The Chandos Singers, conducted by Malcolm Hill, are one of Bath’s leading chamber choirs. Their forthcoming concert will use choral music from Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594), and Mikolaj Zielenski (1560-1620) to demonstrate how Renaissance composers disguised and elaborated quotations from their own work.
During the mediaeval and Renaissance periods, it was normal for composers to base their sacred works on a known melody (often plainsong, sometimes a secular song). While multi-movement works, such as settings of the Mass, might begin each movement with the same passage, and while references to other composers’ pieces were considered as homages to them, it was very rare for composers to include quotations from their own works. What is more, when such quotations were employed, they might well be hidden as a coda or elaborated by using a different number of voices. While composers such as Bach and Handel made more extensive reuse of their music, there are very few examples of precise self-quotation before the end of the Romantic era. Chandos’s Renaissance examples will show the immense variation that could be achieved between the original work and its successor.
The concert will be held in the serene surroundings of the Magdalen Chapel on Holloway, Bath. A chapel is known to have existed on this site in the 11th century, and a leper hospital was built close by in the 12th. Both were under the care of the Abbey monks. The current building is 15th century. Despite severe bomb damage in 1942, it remains an active centre of worship.
Interval refreshments will be available.
Image: Portrait of an artist in his studio (traditionally identified as Willem van de Velde II) by Michiel van Musscher. Source: Dickinson Gallery, London and New York [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.