2016 Q3 music list published

The latest music list is available here.

Cardoso Missa Miserere mihi, opening Kyrie

Cardoso Missa Miserere mihi, opening Kyrie

Another quarter, another music list. The weeks and months seem to fly by. Our monumental Cardoso450 project continues; a true highlight will be the Missa Miserere mihi, a sumptuous 6-part setting from the Liber primus missarum. Cardoso’s gently expressive chromaticism is evident throughout, but perhaps most unexpectly present at the very start where the tenor begins the Mass with a wholetone scale (see illustration). Cardoso would use the same rising scale in his Missa pro defunctis à6 in the same volume which we will be singing next year.

Away from Cardoso and all things Portuguese, we sing English music ancient and modern with settings by Taverner and Vaughan Williams, enjoy some rich lower voice music from Gabrieli, Crecquillon and Gombert, and let our hair down a bit with some cheerful Mozart, including his motet Venite populi for double chorus.

Alleluia, alleluia

Eastertide is a time of great joy in the church, and the exuberance expressed in much of the music is infectious, with motets being appended at every opportunity with catchy Alleluia refrains. The propers of the Mass are likewise peppered, and Alleluia takes over entirely after the first reading. Here, in the Graduale Romanum, the Gradual is replaced by a second Alleluia. 

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Hic est discipulus ille

Using a Motet as a basis for a Mass is a long-established technique used by the majority of composers in the Renaissance, taking either a Motet of their own or of another composer as a model, the latter being a mark of respect, an indication of the high esteem in which the first composer held the second. This Sunday offers the first opportunity in the Cardoso450 series of hearing this technique in action.

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