The Renaissance Choir - Miserere Mei

 The Renaissance Choir, Church of the Holy Spirit, Southsea, July 12

There is an idea that Gregorio Allegri might not have been responsible for the embellishments, including the top C, in the Miserere credited to him, that he only wrote the plainsong and a long-forgotten chorister added the part that made it and its composer famous. That would make Allegri, already a bit of a 'one-hit wonder', the luckiest composer in the history of Western music. 

There are a few works in which one moment has almost come to represent the whole thing as audiences brace themselves for how Hamlet will deliver 'To be or not to be' or 'a handbag?' in The Importance of Being Earnest. That top C in the Miserere is in the same category and where we have had Laurence Olivier or Edith Evans, the Renaissance Choir had Jenni Halliday. One might fear for those in the role as the crucial moment approaches but we need not have done. Jenni cleared it with something in hand, awesomely - if we can still use the word in its undebased sense - and is clearly a special new asset for the Renaissance Choir. The whole choir were concentrated on this most serious and penitential piece that I'm sure I've not heard in the flesh before but the best things come to those who wait.

 

We had begun with the Kyrie and Gloria from Palestrina's Missa Aeterna Christi Munera like layers of cool eiderdown exploiting the kindness of the acoustic. Louise Douglas then moved to the piano to tiptoe minimally through silence in Arvo Pärt's Für Alina before re-joining the choir for his The Woman with the Alabaster Box, illustrating Peter Gambie's imaginative programming to go with the wise wit of his introductory remarks. The sustained notes in the alto and soprano parts engaged in a way both sombre and pacific.

Allegri's much lesser known Missa in Leculo Me, the Gloria, is for 8 parts without, understandably, quite achieving what Tallis does in Spem in Alium but was dance-like at times and then- and I should think so, too - the interval came after there was a fair proportion of audience standing in appreciation of the Miserere. I desperately wanted to but am rarely one to begin such things so I was glad to join in. One can't do it too often or else one devalues the tribute but sometimes one feels one must.

 

The second half had it all to do to follow that and did so by following a similar plan. Firstly, the Sanctus and the rich tapestry of the Agnus Dei from the Palestrina where special mention of the basses ought to be made, underpowered in numbers but not in their contribution. I understand it's a not uncommon situation in choirs but it's one that Renaissance are coping with well.

Louise next moved to the organ for the plaintive, highly punctuated The Beatitudes by Pärt in which the ominous, otherwisely organic growth of the choir part reaches its 'Rejoice' before the organ's burst of light. Strange music by mainstream, classical standards but not unusual for Arvo. The calm modulations of Eleanor Daley's Upon Your Heart seemed to echo the sentiment that 'what will survive of us is love' in its,

For love is strong as death 

but didn't compromise it and empty it out like Larkin's poem does. It served as a palette cleanser, perhaps, before a further monumental Miserere, by James MacMillan. The one more thing the Allegri might have benefitted from was less daylight but as the light faded, the tensions and unresting C21st religion and MacMillan's radical 'liberation theology' had distant echoes of its precursor. Challenging for the choir I'm sure it is and not an automatic selection for an easy listening playlist but, eerily soothing, that's only because 'easy listening' would do better if it were harder. It was great to see that such a less obvious work brought the same reaction from a clearly well-informed audience as the end of the first half had.

That was 'one for the ages', a tremendous achievement by the choir who I've not heard better in a number of outings now. And one for this year's short list that I don't think about, I wait for that involuntary visceral reaction to let me know. It's happened three times this year already, thrillingly but not necessarily as profoundly as that.