THE New London Singers, 34 gifted amateurs, thoroughly rehearsed and ably conducted by Jamie Powe, took us through seven centuries of unaccompanied choral music in St Peter’s, Eaton Square, in London, last month.
The repertoire ranged from a simple triple-time Machaut Gloria to Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry, a 2007 setting of St Patrick’s Breastplate. Byrd’s energetic Arise Lord Into Thy Rest contrasted with the cross-rhythms of Dobrinka Tabakova’s gentler 2022 version, and the florid 17th-century lines of Raphaella Aleotti’s Surge Amica Mea were set against Ivo Antognini’s smoother 2019 setting, with its slowly extending phrases and the serene coda of “your voice is sweet, and your face is comely.”
The major work was the 1922 Requiem by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968). It starts with a simple bass chant, broadening into five radiant madrigal-style parts at Lux Perpetua. With the fugal Kyrie, the harmony becomes starker. The Dies Irae, by far the longest movement, has the traditional plainchant as a funeral march-like cantus firmus under a plangent countermelody sung to Ah from the upper voices, thickening into eight-part polyphony at “Quid sum miser” before climaxing in a passionate “Salva me”. A brief return of the two-part writing precedes a solemn conclusion in which the words “Pie Iesu” suddenly appear in radiant major harmony.
For the Sanctus, the texture becomes three four-part groups, like the multiple choirs of Venetian church music, building through a gentle Benedictus, in which the women’s voices soared in triplets, towards a final full-throated “Hosanna in excelsis”.
The gentle four-part Agnus Dei was a prayer-like interlude before a Libera Me, marked to be sung “with profound fervour”, emphasising texture rather than harmony, restless and rhythmically unsettled, with a moment of pure magic as the choir sunk to a perfect pianissimo at the words “Requiem aeternam dona eis.”
Not a terrifying Requiem this, but one shot through with hope and the promise of grace.
