Saturday 15 March 2025 at 7:30pm
Sherborne Abbey
Uplifting music for Lent, featuring
Tomás Luis de Victoria Requiem (1605)
Banish the winter grey and the politics and be transported to the timelessness of some wonderful Spanish Renaissance music. Uplifting music for Lent from the sixteenth century to the twentieth in the atmospheric setting of Sherborne Abbey, featuring Tomás Luis de Victoria‘s 1605 setting of the Requiem, along with music by Purcell, Lotti, Reger, Pizzetti and Tavener, and culminating in Howells’ wonderful Take him, earth, for cherishing.
The final work Victoria published, the Requiem is a sumptuous six part setting and one of the glories of the Spanish Renaissance. With its vivid colours and sonorities, it’s still a landmark choral work over four hundred years after its composition.
Interspersed between Victoria’s great work are some ‘classic’ works for Lent, and favourites of many choirs. Antonio Lotti‘s dramatic eight-part Crucifixus was written in Venice around the same time as Henry Purcell was writing another choir favourite, Hear my prayer, here in the UK. Another northern Italian composer, Pizzetti wrote his dramatic setting of Psalm 130 in 1937 to mark the patching-up of a friendship with another composer – quite the making-up gift! We pay a brief visit to Germany for one of Max Reger‘s eight sacred songs, written just before he died. John Tavener is a particularly familiar name in this area, where he lived for many years. His 1981 Funeral Ikos is a fine example of the influence of the Orthodox Church liturgical traditions which permeated much of Tavener’s music.
The culminating work in our programme is Herbert Howells‘ masterpiece, Take him, earth, for cherishing, commissioned for the commemoration service following the death of President Kennedy, held in Washington in 1964. Fittingly, it was also sung at the composer’s own memorial service in 1983.
Read more about our programme here.
Our complete programme:
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) Missa Pro Defunctis a 6 (Requiem 1605)
Herbert Howells (1892-1983) Take Him, earth, for cherishing
Antonio Lotti (1667-1740) Crucifixus
Henry Purcell (1659-1695) Hear my prayer
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) De profundis
Max Reger (1873-1916) Der Mensch lebt und bestehet (Man liveth and endureth)
John Tavener (1944-2013) Funeral Ikos