The Sixteen's Blog

The violins and continuo team

Emily has just sent me these photos of the rehearsal for tonight’s concert in St James’ Church in Chipping Campden, where we are performing more of Monteverdi’s Selva Morale e Spirituale in the music festival there.  Full details of the programme are here.

The concert rounds off another busy week, which included our Choral Pilgrimage visit to Greenwich, a reception to mark the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Representative Office of the Government of Flanders in London, and the RPS Awards.

The broadcast on BBC Radio 3 of the latter – featuring Kirsty, Katy, David, Sam and Greg – was earlier this afternoon, and can be heard for the next seven days on the iPlayer. 

RPS Music Awards

To the Dorchester last night for the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, where ‘We Are Shadows’ won the Learning and Participation award for Spitalfields Music.  The Sixteen took part in this community opera – with music by John Barber to a libretto by Hazel Gould – last summer, and Kirsty, Katy, David, Sam and Greg performed ‘Dawn’ last night at the ceremony, to great acclaim.  You can hear a programme from the Awards on BBC Radio 3 next Sunday afternoon.  The citation said: ‘The performance was brave and ambitious, uniting a broad spectrum of participants through work that was musically fresh and vibrant.’  The RPS Music Awards are the most prestigious classical awards in the UK, exemplified last night by the presentation of the RPS Gold Medal to Mitsuko Uchida who, as always, made a brilliant and inspiring speech!

Our next innovative project with Spitalfields Music is in June, with four performances of Samuel Becketts ‘Old Earth’. The Sixteen joins forces with Jericho House to present this significant theatrical event: the first staged presentation of a series of Samuel Beckett monologues with a new music commission by leading British composer Alec Roth.  More details nearer the time, but tickets are on sale here.

James MacMillan: Miserere

There was an interesting, in-depth discussion on BBC Radio 3′s CD Review on Saturday morning, when Andrew McGregor and Jeremy Summerley surveyed recent choral recordings of contemporary repertoire.  It’s about 105 minutes into the programme.  They cover music by Peteris Vasks, Ola Gjeilo, Wolfgang Rihm, a remarkable CD by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain (Augustinas, Urbatis, Plakidis, Grigorjeva, and Gabriel Jackson), and our recent CORO release of works by James MacMillan: Miserere (if you haven’t heard this yet, it is available here).

Talking of CORO, there has been a very encouraging response over the weekend to our Big Give campaign to involve fans of The Sixteen in supporting the second volume of our series of Palestrina Masses.  To find out more or to make a donation, visit The Big Give.

Claudio Monteverdi

Having attended our concert of Monteverdi in Temple Church inLondon last night (you can hear the BBC Radio 3 broadcast here), and reflecting on the fact that some 75% of our concerts are given in cathedrals, abbeys or churches, I was intrigued to see an article on Renaissance Acoustics on the Gates Cambridge Scholarships website.  Braxton Boren and Prof. Malcom Longair have been investigating the question: ‘What would the works of great Renaissance composers like Monteverdi, Willaert and Gabrieli have sounded like when they were heard for the first time?’ You can see their conclusions and coverage in the scientific press here. And you can listen to some of their results on  this Web site by scrolling to the bottom of the page. The top button plays a recording of polyphonic music as it would sound in an echoless chamber; the middle recording is of polyphonic music as it would sound in the empty Basilica of San Marco; and the bottom one is of polyphonic music in the basilica during a festival, as predicted by Boren and Longair’s computer model.

Intriguing stuff.  Harry in particular obviously spends alot of time considering the effect of acoustics on our concerts and recordings: Ely Cathedral, for example, seems to have nodes whereby the sound is perfect only for every tenth row or so, whereas Peterborough Cathedral has a crystal-clear acoustic throughout the nave. And often, an acoustic which seems very dry for the singers, is actually warm and mellow for the audience.

Rehearsing in Temple Church

We continue our exploration of Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale in a concert tonight in the Temple Church here in London. It is being broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm.  Here’s the running order:

Monteverdi: Kyrie and Gloria from Messa a 4; Credidi, propter quod locutus sum; Pianto della Madonna; Credo from Messa a 4; Beatus vir (Secondo).

c. 8.15pm Interval: instrumental music by some of Monteverdi’s Italian forebears and contemporaries including Frescobaldi and a chance to hear music by Gian Francesco Malipiero, the composer and musicologist who put Monteverdi’s music back onto the musical map in the early part of the twentieth century.

c. 8.35pm: Monteverdi: Memento Domine David; Magnificat (Secondo); Laudate Dominum; Sanctus and Agnus Dei from Messa a 4, Crucifixus; Laudate pueri (Secondo).

Temple Church of course was badly damaged by incendiary bombs on 10 May 1941. One of the most notable features of today’s church is the east window.  This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem.  In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers (rather apposite at the moment!).  The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.