Corpus Christi Church, Manhattan
April 8, 2018

A cappella Renaissance specialists Stile Antico are regular visitors to the US, but to date they are best known in Australia for their fine series of recordings on Harmonia Mundi. Given they were performing their latest CD (to be reviewed in May’s Limelight), it seemed a good opportunity to catch the famously ‘unconducted’ British choir in uptown Manhattan singing Tomás Luis de Victoria’s sublime yet sombre Tenebrae Responsories.

The week leading up to Easter Sunday has inspired many musical beauties, but the Tenebrae services, which traditionally take place in a darkened church where 15 candles are extinguished one by one – hence the Latin Tenebrae, or darkness – has drawn forth the best in composers from Gesualdo to James MacMillan. The late-Renaissance Spanish composer Victoria published his 18 Responsories and a handful of the associated Lamentations in 1585 as part of a larger collection of music. The pieces would have been sung six per service over three “nocturns” delivered on the evening preceding Maundy Thursday, Maundy Thursday itself and finishing on Good Friday.

Crucially, the polyphonic settings of the Responsories would have been complex jewels set in an unadorned crown of plainchant. To avoid a...