Spitalfields Festival: Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London/Carey - Palestrina, Soriano, et al., 8 July 2026

Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

Palestrina, arr. Francesco Soriano: Missa Papae Marcelli (for eight voices in double choir)
Interspersed with:
Palestrina: Ave Regina coelorum a 8
Plainchant: Ave Maris Stella
Flor Peeters: Toccata, Fugue et Hymne sur Ave Maris Stella, op.28
Plainchant: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino
Charles Tournemire: ‘Introit’ from L’Orgue mystique, op.57 no.35, ‘In assumptio BMV’
Plainchant: Assumpta est Maria
Tournemire: ‘Offertoire’ from L’Orgue mystique, ‘In assumptio BMV’
Palestrina: Assumpta est Maria a 6

Daniel Greenaway (organ)
Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London
Colm Carey (director)

 

Images: Matt Abel-Smith (from another performance by this choir)

This final concert from the 2026 Spitalfields Festival provided not only an excellent musical experience. It also offered the opportunity to visit one of the Tower of London’s two chapels, St Peter ad Vincula, its current building dating from the 1520s, although others have stood on the same site, perhaps even prior to the Norman Conquest. Many are buried there, including two of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both executed at the Tower, and his successor-but-one, albeit for nine days, Queen Jane. Thomas Macaulay wrote of the chapel, in his mid-nineteenth-century History of England: 

In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts.

It depends what one means by sadness; if one understands it as something qualitatively different from, say, tragic, as opposed to the latter being an extreme version of the former, then this might, according to taste, have truth in it. At any rate, this royal peculiar is an interesting, unusual, and enduringly strange corner of what is itself now a rather strange complex, more exclusively associated in the popular imagination with imprisonment, execution, and death than its history warrants, so much so that one can readily forget the Tower was for centuries a palace in which English monarchs lived in courtly splendour, eating, drinking, carousing, ruling, praying, and more. 

There was nothing especially deathly about this concert, notwithstanding the tombs around us (hardly unusual in church buildings). It was, however, an unusual programme, offering an arrangement for eight voices in double choir of Palestrina’s celebrated Missa Papae Marcelli by one of his pupils, Francesco Soriano. Colm Carey, director of the Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London, thought it may have been the first concert performance in this country; at any rate it was a rare opportunity. The twofold legend that the Council of Trent sought to banish polyphony from services and that Palestrina’s mass ‘saved’ it may be little more than that. It has proved a hardy legend though, all the way to Hans Pfitzner’s opera and beyond. The intelligibility of the liturgical text, saviour of polyphony or not, is the crucial thing here—and it certainly endures in Sapiano’s version, all the more so when performed with such excellence as we were treated to here. Palestrina’s mass is written for six voices, with a seventh added for the second movement of the ‘Agnus Dei’, although he employs different combinations of voices throughout. From what I have read – I do not recall having heard any other music by him – Soriano worked basically within the tradition of Palestrina, with whom he studied at St John Lateran, whilst adopting the newer polychoral style, which fits very well with what we heard here. 

A rich toned, admirably clear performance kept counterpoint and harmony in admirable balance. The ‘Kyrie’ flowing nicely, with its ‘Christe’ offering contrast and continuation, nicely shaded without fussiness or undue anachronism. Palestrina’s eight-voice Ave Regina coelorum sounded, perhaps, a little ‘purer’—though this may well have been my fancy, owing to what I ‘knew’. At any rate, it offered another complement and contrast, as well as pleasure and edification in its counterpoint. No one could doubt the ‘Tridentine’ intelligibility of the ‘Gloria’, as the liturgy became wordier. It was here that the arrangement revealed certain foretellings of later music, if not quite Monteverdi’s seconda prattica, then a little beyond the primo. Tenor intonation of the plainchant Ave maris stella (which many of course will recognise from Monteverdi) prefaced Daniel Greenaway’s performance of a Toccata, Fugue, et Hymne on that theme by Flor Peeters Greenaway communicated i.ts structure with admirable clarity, not merely for itself, but enabling the music that forms it to come to life. It is a strangely reactionary piece – like much twentieth-century organ music – but its echoes of Hindemith were not without interest. 

Hearing the Palestrina-Soriano mass in such a chapel gave rise to some thoughts of correspondence with English music, above all that of Byrd, and perhaps most clearly in the ‘Credo’. To perform it in a chapel such as this would once have been unthinkable, perhaps giving rise to a greater English exceptionalism than was ever warranted. In more purely musical terms, to hear it performed as if in one, variegated breath, form secure and revealing, was a splendid gift. Two pieces from Charles Tournemire’s liturgical L’Orgue mystique, each again preceded by appropriate plainchant, showed a markedly different aspect to the organ in general, the chapel instrument in particular, and its playing. Here, moreover, the composer’s elaboration of plainsong seemed considerably more rooted in the immanent qualities of the material. If, at one point, I could have sworn I heard a recollection of the then new music of Turandot, I suspect it was coincidental or mere fancy: more a reflection of having heard the opera twice in recent succession than anything else. Or perhaps not; I must relisten. 

Returning to Palestrina and Soriano, the ‘Sanctus’ did just what it should, singing its praises unhurried, yet flowing. The ‘Benedictus’ likewise boasted a keen sense of inevitable ‘rightness’, culminating in cries of ‘Osanna’ that truly lifted the soul. They in turn led to the spirited ascension of Palestrina’s six-voice motet Assumpta est Maria, which sounded, however sentimental the notion may be, properly Marian—connecting us to the chapel’s earliest, pre-Reformation history as well as to revivals thereafter. Carolling harmonic surprises on the words ‘Maria Virgo’ proved a highlight of programme and performance alike, angels singing from heaven to earth and back again, then building to fine, rounded climaxes. With an ‘Agnus Dei’ of hymnal sincerity, fitting to its place in liturgical and concert frameworks alike, the programme reached a conclusion of estimable beauty.

'Morning Star' - The Gesualdo Six, 20 December 2024

Wigmore Hall

Palestrina (arr. Willcocks): Matin Responsory
Lassus: Conditor alme siderum
Praetorius: Nun, komm der Heiden Heiland a 6
Sally Beamish: In the stillness
Jacobus Händl: Mirabile mysterium
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: The Promised Light of Life
Plainchant: Rorate coeli
Byrd: Rorate coeli
Poulenc: O magnum mysterium
Anon (arr. Praetorius): Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Anon: Angelus ed virginem
Plainchant: Ecce advenit
Cornelius: Weihnachtslieder, op.8: no.3, ‘Die Könige’
Eccard: Maria wallt zum Heiligtum
Clemens non Papa: Magi veniunt
Arvo Pärt: Morning Star
Judith Bingham: In Mary’s love
Plainchant: Vidimus stellam
Lassus: Tribus miraculis
Owain Park: O send out thy light
Bob Chilcott: The Shepherd’s Carol


Alasdair Austin, Guy James (countertenors)
Josh Cooter (tenor)
Joseph Wicks (tenor)
Michael Craddock (baritone)
Owain Park (artistic director, bass)

The eve of the shortest day of 2024 was especially miserable in London: cold, wet, and dark. All the more need, then, for an aural glimpse of the ‘Morning Star’ that gave its name to this Wigmore Hall concert from The Gesualdo Six. Rather than concentrate on Advent, Christmas, or Epiphany, the programme took us from one through another to the third. Indeed, it perhaps tried to do too much in too many pieces, a succession of very different, generally short music in some cases more merging into one than showing affinity and connection, though there were certainly exceptions to that. A packed audience, though, clearly enjoyed its evening, nowhere more so than in an encore performance of Jingle Bells, arranged by Gordon Langford. ‘Style’ might seem an unduly pretentious attribute, but for me it pointed out what had sometimes been missing elsewhere, certain standout pieces offering welcome relief. Perhaps a church acoustic would have imparted a warmer blend, or perhaps I was simply not in the right mood, but there were times – and I realise this is a matter of taste more than anything else – when relief in the guise of female voices might have helped. 

I had reservations, then, but this was also an opportunity to hear a good range of repertoire from chant to Palestrina to the present day, in the guise of artistic director Owain Park’s own O send out thy light, gratefully written for the group, in which instance they were clearly very much at home. Palestrina had appeared at the opening, in the guise of David Willcocks’s well-known arrangement of a Nunc dimittis as a Mattins responsory. Many will surely have recognised it in one guise or another, and it made for a fitting opening, followed by well if slightly anonymously sung Lassus (how I felt about a later example too) and more florid Praetorius, Nun komm der Heiland, which to my ears gave a more arresting impression. Plainchant and ‘Anon.’ often fared best, I think, deceptive simplicity permitting performances and their reception to hone in on melody and words, the mediaeval carol Angelus ad virginem gathering voices in a warm conclusion to the first half. 

Other highlights for me included the extraordinary wandering chromatic lines of Jacobus Händl’s Mirabile mysterium. They are anything but easy to sing, yet intonation never proved a problem. Nor did it in Poulenc’s O magnum mysterium, which emerged a little later as fitting complement in stillness and movement, although this was one of those cases when I felt the loss of women’s (or even children’s) voices. The expressive accomplishment of Byrd’s Rorate coeli was highly welcome, perhaps a first-half counterpart to the second-half highpoint of Clemens non Papa’s euphonious and, no coincidence, more extended Ephipany Magi veniunt. It was preceded by Joannes Eccard’s Maria wallt zum Heiligtum which likewise benefited from a degree more warmth. 

None of the twenty-first-century pieces seemed concerned with straining at the edges of modernity, Sally Beamish’s In the stillness purposefully reticent, almost belying the skill with which verbal and musical cadences coincided. Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Judith Bingham ventured further harmonically, the former a rare if doubtless coincidental instance of seeming to take its leave from its predecessor (Händl), the latter another welcome case of painting on a slightly larger canvas, which if not exactly ‘Romantic’ was not exactly un-Romantic either. Arvo Pärt’s Morning Star, well crafted and performed with sympathy, readily laid bare idea and processes. A somewhat dour Cornelius ‘Three Kings’, sung in English, suggested that the nineteenth century was in generally better avoided; unless, that is, we count Jingle Bells.

 

King's/Parry - Lenten Choral Music, 21 March 2018

Cadogan Hall

Palestrina: Stabat Mater

Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part 1)

Poulenc: Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence

Lassus: Stabat Mater

Byrd: Ne irascaris, Domine; Civitas sancti tui

Brahms: Warum ist das Licht gegeben, op.74 no.2; Schaffe in mir, Gott, op.29 no.2

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

Ben Parry (conductor)

Time was I could hear the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s Voices.) Not that I did, of course: I tended to go to my own chapel services more than others’; I also tended to prefer the services down the road at St John’s, less packed with tourists and thus seemingly less of a ‘concert’. I also preferred, in many ways, the more ‘Continental’ sound of St John’s to the typically ‘English’, whiter sound of King’s. Nevertheless, it was always quite an experience, first to set foot in that masterpiece of late Perpendicular Gothic – pay no heed to its cultured despisers, the same sort who will tell you that St Paul’s is a monstrous hybrid – gowned (and thus in slightly better seating than the non-Cambridge congregants), and to hear that celebrated choir, which, through radio and other recordings, I had known for so long before my time in the city that was essentially my home for fifteen years.

Ben Parry, an old boy from the choir and Assistant Director of Music at King’s, substituted for Stephen Cleobury, who was recovering from a bicycle accident. Parry certainly knew the choir and how to play to its strengths; it is difficult to imagine anyone having been disappointed, even in the almost diametrically opposed (to its echoing Chapel home) acoustic of Cadogan Hall. If some tempo choices, perhaps especially in the closing Brahms motets, seemed chosen more to help the boys than on ‘purely’ musical grounds, there is no great harm in that. The business of a collegiate (or other) choral foundation, after all, is far more than providing concert material; indeed, that is not really its business at all. Perhaps those works by Brahms, Warum ist das Licht gegeben? and Schaffe in mir, Gott, the latter a setting of part of Luther’s translation of the Miserere (Psalm 51), will have flowed more readily, especially in the relationship between different sections, and indeed have benefited from surer intonation, but there was much to enjoy, especially in their respective closing sections.

Two settings of the Stabat Mater, by Palestrina and Lassus, opened the concert’s two halves. Both were nicely shaded, without jarring (to my ears, without any) anachronism. The performance of the former imparted, when called upon, a real sense of ‘dec and can’ (decani and cantoris) antiphony in a different setting. It perhaps sounded closer to Monteverdi than often one hears, less ‘white’ than I had expected. Whatever the Council of Trent’s suspicion of the poem, I was struck by the essential simplicity, however artful, of the music and by the guiding role of words. Lassus’s setting came across as darker, a little more Northern perhaps. (He was, after all, Kapellmeister in Munich.) Within the context of an undoubtedly ‘Anglican’ performance, full of tone yet not too full, the sound seemed – or maybe it was just my ears adjusting – to become a little more Italianate as time progressed.


Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence offer a challenge, not least intonational, to any choir, and are more often heard with older (female) voices. In these forthright performances, there was – rightly, I think – no great attempt made to ape other performing traditions, but there was nevertheless sometimes a harshness, even perhaps, in the closing ‘Tristis est anima mea’, an anger, we do not necessarily associate with the choir. The shading of ‘Vinea mea electa’ was intelligent, fuller than Anglican reputation would have you believe. If intonation proved far from perfect, especially in the opening ‘Timor et tremor’, nor should one exaggerate; one always knew where the music and indeed the text were heading.

The music of Tallis and Byrd is home territory for King’s – albeit here without the trebles. Naturally, in their absence, countertenors came more strongly to the fore. Parry wisely made no attempt to do too much in terms of word-painting in the Tallis; the words speak for themselves, and did so here especially on the Lenten cries for ‘Ierusalem, Ierusalem’ to return to her God. The two Byrd motets offered, for me, the highlight of the concert. Without a hint of blandness or routine, there was simply – or not so simply – that ineffable sense of ‘rightness’, of ease with the music, the composer’s recusancy notwithstanding. Music and words spoke freely, in greatly satisfying performances. As we heard in both, ‘Sion deserta facta est, Jerusalem desolata est.’ And yet, there was comfort to be had, if not in the wilderness and desolation of Jerusalems heavenly and earthly, then in their artistic representation – which is doubtless as it should be.

Tallis Scholars - Victoria and Palestrina, 10 May 2011

Cadogan Hall

Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips (director)

Victoria – Dum complerentur
Palestrina – Dum complerentur
Victoria – Lamentations for Maundy Thursday
Victoria – Lamentations for Holy Saturday
Palestrina – Tribulationes civitatum
Victoria – Vidi speciosam
Palestrina – Tu es Petrus


A funny programme for May, let alone such a May of such unseasonable warmth: to open with two Whitsun motets, thence to retreat to Holy Week, prior to a final thaw. Moreover, though Cadogan Hall hosts a good number of choral concerts, it is perhaps not the most obvious venue for Renaissance polyphony: the former Christian Scientist church looks and feels more inclined at least to English nonconformism. The acoustic, good in itself, took a little getting used to – and I wondered whether this were the case for the Tallis Scholars too. At any rate, Victoria’s setting of the Pentecostal text, Dum complerentur, at times sounded a little thin. However, the Tallis Scholars’ accustomed smoothness of phrasing provided continuity, and by the time of the final ‘alleluia’, bells – or should that be tongues? – could be heard a-rejoicing. Palestrina’s responsory setting of the same text offered a fascinating contrast. ‘Older’ and ‘purer’ were two comparative adjectives that came to mind, but equally apparent was greater sturdiness of rhythm, at times presaging Handel. Imitative writing came across keenly in the present performance, Palestrina’s version sounding fuller in tone than Victoria’s, though the performers were two fewer in number. Peccantem me quotidie seems to hark back still further in time; Alexandra Coghlan’s booklet note rightly mentioned Franco-Flemish style as an influence upon Palestrina. Just as striking was the sonority of intimate contrition, to which the Tallis Scholars brought a rather English – and I mean ‘English’ rather than ‘Anglican’ – tonal quality.

The centrepieces to this concert, positioned either side of the interval, were two Victoria sets of Lamentations: those for Matins on Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday. Phrasing proved as seamless as in the opening motet, but the performances continued to sound more at ease. I was especially taken by the mood of dignified sadness to the first set, putting me in mind, perhaps fancifully, of the dark Escorial. Victoria now seemed to be heard – which, in terms of the programming he was – through the auditory prism of Palestrina. The second refrain of ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum’ (‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the Lord thy God’) sounded especially plangent. The equivalent passage in the Holy Saturday suffered from slight imprecision upon the cadence of the second ‘Jerusalem’, but otherwise performances impressed. By the time of the final refrain, there was initially a not inappropriate impression of near-weariness, but the imprecation to turn to the Lord elicited a final, sonorous bloom.

After two considerable doses of Victoria, the dawning of Palestrina’s Tribulationes civitatum again heralded a sense of almost ‘classical’ purity. This is never, of course, a composer to wear his heart upon his sleeve: words were permitted broodingly to tell of our sinful plight, without impinging duly upon musical progression. A brighter note was struck in the final two motets. A Song of Songs text, composer, and performers brought new warmth to Victoria’s Vidi speciosam, even if I can imagine other groups imparting a greater sense of the erotic. There was an apt sense of Petrine certainty to be heard in Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus. Fuller tone was employed, though a performance more overtly jubilant might have conveyed the message more strongly.