VOCES8 & VOCES8 Scholars: Mass for Double Choir by Frank Martin

VOCES8 is joined by the VOCES8 Scholars and members of the VOCES8 Foundation Choir under the direction of Barnaby Smith for a performance of Frank Martin’s iconic ’Mass for Double Choir’. The performance was filmed at VOCES8’s Milton Abbey International Music Festival. 00:00 Kyrie 04:36 Gloria 09:20 Credo 14:34 Sanctus 17:36 Benedictus 18:42 Agnus Dei Barnaby writes: Frank Martin’s ’Mass for Double Choir’ is a unique work in the choral repertory for many reasons, the story of its premiere being one. Martin wrote most of the mass in 1922, and completed the final movement - the Agnus Dei - in 1926. It wasn’t until 1963 that the work came to be performed. Martin himself commented that ‘I considered it to be a matter between God and myself. I felt that a personal expression of religious belief should remain secret and hidden from public opinion.‘  It is that idea of personal expression within the work which I find so compelling. The music is vivid, pictorial, and doesn’t always move in the directions which one can come to expect having sung hundreds of different settings of this most central of texts across a career working with liturgical music. Although there are no actual plainsong themes in the work, the influence of Gregorian plainsong is never far away, not least at the very opening where a simple, flowing alto line gradually unfolds, soon to be taken up by the sopranos and then supported by the full choirs. As the movement explodes into action, one is left with a palpable sense that Martin’s austere faith filled him with both a sense of comfort, but also a deep sense of trepidation about his own day of reckoning. The Gloria unusually opens with some of the softer expressions from the work, but its flowing rhythms and melodic vitality soon win out, always however at the service of the words. The Credo begins with appropriately strong statements from each choir, and continues in service of the text. It is the Sanctus and Benedictus which I personally find profusely moving. The Sanctus opens as though a choir of angels had arrived in the abbey, the upper voice chant-like melodies replying to invocations from the tenors and basses. The score builds to an intense climax before the musical touch paper is then lit at the ‘pleni sunt caeli’. A Benedictus follows which unusually continues the climactic writing, and which grows from the previous rampant Hosanna. Such is the pace of this incredible setting, there is hardly a moment to catch breath. The separation between the two choirs is most marked in an emotive Agnus Dei. The second choir provides a steady rhythmic foundation over which the first choir, mostly in unison, and sung by four soloists from VOCES8, sings a plainsong-like melodic line that echoes the music of the opening Kyrie. This masterpiece reaches a peaceful conclusion with the two choirs combining for the final, heartfelt ‘dona nobis pacem’. SOPRANO Andrea Haines* Molly Noon* Ailsa Campbell** Clover Willis** Eleonore Cockerham*** Bobbie Blommesteijn*** Rebecca Lea*** ALTO Katie Jeffries-Harris* Katie Macdonald** Will Prior** Chris Wardle*** TENOR Blake Morgan* Euan Williamson* David Walsh** Joe Hancock** BASS Christopher Moore* Dominic Carver* Daniel Gilchrist** George Vines** Greg Skidmore*** Jimmy Holliday*** *VOCES8 **VOCES8 Scholar ***VOCES8 Foundation Choir