Reproaches, Lamentation and Penitence: choral music for Lent | Corvus Consort

An hour long concert of choral music for Lent, exploring themes of repentance, lamentation and petitions for mercy.

Works by renaissance masters are cast alongside music from the present day, including two settings of text from the ‘Improperia’ or ‘Reproaches’ published over 400 years apart. Featuring music by renowned 16th century composers William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, as well as their lesser known contemporaries Sulpitia Cesis, an Italian lutenist-composer and nun, and Vicente Lusitano, whose 1555 book of motets makes him Europe’s first published composer of African descent. Early music sits shoulder-to-shoulder with works from the 20th and 21st centuries, including John Sanders’s ‘The Reproaches’, a deeply-evocative work first written in 1984 for Good Friday in Gloucester Cathedral, and James MacMillan’s masterful ‘Miserere’, which reimagines Gregorio Allegri’s iconic setting of the same text into a rich contemporary soundworld full of drama, beauty and intense emotional outpouring.

The Corvus Consort is a vocal ensemble based in the UK. Founded and directed by Freddie Crowley, the group draws its members from a pool of young professionals in the early stages of their singing careers. With key objectives of musical versatility and innovative programming, the Consort performs in a wide variety of genres and styles, stretching from the Renaissance to the present day, and enjoys a range of instrumental collaborations. The ensemble is also flexible in size and forces, so it can be carefully tailored to each particular performance context.