The Renaissance Choir and the music of

The Renaissance Choir was formed in the summer of 1976 and gave its first concert in November of the same year. It was initially known as ‘The Highbury Singers’, taking that name from its then rehearsal venue, but the definitive name had been adopted by the start of the following season.

As its name implies, the Choir, of some thirty voices, chose to specialize in unaccompanied music of both the Renaissance and the twentieth century, with composers ranging from acknowledged masters such as Palestrina, Schütz and Victoria to little-known figures such as Alonso de Alba.

Francisco Guerrero

Although the Founder and Conductor of the Choir for its first ten years, Raymond Calcraft, was a specialist in Spanish Golden Age literature and art, the music of Spanish composers did not feature prominently in the Choir’s repertoire until 1979, when the Choir performed a programme of Spanish Renaissance music at Oaklands, repeating this later the same year on its first tour to Spain, where it sang in the Cathedrals of , Córdoba and . Both then, and subsequently, the music of Francisco Guerrero was a particular focus for the Choir, which gave several programmes in 1983 entitled ‘A Portrait of Francisco Guerrero’, when motets, a Mass, and several villanescas espirituales were interspersed with readings from the composer’s autobiography, The Journey to Jerusalem. This programme was given at St John’s, Smith Square, London, with the distinguished actor, Gabriel Woolf, and a shortened version was then broadcast on both BBC Radios 3 and 4. In early 1983 the Choir took the programme to Spain, where it was presented in the Cathedrals of Ciudad Rodrigo and Cáceres, and also at the University of , the readings now, of course, being taken from the original Spanish text, El viage de Hierusalem.

Sebastián de Vivanco

After the concert at Salamanca, the University’s Professor of Music, Dámaso García Fraile, told Raymond Calcraft that the University was shortly to embark on a series of recordings of music by several of the Chapelmasters of Salamanca Cathedral. The first such figure was to be Sebastián de Vivanco, and Professor García Fraile asked if the Choir would be willing to record a selection of Vivanco’s music commercially, to be paid for by the University. This was agreed, and it was decided that the Abbey recording company from Oxford, specialists in recording cathedral music, would be the Choir’s partners in the venture.

As hardly any of Vivanco’s music was available in print at that time, it was necessary to choose suitable music from three large manuscript volumes in the Salamanca library, and after study of several works, photocopies were eventually taken of the Mass In Festo Beatae Mariae Virginis and five contrasting motets. The Choir then learnt this music from photocopies made from the originals which had been brought back from Salamanca, and the recording session took place at St Andrew’s Church, West Dean, Chichester, on the 29th June 1985. 400 copies of the eventual Abbey LP, Alpha ACA 550, were taken by car to Spain that autumn, in time to be presented at a conference on Spanish Renaissance music at Salamanca University.

Joaquín Rodrigo

Early in that same year of 1983 the Committee of the Portsmouth Festival had invited Raymond Calcraft, who had been the Festival’s Director from 1971-74, to give a concert of Spanish music with the Choir and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. The Committee specifically asked for a work to be performed which would be new to this country, and it was found that Joaquín Rodrigo’s Música para un códice salmantino (‘Ode to Salamanca’), one of the composer’s finest pieces, had never been heard here. A further work by Rodrigo, Cánticos nupciales, a cantata written for the wedding of the composer’s daughter Cecilia in 1963, was also included in the programme (another UK first performance), together with choruses from Manuel de Falla’s Atlántida. Two well-known orchestral works by Rodrigo and Falla completed this ‘Music of Spain’ concert, given first in St John’s Cathedral in Portsmouth, and then, at the Sinfonietta’s suggestion, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, where both music and performances were well received.

A cassette recording of the Choir’s performances of the two UK premières was sent to Joaquín Rodrigo in Madrid, resulting in an invitation for Raymond Calcraft to visit the composer on his next visit to Spain. Discussions in Madrid, and a realisation of how many of Rodrigo’s major works had still to be heard in this country, led to the formation of plans for a major Festival of his music to be given here, something which eventually took place on London’s South Bank in March 1986. The Festival took place between the 3rd and 15th of that month, and consisted of four symphony concerts, two recitals and a lecture on the composer’s music. The concerts were performed by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, The Renaissance Choir, and many international soloists associated with Rodrigo’s music, including the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, the guitarists Ángel and Pepe Romero, the pianist Joaquín Achúcarro, and the soprano Patricia Rozario. The composer and his wife Victoria were present in London throughout the Festival and attended every event. Music from two of the concerts was recorded by the BBC and broadcast world-wide, including the world première of the composer’s last major work, the Cántico de San Francisco de Asís, in which The Renaissance Choir took part, and which Rodrigo later dedicated to Raymond Calcraft. Its first performances in Spain took place in April 1990, when the same conductor gave the work in concerts in Madrid and Barcelona, with Catalan choirs and the Bournemouth orchestra. The Cántico was recorded for the first time in 2000, on an EMI Classics CD of Rodrigo’s vocal and orchestral works, by its dedicatee, five soloists, Exeter Philharmonic Choir and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

RPC 20.III.2014