Below is a selection of past concert programmes from the last few years, to give you a flavour of the variety of music performed by the Cantilena Singers.
13 July 2024: Songs of Suffolk
We returned to the beautiful St. Mary’s Church, Newmarket, for an evening of folk song arrangements, with favourites from some of the finest composers of the 20th century, including Ernest Moeran, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Peter Warlock, Percy Grainger, Gustav Holst, and David Willcocks. The programme also included a brand new choral arrangement of six folk songs originally collected in Suffolk and arranged for voice and piano by Moeran in the 1930s, being performed for the first time in this concert.
Download the concert programme
20 April 2024: Illi autem sunt in pace
St. Nicholas’ Church, Great Wilbraham was the venue for our spring 2024 concert, which celebrated anniversaries for several composers: Renaissance composer Robert White, who died 450 years ago; Charles Villiers Stanford, who died 100 years ago; and Edward Bairstow, who was born 150 years ago. The programme included:
- White – The Lord bless us and keep us
- Lotti – Missa brevis (Missa del primo tuono)
- Bach – Der aber die Herzen forschet from Der geist hilft (BWV 226)
- Mendelssohn – selection from Die Deutsche Liturgie (MWV B 57)
- Bruckner – Ave Maria, Locus iste, Os justi, Vexilla Regis
- Stanford – Three Motets, Op. 38
- Bairstow – Let all mortal flesh keep silence; Jesu, the very thought of thee; I sat down under his shadow
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10 December 2023: Christus natus est
Rounding out our 40th anniversary year, we marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd with a performance of his Mass for Four Voices in St. Luke’s Church, Lode. Our programme also included seasonal favourites such as Robert Pearsall’s In dulci Jubilo, Harold Darke’s In the bleak midwinter, Michael Head’s The little road to Bethlehem, and some less well-known carols, including Lillie Harris’s Christmas Silence and the late Richard Rodney Bennett’s Coventry Carol, written shortly before his passing.
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22 July 2023: Celebrate!
A special concert to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Cantilena Singers, the choir performed at the church in its home village, St. Mary’s, Swaffham Bulbeck, with a special programme of secular part songs and folk song arrangements by English composers.
- Elmer – Six partsongs on poems by Christina Rossetti
- Britten – Selections from Five Flower Songs
- Finzi – Selections from Seven partsongs on poems by Robert Bridges
- Rutter – Selections from Five Traditional Songs and Five Childhood Lyrics
- Wood – Nights of music and Come, sleep
- Ross – The wild mountain thyme
- Finn – She moved through the fair
Founding director, Roger Bond, was in attendance, along with a number of former members of the choir, who joined the current members on stage to perform The wile mountain thyme together.
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18 March 2023: Salvator mundi
The Cantilena Singers returned to St. Mary’s, Swaffham Prior, for a Lenten concert featuring music from the 16th century to the present day.
- Stopford – Three Sacred Miniatures
- Rheinberger – Kyrie and Agnus Dei from Mass in E flat major, Op. 109
- Palestrina – Sicut cervus
- Victoria – Jesu dulcis memoria
- Tallis – If ye love me, In manus tuas and Salvator mundi
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10 December 2022: O magnum mysterium
Returning to St. Nicholas’s Church, Great Wilbraham, the Cantilena Singers performed a programme built around different composers’ responses to the responsorial chant for the Matins on Christmas Day, “O magnum mysterium”, including the famous setting by Morten Lauridsen, and the complete mass by Tomás Luis de Victoria.
- Victoria – Missa “O magnum mysterium”
- Lauridsen – O magnum mysterium
- Whitacre – Lux aurumque
- Britten – A hymn to the Virgin
- Villette – Hymne à la Vierge
- Darke – In the bleak midwinter
- Howells – Long, long ago