Harry Christophers and The Sixteen create a chamber of echoes in this fascinating sequence on ‘time past’: Monteverdi’s music is linked to the earlier polyphonic tradition that so influenced him, and is here interleaved with the Dante-inspired poetry of Seamus Heaney.

Monteverdi derived his striking Missa ‘In illo tempore’ (Mass ‘At that time’) from a motet by Flemish maestro Nicolas Gombert, written a century earlier. Sensuous settings of the Song of Songs by the great Iberian composers Guerrero and Victoria will be woven through the Mass.

In his 1984 collection Station Island Irish poet Seamus Heaney questioned his place in a nation riven by the Troubles. It includes the poem ‘In illo tempore’, which considers the grammar and politics of a Mass service. Heaney takes us on a Dantean voyage, encountering ghosts from his past, just as Monteverdi recalled and transformed the ideas of his forebears.

You might also like Book of Hours: Salve Regina – The Sixteen on Sat 16 Jun 2018.