Ex Cathedra - In a strange land

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

This well-known verse from Psalm 137, a hymn of captivity and longing for homeland and religious freedom, gives this programme its title and its theme. In a strange land explores man’s search for heaven and earth in the Old and the New World in the turbulence of the 16th and 17th centuries. There is music of religious conflict and of discovery from England, France, Holland, Spain – and from Mexico and Bolivia, the world of the Aztecs and Incas.

The programme includes William Byrd’s exquisite Mass for 4 Voices alongside gems by Gesualdo, Lobo, Tallis and Victoria, the lilting syncopation of Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla’s Missa Ego flos campi, and rhythmically-arresting music from the Latin American Baroque, full of evocative, indigenous imagery.

Part of Choral at Cadogan 2016-17