Voices from the Shadows: Lux Aeterna
A Requiem from Puebla Cathedral
Lamentations and motets from Spain and the New World
The Renaissance Singers, David Allinson
St Pancras New Church. 10 February 2024

I have reviewed The Rensaissance Singers many times over the years, and they always impress. But this concert was really something special. Not only was the performance outstanding, but the choice of music, much of it being heard for the first time in the UK, was a brilliant choice by their inspirational musical director and conductor David Allinson. Their programme was based on the music of Spain and the New World in the build-up to Easter and the traditional Day of the Dead celebrations, with a musical focus on two principal churches, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Pueblo de los Angeles.

The first half focussed on a mysterious polyphonic Missa pro Defunctis found in the archive of Mexico’s Pueblo de los Angeles cathedral. It has recently been discovered to be a four-part Requiem Mass by Manuel Mendes (c1547-1605), partially reconstructed for two equal four-part choirs by Gonçalo Saldanha (c1580-1645). Mendes was Mestre de Capela at Évora Cathedral in Portugal. It seems that most of his music, which remained in manuscript form, was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. The adaptation is simple, creating antiphonal four-part choruses from the existing text, with expansion to eight parts at the conclusion of each section. Only briefly is any new music added. The result is a powerful piece, opening with an expansive Introitus, the slow tactus pulse underlying increasingly complex polyphony. The low/high contrast between the two choirs first appears in the Kyrie, the imitative voice entries leading to a more florid concluding section. The Offertorium remains in Mendes’ four-part version, while the more homophonic Sanctus and concluding Agnus Dei.

Interspersed between the Mass settings were two short organ versets from a Kyrie del sexto tono by Antonio de Cabezón, representing the early development of Spanish keyboard music through elaborations on a polyphonic vocal model, and a powerful setting of In horrore viisionis nocturnae by Francisco López Capillas, the assistant organist, dulcian player and later choirmaster of Pueblo cathedral. Incidentally, the music heard in this concert might originally have been accompanied by a dulcian and other instruments, a common practice in Spain and its colonies at the time. The first half concluded with the very impressive six-voice Circumdederunt me dolores mortis by Juan Gutiérrez Padilla, who travelled from Malaga to spend four decades as a highly respected Maestro di Capilla at Puebla Cathedral where his music is preserved in a specially bound volume. It was given a particularly powerful reading by David Allinson and the Renaissance Singers.

After the interval, the focus fell on the concluding eight-voice double-choir Lamentations for the Thursday of Easter by José de Baquedano, director of music at Santiago Cathedral in the late 17th century. Reflecting a combination of the traditional polyphonic style of the late Renaissance with the emerging Baroque, it was a real test of the singers, with some scarily high soprano lines, exquisitely performed by the Renaissance Singers. Like Padilla in Puebla. the cathedral authorities ensured that Baquedano’s music was lodged in the library, where it remains to this day.

It was preceded by the slowly evolving Circumdederunt me dolores mortis by Cristóbal de Morales and the first UK performance of Carlos Patiño, maestro de capilla of the capilla real. There were also two extended organ Tientos by the master of the Spanish Golden Age of keyboard music, Francisco Correa de Arauxo and Juan Cabanilles, a contemporary of Baquedano. These were played with impressively appropriate ornamentation by William Whitehead, who also provided organ accompaniments to the Lamentations. The Arauxo was composed in a strict polyphone style, but with the upper voice treated to exotic elaborations, adding something of a Moorish tinge. The Cabanilles was in the more elaborate Baroque style.

This year sees the 80th anniversary of The Renaissance Singers, which will be celebrated at a concert on 29 June, following a concert of Lassus back in St Pancas New Church on 23 March. They are currently at the top of their game, with an excellent and well-drilled singers.