Double or Nothing: Renaissance Music for double choir

New date added!

We have recently reached an agreement to bring this programme to St Nicholas' Church in Arundel. Come and see this concert there on Saturday, 17 February 2024.

We are being graciously hosted by Mike Carey of The Victoria Institute in Arundel and they have set up a separate online ticketing store. Click here to buy tickets to the Arundel performance on Saturday, 17 February.

Of the many fascinating innovations in choral composition that took place during the Renaissance, one of the most striking was the development of double choir texture. Here, polyphonic lines both swirl and interweave as they always do, but also at times act like blocks or pillars as well. In this concert, Brighton Consort presents music all written in this compelling way, all for eight separate voices.

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Concert programme

Gregorio Allegri - Christus resurgens

Tomas Luis de Victoria - Missa Alma redemptoris mater: Kyrie
Tomas Luis de Victoria - Missa Alma redemptoris mater: Gloria

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - Stabat mater

Giovanni Gabrieli - O magnum mysterium
Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi - O notturno miracolo

Tomas Luis de Victoria - Missa Alma redemptoris mater: Credo

Claudio Monteverdi - Nisi Dominus (from 1610 Vespers)

— INTERVAL —

Tomas Luis de Victoria - Missa Alma redemptoris mater: Sanctus

Jean Mouton - Nesciens mater
Alonso Lobo - Ave maria a 8

Nicolas Gombert - Lugebat David Absalon
Sebastián de Vivanco - Veni dilecte mi

William Byrd - ‘Nunc dimittis’ from The Great Service

Tomas Luis de Victoria - Missa Alma redemptoris mater: Agnus

Programme note

Download our PDF concert programme

Rather than choose as our theme for this programme a composer, time, place, or a major work, we have decided to explore a musical texture, an organising principle, a compositional device. This leaves quite a lot of room for variety and we believe this programme offers us an opportunity to explore the wide range of ways that composers from the Renaissance expressed this device: double choir texture.

On the surface, this is a straightforward principle to understand. Take a choir, divide it into two smaller choirs, and give each group something different to do. Because of the standard division of voices in soprano, alto, tenor, and bass this results most often in 8 separate lines of music, but we will see that composers were able to stretch and rethink this 8-voices-in-two-groups-of-4-each limitation in various ways.

However, to more fully understand the leap forward in musical thinking that double choir writing represents, it is necessary to look at the music that preceded the Renaissance. Mediaeval music (as indeed a substantial amount of Renaissance music as well) is rooted in Gregorian plainsong, in single lines or unaccompanied melodies. The first polyphonic music was conceived of entirely as the simultaneous sounding of two or more melodies, what musicians call ‘horizontal’ lines of music - as that is how they are orientated on a page of music. As the Renaissance moved into the Baroque, however, and with the ever-increasing influence of instrumental music on music written for choirs, composers began to experiment with thinking about music not as melodies but as blocks of sound, or sonic textures. They began to structure music not only using the structures of the texts they were setting, or by employing complicated and impressive mathematics to give their musical creations intelligible form, but also by engaging in a more abstract understanding of the sound of a piece itself. They began to mould and build patterns in sound alone.

The most straightforward way of showing this technique is evident in the first piece on our programme, Gregorio Allegri’s Christus resurgens. A piece written for Easter, it is an exciting and triumphant piece, and the layering of both choirs bouncing the words ‘Vivit Deo’ (God lives!) back and forth to one another is textbook double-choir composition. Allegri is most famous for his setting of Miserere mei Deus, but here he shows us that, in his position as a bridging composer between Renaissance and Baroque, he has mastered the exciting opportunities afforded to him by the use of this ‘stereo’ texture.

Winding its way through our programme is one of Tomas Luis de Victoria’s most beautiful double-choir mass settings, Missa Alma redemptoris mater. This piece also makes use of one of the most often-used compositional techniques in the Renaissance, that of ‘parody’ technique. Rather than referring to anything derogatory, parody technique in the Renaissance was using one piece as a model for another, as an inspiration. Composers would pay homage to one another by doing this and also revisit earlier works they themselves had written, as was the case here. A parody motet or mass adopts passages, textures, and compositional devices from another work - or, in modern parlance, the ‘look and feel’ of another piece of music. A good parody mass doesn’t quote directly from another work, but is close enough to immediately be recognisable. Victoria’s mastery is here displayed in using the musical material from a motet in praise of the elegance and mystery of the virgin Mary - i.e. one idea - to express the much wider range of emotions and moods contained in the text of the Mass Ordinary (divided into Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus & Benedictus, and Agnus Dei movements). As Victoria is a complete genius, this is done seamlessly and effectively.

One of the most famous works of double choir music from the Renaissance is Palestrina’s Stabat mater. No concert of double choir music would be complete without this magnificent, lengthy, ‘slow burn’ of a piece. Palestrina here is at his concise, elegant, and transcendent best, using the alternating format presented to him by the double choir texture to bring together long sweeps of musical time, building to perfectly judged climaxes, and always ultimately in service of the text.

Giovanni Gabrieli uses similar techniques of setting up dialogue followed by the joining together of the choirs, but takes things one step further toward the of his O magnum mysterium setting. Gabrieli is known, of course, for both his instrumental writing and his association with the basilica of San Marco in Venice, where he wrote music for multiple group of singers and instrumentalists who would stand in the various galleries of that splendid building and create ‘Renaissance surround sound’ for the awed listeners below. O magnum mysterium contains just a taste of this in its instrumentally-inspired rhythms at the end, leading to a grand ending worthy of the splendours of Venice!

O notturno miracolo by Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi is in many ways unique in this programme. It is firstly a secular piece of music - a love song. Secondly, while most of the rest of the music in the programme delicately plays with the combination of melodies and chords (what musicians call ‘vertical’ sounds), Gastoldi here is primarily concerned with the intelligibility of the text in a double choir format, meaning almost all of this piece is written in a ‘homophonic’ way, meaning all of the syllables of text are sung at the same time, like modern hymn singing in church. The extent to which Gastoldi adheres to this principle is remarkable in this piece and it results in the unique experience for the listener of the text being delivered as one, but with musical richness - almost like a Greek chorus. Being a late Renaissance Italian madrigal, there are also some extraordinary pictorial representations of the text in this piece, none more so than when Gastoldi sets the text ‘Poi ferma il tuo viaggio’ (Then stay your journey) by slowing everything down!

Bringing the first half to a close is a truly remarkable piece by a truly remarkable composer. Claudio Monterverdi defined, expanded and innovated in every musical form available to him. His Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610 (the famous so-called ‘1610 Vespers’) can be thought of as a portfolio of different ways in which Monteverdi was engaging with his musical heritage, taking forms and conventions of the past and updating them, matching the best of what his predecessors could do and bringing something new as well. In Nisi Dominus, not only does Monteverdi employ the approach of alternating blocks of sound perfected by Palestrina and Victoria, but also incorporates the much older technique of placing a cantus firmus plainsong melody in very long notes right into the heart of the texture. Further, this piece expands on the 8-voice convention by opening out to a full 10 voices, two groups of 5!

The second half of the programme contains its two earliest pieces. The first, and oldest, is Jean Mouton’s Nesciens mater. This piece perhaps epitomises the mindset of the very first experiments with what would become double choir texture in that it isn’t actually conceived of as blocks of sound at all but instead is an ingenious canon. Canons are conceptually the logical extreme of simplicity in polyphony; to create harmony when writing a canon, a composer doesn’t even write two separate melodies! Only one line is written and it’s just sung at a different time, and sometimes at a different pitch, by another voice. Somehow it miraculously adds up and the result sounds harmonious! Canons are, of course, much more complicated to actually write, but the idea behind them is this one of utmost simplicity. Here Mouton takes this idea and expands it, making it mind-blowing. Instead of writing one melody and having it sung at a different time, Mouton writes a full four-voice motet, and then has another group of voices sing the same thing, transposed to a different key, and a few beats later. Nesciens mater is a total triumph of this sort of simplicity expressed in complexity and Mouton pulls it off here without any awkwardness or rough edges. A masterpiece.

Many decades later, Alonso Lobo, in another version of parody technique, would return to this same compositional conceit in his setting of the famous prayer Ave Maria for eight voices. Again, Lobo only composed four of them with the other four voices sung in canon with the first four. Lobo also updated the harmonies and was able to make the structure his own through the use of chromaticism and other, later expressive gestures more representative of the high Renaissance.

Born at the very end of the 15th century, Nicolas Gombert is the second oldest composer on tonight’s programme. His Lugebat David Absalon is less of a traditional ‘double choir’ piece that conceives the two choirs as blocks of sound and more of a fluid experiment with how 8 equal voices can combine in different ways. Sometimes each voice is entirely on its own while at other times, Gombert does group them into recognisable, alternating blocks like we see in later pieces. As fascinating as this is, the real hallmark of this piece is the searing intensity with which Gombert expresses this incredibly emotive text. If ever there was an argument against early Renaissance music being dry and academic, this is surely it! Gombert expresses every possible emotion felt by a grieving father (King David mourning the death of his son Absalon) in this emotional roller coaster of a piece.

Moving toward the end of the programme we present two undoubtedly modern pieces of music, at least by Renaissance standards. Vivanco’s Veni dilecte mi, makes use of intricate rhythms in a way that prefigures Baroque treatment of text, almost in a dance-like way. This is a setting from the biblical Song of Songs, and Vivanco here doesn’t shy away from the text’s emotive, intimate, and sensual words. This is a piece where the sturdy feel of double choir solidity dissolves into sensuality and a flexible expression of passionate romantic love.

As a final nod to William Byrd, whose music we included in every one of our programmes last year, we include one of Byrd’s only double-choir works, the Nunc dimittis movement from his extraordinary Great Service. Last year, 2023, was a Byrd anniversary year and we just felt we couldn’t really let him go! The Great Service contains music suitable for a range of Church of England services, and the Nunc dimittis movement was written to be sung during Evensong. The Great Service was so named for its size rather than necessarily its quality(!), though it is a tour de force of Byrd’s contrapuntal skill and management of choral forces. Like Gombert, rather than employ a constant back-and-forth between his two five-part choirs, Byrd here plays with different combinations of voices and textures. The piece is elegant and refined while also being full, and impressive. 2023 is not yet that distant of a memory and we will miss singing so much of this unparalleled genius of the English Renaissance.

But speaking of unparalleled geniuses, it is of course fitting that we end with Victoria, whose mass has threaded its way through this programme, tying all of this different music together. Double choir music is a choral composer’s best opportunity to borrow from the instrumental composer’s tool kit by allowing for the abstract sculpting of sound itself, while still remaining true to the text, that thing that differentiates and heightens the choral musician’s art. Choirs, rather than instrumentalists or vocal soloists, are uniquely privileged here, therefore, having the opportunity to truly enjoy the best of both worlds!

Programme note by Greg Skidmore
January 2024

Texts and translations