Press

on Become like Children (closing movement of Songs From The Heart), performed at The Song Company’s 40th-anniversary concert

Sonya Holowell’s Become like Children (2022) magnifies the compelling plea of the Uluru Statement From The Heart, employing diverse modes of composition and conceptual exploration to challenge its performers to navigate between adult resilience and childhood innocence

on Missa Unitatis Credo, part of Sydney Chamber Choir’s The Human Spirit

It was a positive sign of the continuing creativity of the human spirit to note that all the works in this performance were composed in the 21st century and a delight that many of the composers were in the audience... The feeling of togetherness in choral singing was further reflected in Antony Pitts’ Missa Unitatis (Mass of Unity). The choir formed into a circle and sang the Credo from this Mass to each other. Divided into 2 choirs, they sang the opening lines joyously in a slightly jazzy rhythm, each choir bouncing off the other. Choral harmonies rose and fell as they sang, ending in the style of 12th-century Paris. The innovative style of stage direction and presentation was reminiscent of Antony Pitts’s The Song Company productions when he was their Artistic Director. At the end, he came to the stage and shook hands with the conductor to audience applause... The audience continued excited discussions in the foyer, themselves reflecting the the Human Spirit in appreciation of this creative concert.” (Heidi Hereth)

on Missa Unitatis Credo, part of Sydney Chamber Choir’s The Human Spirit

This was a performance, a concert construct, wherein words matter, music matters, and most of all, the human spirit matters. Like all carefully thought through artistic constructs, it revealed itself slowly and with hindsight... Former Artistic Director of The Song Company, Antony Pitts, made a welcome appearance as a composer... The history of Antony Pitts’ Missa Unitatis (Mass of Unity) (2008) is fascinating in that it was commissioned by The Illustrious Brotherhood of our Blessed Lady, a Dutch-based former Catholic group founded in 1318 to promote the veneration of Mary. They reshaped themselves post the Reformation to encourage unity between Christians. In 1681 it fixed its membership at 18 Catholics and 18 Protestants. Only the Credo was presented at this concert which of itself stimulated my desire to hear the whole Mass. The Chamber Choir stood in a circle on stage with Allchurch conducting from the inside of the circle. Set up this way, the timbre changed immediately. Pitts takes the lengthy text of the Credo at quite a clip in this joyous setting. The work is designed to be performed by two choirs either separately or together. He writes ‘The material for both choirs is similar, but each choir has its own way of presenting it…’ reflecting the composer’s view that ‘unity is a real challenge’. I got the sense that there were at least 8 to 10 parts being sung, which stretched the choir’s capabilities, but they kept their unity. I hope the full mass is performed in Australia soon... The Human Spirit offered much to love and think about. Sometimes artists are prophets.” (Philip Pogson)

on SCALA sound installation programme (inaugural edition featured Sound Patterns)

Proiektua 2020ko abenduan abiatu zen, Pauline Oliverosen Sound Patterns lanarekin

on Songs From The Heart

Glorious’ performance demands a bigger audience

on Songs From The Heart

For artistic director Antony Pitts, this is his last tour leading the ensemble after seven years at the helm. He has certainly changed the course of the Song Company over that time and there have been some memorable performances, this one included... It needs a larger, more reverberant space and a larger audience to be immersed in this glorious work.

on Songs From The Heart

the singing was superb from all the singers ... with the high soprano of Susannah Lawergren soaring above the ensemble in many of the songs.

on Arms of Love (Aug-Sept 2022 MainStage concert)

THE Song Company has embraced a more theatrical presentation of vocal music for this production, adding three instrumentalists, lighting effects, and dance to the usual small group of singers... As we have come to expect from The Song Company, the singing was a delight.

on Liquid Days / Songs from Liquid Days (March 2022 concert)

The performance of Philip Glass’s celebrated song cycle Songs from Liquid Days is always a rare treat, and to have it delivered by one of contemporary Australian vocal music’s greatest voices is an even more notable treat... The storytelling abilities on display by the performers gave Glass’s work a modern, personal, and complex interpretation.

on Songs From The Heart

I had a feeling this would be music that would be good for me... but it turned out to be good too, excellent in fact. Songs from the Heart is entirely penned by First Nations’ composers Sonya Holowell and Elizabeth Sheppard (with two songs co-written by another Indigenous woman Rhubee Neale). It sets the actual text of the Uluru Statement of the Heart and other reflective and powerful lyrics from the composers to create, as Pitts describes it, “a kind of sacred oratorio for our time and place”.

on Songs From The Heart

During his seven years as Artistic Director of The Song Company Antony Pitts has been trying to find his own authentic way of collaborating artistically with the First Nations people of Australia.

on Songs From The Heart

This is an important work that deserves to become part of all Australians’ shared history.

on Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem (Feb 2022, 2022 season launch)

The Song Company’s first MainStage performance of the year was a remarkable and moving event. It was remarkable in that it featured the new concept of The SongCo Apprentices... Antony Pitts’s sensitive conducting brought out the magic of their interweaving voices with their superb intonation in these a cappella pieces of 16th-century polyphonic music... After many seconds of silent reverie, the audience burst into cheers and enthusiastic applause. Remarkable and moving indeed!

on Liquid Days / Songs from Liquid Days (March 2022 concert)

The core work of this program is Songs from Liquid Days, a cycle of six songs that Philip Glass wrote in 1986... sung here by Dan Walker who also plays synthesizer. Antony Pitts played piano and sang occasional backing vocals with Raphael Pitts... There was a dreamy quality about this concert, a compassion and warmth which come equally from the lyrics, the composition and sympathetic performance.

on Becoming Beatrix (May 2022 Close-Up concert)

The Song Company is renowned for its intriguing, unusual programs and Becoming Beatrix is no exception. Part of their Close-up series concentrating on individual artists, Becoming Beatrix featured accomplished soprano, Chloe Lankshear, who literally ‘became’ Beatrix in this program, and the innovative Francis Greep... Now, whenever I hear her name, I will see the face and hear the voice of Chloe Lankshear.

on Entangled (June 2022 Close-Up concert)

The Song Company Studio at Wharf 4/5 at Dawes Point was quickly filling up with an enthusiastic crowd coming to see Entangled, a Close-Up performance by Jessica O’Donoghue... Artistic Director, Antony Pitts played the piano, improvising on a melody by Jessica O’Donoghue with wistful arpeggios... This was yet another educational and innovative concert from The Song Company!

on SCALA sound installation programme (Sound Patterns named as a past edition)

En las pasadas ediciones participaron Pauline Oliveros, el Niño de Elche y Maialen Lujanbio.

on SCALA sound installation programme

El proyecto Scala invita a profundizar en la música y en las relaciones externas a ella.

on Tremors of Earth (Song Company Apprentices concert; constituent work: Antony Pitts, Thou knowest my lying down)

It was an historic weekend for Sydney as Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay held its opening festival, revealing The Neilson Theatre, brand new home of the Australian Chamber Orchestra... Under the watchful direction of Antony Pitts in its ‘Underground’ series Tremors of Earth, the Apprentices... performed a program of grand European Renaissance polyphony by Antoine Brumel and Nicolas Gombert, interleaved with contemporary pieces by Alice Chance and Antony Pitts... At its heart is Antoine Brumel’s brilliant 12-part Missa Et ecce terrae motus (‘Earthquake’ Mass)... Pitts’ Tres Antiphonae Paschae is a very appealing triptych which plays with part-writing, combining voices in different configurations. The Lord is risen, in declamatory style has soprano Lily Harper holding a slow trill soaring above the other voices; Thou knowest my lying down has a distinctive rising chromatic soprano line... and The bread which we break is built on columns of cluster chords... The youthfulness of the apprentices belies their professionalism. Under Pitts’ guidance these exceptionally gifted musicians with fresh and lucent voices, achieve beauty of sound, choral blend and a solid sensitivity to performing as an ensemble.

on Heather Percy: Locus iste (after Bruckner) (live 2022, from Rumours of Glory)

It is extraordinary that a collection of notes scratched on extant manuscripts can erase half a millennium of science and art, war and pestilence, taking us back to simpler and more innocent times... Antony Pitts... We hear harmony in its infancy, yet daringly, challengingly adventurous and sophisticated... it is an education and a pleasure to watch the ensemble with their use of gestures in communication, their craft and methodology, weaving a synchronised and crystalline sound that is fluid in line, graceful in phrasing and precise in articulation.

on Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem (Feb 2022, 2022 season launch)

Two starkly contrasting settings – one a Renaissance chapel, the other a 19th-century living room – formed the imaginary backdrop to The Song Company’s launch of their 2022 season. Artistic Director Antony Pitts said the concert was partly in memoriam Australian composer Nigel Butterley... British soprano Amy Moore, now a Song Co. mainstay, was radiant in her solo ‘Ye now have sorrow’... If you can watch the upcoming livestream on Australian Digital Concert Hall you certainly won’t regret it.

on Arms of Love (Aug-Sept 2022 MainStage concert)

In this new program in its MainStage series, The Song Company performs Dietrich Buxtehude’s seven-part oratorio Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima (1680), interwoven with a world première of Chris Williams’s I pray the sea, and staged with choreography by Thomas E.S. Kelly (Karul Projects)... with Musical Director Antony Pitts exploring the timbral possibilities of a Rhodes keyboard... The fluidity between centuries, continents, art forms and senses made new resonances of each of the program’s parts.

on Known Unknown album and Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement chamber opera (Hyperion) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

In the attractive, colourful, and informative booklet accompanying this bold new recording, Antony Pitts describes Known Unknown as, ‘a chance to reassess the nature of music and the value of human music-making’. Hyperion, the luxurious boutique titan of the English recording industry (and not readily available on streaming platforms), has taken on conductor and composer Pitts’s artistic and compositional visions in a programme lovingly curated by Pitts himself, generously totalling over 75 minutes... The booklet bursts with composers’ insights into their music and its genesis, and also contains attractive designs by Volkmar Zander, Yolanda Koning and striking photography by Peter Hislop. Our own Song Company have proved themselves champions of new (and old) music again and again, while TONUS PEREGRINUS’s background has charted a similar northern hemispheric journey, also under Pitts’s expert direction... While John Cage and Steve Reich are more familiar to [some] audiences, much of the content is relatively unknown and deserving of a wider outing, here very successfully delivered to us by Hyperion and Pitts. Antony Pitts’ own opera Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement constitutes the centrepiece of this left-of-centre musical smorgasbord. Premiered live as part of the Dreamers of the Day tour in 2017, it deals with the seepage of life-stress into one’s dreams and the resulting longing for peace. Dreams are indeed funny things, and this is not lost on librettist Shaen Catherwood... A thorough and thoughtful detailed musical synopsis is provided by the composer, serving as an effective listening guide to his musical ingenuity and clever mutation of old music to dramatic effect, such as Bach’s ‘Contrapunctus XIX’ from The Art of Fugue and Sleepers, Wake... The overture of phone rings felt overly-long (reminiscences of car-horn preludes to Ligeti’s Le grand macabre), though perhaps not in live performance, from which this recording was made. Anna Fraser’s direct spoken word – each word containing a world of bursting anxiety – successfully broke this and smoothly traversed from pure speech, to Sprechgesang, to pitched vocalism, all with rather fine diction. The Greek-style chorus (every other singer in the work) emoted with diligent attention to text and phrasing, bringing to mind a macabre combination of the Nightmare chorus from Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy crossed with the scat-singing jazz trio from Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti... the work was commissioned for New Chamber Opera. The use of young soft-grained voices which don’t all possess grandiose operatic opulence further provides assumed proof of chamber opera as appropriate nomenclature. The specific vocal grains set within Pitts’ instrumental texture become highly effective in a story set behind a double proscenium arch of consciousness – as Wagner intended for his operas at Bayreuth, for the same purpose... Pitts’ handling of the band is at times masterful. The nebulously hammering instrumental textures beautifully sum up the midnight train-mare, and dissonant syncopations in the bank episode lend an uncomfortable atmosphere to the whole affair... the hymn-like unravelling mélange of decimation that is the Act 1 finale carries substantial weight in these hands (and cords). A substantially briefer Act 2 radiates emotional overwhelm, akin to the top of Act 4 of Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten... It is here that the full weight of Fraser’s tour-de-force performance hits, alongside a malevolent Swingle Singer-esque ensemble... No matter one’s level of avant-garde tolerance, Known Unknown proves itself a highly accessible voyage through the concepts of non-traditional music-making, silence and dreams, and the way one reassesses ‘the nature of music and the value of human music-making’

on Missa Et ecce terrae motus (Brumel, 12-part, in Tremors of Earth)

The Song Company brought together their year’s theme Higher Ground with images of rebirth, growth, and renewal in a concert of Renaissance polyphony and new modern compositions. Fittingly, then, the concert also showcased the burgeoning talents of the company’s Apprentice Program... Tremors of Earth was a program of great variety in tone and taste but with a consistent interest in themes of new beginnings, which was fitting for the Easter time.

on concert Fullness of Joy

Filmed at the Nielson, ACO Pier 2/3 on Sunday 20 November and streamed by the Australian Digital Concert Hall on 15 December as part of the 2022 Higher Ground season,... celebrated Antony Pitts in his last concert as Artistic Director of The Song Company after seven years. The complex, multi-layered, and precisely structured music was given a lustrous performance by the artists of The Song Company along with The SongCo Apprentices and The SongCo Chorale, passionately and eloquently presented. Pitts conducted most enthusiastically and dynamically... Sections of Tallis’s mass Missa Puer natus est nobis were interspersed with his Suscipe quaeso Domine, regarded as one of the keystone musical works of 16th-century England... The vibrant, opulent sound produced intricately flowing melodies and harmonies at times creating dauntless suspense... Pitts’s Requiem for the Time of the End – In Paradisum shimmered... A very adroit and virtuoso concert of Renaissance polyphony and related modern works. The music and voices were burnished and compelling.” (Lynne Lancaster)

on Songs From The Heart

The voices are assured, accomplished, resounding and radiant... Directed and conducted energetically and enthusiastically by Artistic Director Antony Pitts... The striking concert full of profound refinement and harsh passion concludes on a possibly hopeful note

on Entangled (June 2022 Close-Up concert)

Having The Song Company as part of our offering in Sydney has always been a great privilege... The current Artistic Director Antony Pitts keeps those high standards maintained and draws in new ideas fluently and consistently... O’Donoghue proved herself to be an incredibly unique, versatile and ambitious artist/composer.

on Arms of Love (Aug-Sept 2022 MainStage concert)

This complex, multi-layered performance by The Song Company was filmed at the Cell Block Theatre, Sydney and streamed by the Australian Digital Concert Hall, as part of their national tour. Directed by Robert Macfarlane and Antony Pitts, it was strong and powerful, blending the music and dance... A compelling, thought-provoking, challenging performance.

on concert Fullness of Joy

One of music’s most remarkable experiences is to listen to Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet, Spem in alium, from “within”, with the sounds of the eight five-part choirs coming from every direction, surrounding the listener in sonic fabric of serene wonder. This is usually reserved for the singers themselves but in the final concert of The Song Company’s 2022 season, Artistic Director Antony Pitts provided just such an immersive experience, placing the choirs in the arched stone galleries of St Mary’s Crypt around the audience so that whole space seemed to resonate and hum. The program provided two chances to hear this famous but rarely heard piece. Earlier, we had heard The Song Company and guests singing it from the centre with the audience placed around, so as to capture the intricate density of its complexly woven texture. The remainder of the program paired music by Australian and Spanish composers and another Tallis motet, with the three surviving movements of another Tallis masterpiece, the seven-part Missa Puer natus est nobis... To suit Tallis’ choir, which lacked sopranos, the range is low and rich, an emphasis captured beautifully by The Song Company at the start of the Benedictus where velvety alto and lower parts created a sense of warm inner reverence. The Mass is built on an esoteric rhythmic structure and elsewhere The Song Company under Pitts realised the full seven-part textures as gloriously complex abstractions... Antony Pitts’s In Paradisum began with weighty glowing textures in low range, opening out to iridescent still chords, holding the soprano line like a beam of light as the textures mutated towards the cadence... Pitts departs The Song Company at the end of 2022 after leading choral projects of wide-ranging imagination, intelligence, and stylistic richness. His particular affinity with Tallis’s masterwork was heard earlier in his tenure through a performance of the companion work he wrote for it, XL. This program was a fitting testament to the creative enrichment he has brought to The Song Company and to Sydney’s musical life.” (Peter McCallum)

on Heather Percy: Locus iste (after Bruckner) (live 2022, from Rumours of Glory)

Sometimes called the ‘Michelangelo of Music’, Josquin was among the first celebrated masters of the Renaissance polyphonic style... the pandemic tried its best to ruin this celebration as well, but in a courageous display of the show-must-go-on mentality, conductor and Artistic Director Antony Pitts leapt into the fray, mixing his intimate knowledge of the music’s harmonic and expressive purpose into the quartet... Josquin’s mass was a pure delight, from the still balance of the Kyrie, to captivating soprano-alto duet in the Sanctus and the animated complexity of the Credo.

on The Song Company concert

In a courageous display of the show-must-go-on mentality, conductor and Artistic Director Antony Pitts leapt into the fray, mixing his intimate knowledge of the music’s harmonic and expressive purpose into the quartet.

on Arms of Love (concert program) - reviewed under headline “Love conquers all in this diverse musical offering...”

Arms of Love, directed by tenor Robert Macfarlane and musical director Antony Pitts, wove together four strands in a counterpoint of difference to make a statement about the dehumanisation of those seeking refuge.

on The Song Company - Pitts’s final season / farewell program

Pitts departs The Song Company at the end of 2022 after leading choral projects of wide-ranging imagination, intelligence, and stylistic richness... This program was a fitting testament to the creative enrichment he has brought to The Song Company and to Sydney’s musical life.

on Arms of Love (Aug-Sept 2022 MainStage concert)

Interweaving baroque and contemporary music with dance, The Song Company’s Arms of Love seeks to explore resonances between three powerful narratives: the plight of Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, the feeling that First Nations people are refugees in their own country, and the passion of Jesus Christ... Directed by Robert Macfarlane, Arms of Love is certainly thought-provoking – sometimes moving, sometimes quirky

on album Known Unknown and chamber opera Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement

This an album for those interested in new boundaries of vocal writing. It’s a generous tasting platter of items familiar and unfamiliar, cleverly connected by theme and methodology of musical delivery, and well delivered by The Song Company and TONUS PEREGRINUS under Antony Pitts. Known Unknown is a refreshing and accessible take on non-traditional musical delivery, extolling the malleability and effectiveness of the human voice and body as a vessel for this. “...In the attractive, colourful, and informative booklet accompanying this bold new recording, Antony Pitts describes Known Unknown as, ‘a chance to reassess the nature of music and the value of human music-making’. Hyperion, the luxurious boutique titan of the English recording industry (and not readily available on streaming platforms), has taken on conductor and composer Pitts’s artistic and compositional visions in a programme lovingly curated by Pitts himself, generously totalling over 75 minutes... The booklet bursts with composers’ insights into their music and its genesis, and also contains attractive designs by Volkmar Zander, Yolanda Koning and striking photography by Peter Hislop. Our own Song Company have proved themselves champions of new (and old) music again and again, while TONUS PEREGRINUS’s background has charted a similar northern hemispheric journey, also under Pitts’s expert direction... While John Cage and Steve Reich are more familiar to [some] audiences, much of the content is relatively unknown and deserving of a wider outing, here very successfully delivered to us by Hyperion and Pitts. Antony Pitts’ own opera Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement constitutes the centrepiece of this left-of-centre musical smorgasbord. Premiered live as part of the Dreamers of the Day tour in 2017, it deals with the seepage of life-stress into one’s dreams and the resulting longing for peace. Dreams are indeed funny things, and this is not lost on librettist Shaen Catherwood... A thorough and thoughtful detailed musical synopsis is provided by the composer, serving as an effective listening guide to his musical ingenuity and clever mutation of old music to dramatic effect, such as Bach’s ‘Contrapunctus XIX’ from The Art of Fugue and Sleepers, Wake... The overture of phone rings felt overly-long (reminiscences of car-horn preludes to Ligeti’s Le grand macabre ), though perhaps not in live performance, from which this recording was made. Anna Fraser’s direct spoken word – each word containing a world of bursting anxiety – successfully broke this and smoothly traversed from pure speech, to Sprechgesang, to pitched vocalism, all with rather fine diction. The Greek-style chorus (every other singer in the work) emoted with diligent attention to text and phrasing, bringing to mind a macabre combination of the Nightmare chorus from Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy crossed with the scat-singing jazz trio from Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti... the work was commissioned for New Chamber Opera. The use of young soft-grained voices which don’t all possess grandiose operatic opulence further provides assumed proof of chamber opera as appropriate nomenclature. The specific vocal grains set within Pitts’ instrumental texture become highly effective in a story set behind a double proscenium arch of consciousness – as Wagner intended for his operas at Bayreuth, for the same purpose... Pitts’ handling of the band is at times masterful. The nebulously hammering instrumental textures beautifully sum up the midnight train-mare, and dissonant syncopations in the bank episode lend an uncomfortable atmosphere to the whole affair... the hymn-like unravelling mélange of decimation that is the Act 1 finale carries substantial weight in these hands (and cords). A substantially briefer Act 2 radiates emotional overwhelm, akin to the top of Act 4 of Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten... It is here that the full weight of Fraser’s tour-de-force performance hits, alongside a malevolent Swingle Singer-esque ensemble... No matter one’s level of avant-garde tolerance, Known Unknown proves itself a highly accessible voyage through the concepts of non-traditional music-making, silence and dreams, and the way one reassesses ‘the nature of music and the value of human music-making’...” (Simon Lobelson)

on album Burden of Truth and 25-part motet Transiens

A truly remarkable large-scale feat that is deserving of huge respect.

extremely beautiful. It is very impressive that this product sounds as if it has been recorded with the vocal cohort in one gorgeous resonant space. The homogeneity of the vocal sound was beautifully suited to this contrapuntal canon-imbued work... A truly exquisite moment occurs at the end of this work where the hymn that Bryars’s old man sings is quoted... Burden of Truth is an incredibly impressive lockdown-project... available via Bandcamp, [Hyperion], or limited edition vinyl...” (Alex Raineri)

on Burden of Truth (album); Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (Bryars)

composer Gavin Bryars taking the frail voice of a homeless man and gradually framing it with the trained singers of The Song Company conducted by Antony Pitts – their range and precision as they shift slowly and subtly around the tape loop forming a radiant, meditative counterpoint to it.

on The Song Company broadcast (tape loop piece)

The trained singers of The Song Company conducted by Antony Pitts – their range and precision as they shift slowly and subtly around the tape loop forming a radiant, meditative counterpoint.

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

Highly textured harmonies that defy description

Transiens, a world première by Pitts, is based on the music of the Eton Choirbook. Inspired by a road trip from Uluru to Kakadu early in 2020, this work started with almost no break from the last. It seemed to be purposely connected... in 25 parts, crossed a lot of polyphonic territory. The glorious sound of this large choir came into their own during this work. While a contemporary piece, it held an ancient sound... So full, rich and complex was this piece that it probably should be considered a major new Australian choral work. Well done to Antony Pitts and to every singer... this was a concert of the highest quality...” (Rob Kennedy)

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

As a companion piece to the Bryars work, Antony Pitts’s Transiens is an outstanding accomplishment... The outer two sections of revealed themselves to be a fantasia on a series of canons, which, like the Wylkynson original, focus on the twelve phrases of a much older confession of faith – the Apostles’ Creed... The evolving textures created by the counterpoint and the resulting harmonies again reinforced the joy of singing for its own sake... Trinity and Song Company voices joined here in exultant and heavenly song – a rich paean... Thereafter, entrancing moments of vocal expression – melismas, very high notes, cheeky rhythms, “odd” notes in chords, the men’s voices suddenly singing disjunctively, and even solo voices. Finally and movingly, towards the end, as if in homage to Gavin Bryars’s old man of simple faith, the full choir reminded us in unison of the melody of his burden, Jesus’ blood never failed me yet... The “repetition” to which were alerted at the beginning of the concert turned out to be the source of this concert’s many joys. In Transiens Antony Pitts has developed nine notes of a chant into a creation of “infinite variety”, and we feel at one with all the life forms in the universe. Even such a thing as the melody of a simple confession of faith can be reworked by a composer and fine voices into something “sufficient, beautiful, even glorious”. Pitts conducted his piece with authority, marshalling his charges confidently, giving clear cues for the complex music and associated movements. In full voice the choirs’ combined sound was generous and exciting... I left with overwhelming gratitude for the musical art which makes for the glorious out of simplicity...” (Bruce Macrae)

on Burden of Truth (concert; Transiens)

Antony Pitts directed the combined forces of The Song Company and The Choir of Trinity College in the comfortable amphitheatrical surrounds of St Michael’s Uniting Church... In Transiens Antony Pitts has developed nine notes of a chant into a creation of “infinite variety,” and we feel at one with all the life forms in the universe... I left with overwhelming gratitude for the musical art which makes for the glorious out of simplicity

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

Ecstatic reveries from The Song Company

This was no mere choral performance – this was a moving experience that vibrated through body and soul... I am referring to The Song Company’s Burden of Truth... Antony Pitts introduced a program which treats us to two world premières, describing how the continuing repetition of refrains lead us through a changing landscape of emotion and how the structure of the program forms an overall arch... Transiens, based on Wylkynson’s melody we heard earlier and beautifully developed by Antony Pitts into a complex series of canons and harmonies and sung by twice the number of voices. This was written as a companion piece to Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, during an inspiring trip to Central Australia and Kakadu in 2020. The choristers still moved around as they sang, standing in a semi-circle at times, or in sections to form a triptych, where the central core sang the original canon, with the outer parts singing the twelve phrases sung by the Apostles to make up the Creed... These vocal ensembles sang with exquisite perfection, transporting the listeners to ecstatic reveries as the music became increasingly complex and intense. When they finished, Antony Pitts held the silence and eventually turned around to face the audience to much earned applause. I heard several comments of ‘mesmerising’ from nearby audience members. A wonderful experience indeed!...” (Heidi Hereth)

on It came upon the midnight clear (Hark! – The Song Company carols concert)

The Song Company presents an interesting mix of old favourites and new carols

on It came upon the midnight clear (Hark! – The Song Company carols concert)

The Song Company presented a program of 18 carols and a quick perusal of the program showed what looked like an interesting mix of old favourites and intriguing ‘new’ carols – or at least new to me! The carols were presented in four brackets, with the final carol in each bracket calling for audience participation... It turned out that all the ‘old favourites’ were drawn from two books of carols edited by Antony Pitts, Artistic Director of The Song Company, and had been given new arrangements. And why not? – I suppose carols can be reinvented and reinvigorated like any other musical form. The only issue here was in the four carols for audience participation where carol singers in the audience used to their David Willcocks arrangements had to deal with some different harmonisations. Hark! The herald angels sing, for example, had an organ part that would certainly have surprised Mendelssohn. Some highlights of the concert were provided by composers unfamiliar to me and Pitts and Greep should be commended for programming them. Elizabeth Sheppard is a contemporary Australian indigenous composer and after hearing her carol Mary, gentle Mother I will be seeking out more of her work. It is a simple, but affecting piece in triple time, almost a lullaby. From Richard Eteson, an English singer, arranger and composer, the choir gave us A Jolly Wassel-Bowl, and very jolly it was, with a stirring organ part and building to a big finish. It came upon the midnight clear is a very well-known carol, either with the American tune by Willis, or the English tune by Arthur Sullivan. This version, by Jonathan Pitts... was a successful re-invention of the carol, catchy and rhythmic. One of the highlights of the concert for me was a piece by the Central Coast composer, Brian Kogler. Gaudete began with The Song Company clapping a complex rhythm, and then singing a melody in unison before breaking into parts and performing it as a round. The choir performed it very energetically and the cumulative effect was striking. An audience favourite!

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

The power of repetition recurs in Transiens (2020), which Antony Pitts has composed from the fragment of Wylkynson’s melody (composed in the early 1500s)... during a road trip in outback Australia. In it, I hear the sounds of the landscape – the flocks of birds, the sunrise over a red horizon, unforgiving mountains and dusty sweeping plains; individual parts make their point through the impossibly rich tapestry. Playing with innovative configurations and rapturous repetition, the final part of this triptych sees the voices separated into two flanks of upper and lower registers with the solo ensemble centred between them. The piece reaches its transcendental conclusion, ignited by sparks from the high sopranos, pulsating variations in rhythm, thick cluster harmonies and a reprise of Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. Burden of Truth is a challenging program, ably realised by the expanded company of experienced and emerging singers. The blend of voices, musicianship and elements of ensemble, with the added challenge of moving around the stage is faultless. Fascinating acoustically and visually, we see the attainment of purity through music.” (Shamistha de Soysa)

on Hark! (The Song Company Christmas carols concert) – It came upon the midnight clear

Broadening the compilation are carols by contemporary Australian

on It came upon the midnight clear (Hark! – The Song Company carols concert)

The Song Company establishes a new Christmas tradition with an engaging performance of carols – some new, some old, but all beautifully performed

on It came upon the midnight clear (Hark! – The Song Company carols concert)

The Song Company’s program Hark! is a selection of 18 carols in traditional and (mostly) novel arrangements, many of them from The Naxos and Patmos Books of Carols which contain arrangements by the ensemble’s Artistic Director Antony Pitts. As well, Hark! is the debut of what is intended to be The Song Company’s annual celebration of festive choral music. For this inaugural presentation, the carols are gathered under four themes which follow the narrative of the birth of Christ – Proclamation, Anticipation, Generation, and Celebration. The ensemble, conducted by Associate Artistic Director Francis Greep comprises just eight voices (two to a part) and includes Kurt Ison at the organ. There are some time-honoured European gems like the c.13th century carol O come, o come, Emmanuel and Praetorius’ incomparable Lo, there a Rose is blooming, along with congregational favourites, like Hark! the herald angels sing (Mendelssohn) in which the attendees are invited to participate. Each congregational carol with its comfortingly familiar unaccompanied verses, final verse harmonies and indispensable descants in the English choral tradition, closes off one of the four segments of the program. Broadening the compilation are carols by contemporary Australian composers Brian Kogler, who is present at this performance and Indigenous composer Elizabeth Sheppard. Recording company Naxos commissioned the eponymous Book of Carols from which several of these arrangements are drawn. Naxos is also the name of a large Greek island, as is Patmos, a smaller Greek island, where the apostle John received the visions found in the Bible’s Book of Revelations and where the book was written. The performance is indeed revelatory. Facing a calendar saturated with much-loved but well-worn seasonal offerings at this time of year, the innovative arrangements of the carols in this program cast them in an enticing new light. The ensemble is arranged as two SATB choirs as baritone Hayden Barrington delivers the Incipit for O come, o come, Emmanuel which begins with plainchant and ends with the organ in all its glory, intentionally dominating the voices. The Angel Gabriel, a traditional Basque carol in the style of a pastorale, is gently hummed as a foil to Stephanie Dillon’s solo, which is crunchy with dissonance. The holly and the ivy is another highlight, its text collected by Cecil J. Sharp over a century ago and set to a dance-like musical arrangement by Antony Pitts. Introduced by the crystalline tones of soprano Chloe Lankshear, the choristers sing the verses in various combination of two voices... There are two ‘rounds’ by Brian Kogler (b. 1954) who lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. The King of Blis and Gaudete are engaging pieces, the latter, energised by clapping rhythms. These two rounds have an appealing beauty as songs, but are also superb exercises in musical skills, with strong melodic lines which lend themselves to imitation. The evergreen Silent Night is graced with an exquisite solo from tenor Elias Wilson... Elizabeth Sheppard’s Mary, gentle Mother is an important and delightful inclusion; Jonathan Pitts’s arrangement of It came upon the midnight clear leads us into dance mode, its multi-metric rhythms peppered with hemiolas, and takes us further into merriment with A Jolly Wassel-Bowl in a rousing arrangement by the contemporary British composer and singer Richard Eteson. Good King Wenceslas, in an arrangement from the Naxos collection, strides somewhat more rapidly through the snow than we are accustomed to, giving the carol renewed energy. The performance concludes with the all-embracing O come, all ye faithful in a mixture of a cappella and congregational singing, which swells to a majestic end as the organ joins in... This inaugural presentation of Hark! showcases the many merits and skills of the members of The Song Company. The challenging repertoire requires supreme musicianship and ensemble skills from its singers. It also gives us a new perspective on time-honoured carols as familiar arrangements give way to new constructs, many of them by Antony Pitts. They stare down conventional harmonies and push the boundaries of melodic safety, whilst remaining within the parameters of beautiful sounds... innovation is crucial and The Song Company’s inaugural Hark! has begun its path to establishing its own inimitable traditions.

on Burden of Truth (concert; Transiens)

In the company of song, we traverse an engaging a cappella program, Burden of Truth, which includes two world premières inspired by original works from the past... The power of Burden of Truth is that it evades tedium and engages by embedding repetition in an ever-changing context of multiple lines and harmonies... Burden of Truth is a challenging program, ably realised by the expanded company of experienced and emerging singers.

on Byrd Underground (concert program drawing on the Dow Partbooks material, related to Vinum et Musica); White Exaudiat te, Parsons O Bone Jesu

Celestial sounds from underground as The Song Company delivers an expert and enlightening performance in Tudor polyphony

on Byrd Underground (concert program drawing on the Dow Partbooks material, related to Vinum et Musica); White Exaudiat te, Parsons O Bone Jesu

The Song Company has its Byrd decidedly in hand for its presentation of Byrd Underground, a collection of motets from late 16th century Elizabethan England. Taken from the five partbooks of Robert Dow... Artistic Director of The Song Company, Antony Pitts explains in his welcome why these partbooks are so special: these scores contain just one part each, not the full stave (often with piano reduction accompaniment) to which today’s choral singers are accustomed. Each partbooking ensemble singer must rely on their own musical navigational skills. As well, there are no bar lines, so tactus must be communicated; the scansion, where the text is written to match the notes has yet to come into use; accidentals are not always written. More than a salon concert, this is a sophisticated learning exercise for the performers, who have the opportunity to hone their already considerable skills in musicianship and to study from the original sources to deliver the ‘most authentic possible’ interpretation of this repertoire in an expert and enlightening performance of Tudor polyphony... Most of the program is sung by The Song Company’s superb Ensemble Artists mezzo-soprano Janine Harris, tenor Ethan Taylor, bass Hayden Barrington and Pitts directing and singing, with Elias Wilson, Vocalization Scholar. Principal Artists Roberta Diamond, Amy Moore and Associate Artist Edward Elias swell the ensemble to eight for the jolly round Hey down, sing ye now after me (Anonymous) and stay for White’s Exaudiat te... Harris sings soprano, demonstrating her exceptional range, precision, clarity and even tone. Barrington achieves a rich and grounded bass; Taylor is a promising tenor. However, it is hard not to be especially impressed by Wilson whose musicality and glowing voice are a very welcome addition to the ensemble. These are voices to watch. The interplay between Harris and Wilson in Parsons’ O Bone Jesu is exquisitely light and agile. The quintet of singers is positioned at the heart of the crypt, facing each other across the centre to heighten the antiphonal effect. The ensemble of eight completes the circle, surrounded by a spellbound audience... This circle of singers has added significance in the absence of dynamic markings, phrasing and rehearsal notes in the scores, as they rely on gestures, eye contact and empathy to achieve a seamless blend and congruity in phrasing, articulation and dynamics. Endings are in perfect agreement and diction is clear... Credit is due to the very sensitive audience. Too transfixed to applause between items, the sound is allowed to distil through the silence and reverberate through the chambers of the crypt, maintaining the serenity of the mood amongst both audience and singers

on The Song Company concert with expanded/guest forces

Artistic Director Antony Pitts directs the 10 core voices of The Song Company, expanded to include noted guests, further augmented by emerging voices from Sydney’s Conservatorium High School, Sydney Philharmonia VOX and The SongCo Chorale.

on Hildegard of Bingen: Ordo Virtutum - NARRATIO (from Ordo Virtutum / Circle of Virtue album)

the music of the named characters is uniformly superbly sung – deeply in touch with the organisation of the thoughts in Latin and (within the confines of the morality play’s limitations) well characterised... The Song Company’s recording is a worthy successor to Sequentia’s more heart-on-sleeve early music orthodoxy and, with its fantastically vibrant recorded sound, evident commitment, and powerfully engaged singing, it... certainly gives the older, highly respected recording, a real run for its money.

on Hark! (concert drawing on The Naxos and Patmos Books of Carols); The Angel Gabriel

A thematically well-ordered program divided into four sections found the Company covering a wide range of repertoire... A regular at many Christmas services, The Angel Gabriel from the Basque territory here enjoyed new garb with a hummed first statement before the first verse began... the singers’ articulation and clarity of notes made a striking impression... still one of the more impressive and meritorious blooms in Sydney’s serious music chaplet.

on Hark! (December 2021 carols concert)

original compositions or arrangements by contemporary writers: one-time professional cartoonist Brian Kogler (two carols), Indigenous musician Elizabeth Sheppard, Sydney lawyer Rachel Scanlon, and British singer Richard Eteson. This all made for an invigorating experience... still one of the more impressive and meritorious blooms in Sydney’s serious music chaplet.

on Hark! (concert drawing on The Naxos and Patmos Books of Carols); The Angel Gabriel

What a wonderful way to be reminded of the intangibles of Christmas – superb carols in a splendid setting... arranged by Artistic Director Antony Pitts with the choir under the hand of Associate Artistic Director Francis Greep... The concert included a discreet variety of tempi, volume and language, from the humming intro to the traditional Basque, The Angel Gabriel, the handclaps of Gaudete by local NSW composer Brian Kogler... Hark! was that kind of experience, both individual and communal.

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

An Extraordinary Achievement

Transiens is a monumental new work, profoundly influenced by Renaissance sacred choral music in general and, of course, by Robert Wylkynson’s canonic treatment of Jesus autem transiens in particular. In its antiphonal use of small choirs (with more dynamic vocal placement throughout), there is a definite relationship to Tallis’s Spem in alium here: not surprising when one reads in Pitts’ bio that he has also composed the work XL, a 40-voice-part companion piece to Spem, which, also in 40 parts, is beloved by ambitious choristers everywhere. Rich with chiaroscuro and the tension between chaos and order, sometimes almost schizophrenic in its imitative polyphony, sometimes a glorious wash of sound like waves rolling over the audience, Transiens is a significant new addition to the Australian choral repertory. Pitts should be extremely proud, not only of the composition, but also of the multiple young collaborating choirs and the remarkably unified sound he has achieved with them. All this happily exists on a new album, recorded in isolation during Covid and available now on Bandcamp and as a limited edition vinyl recording. What an extraordinary achievement for The Song Company, to have completed this project during what is surely one of history’s most difficult periods to be a singer...” (Holly Champion)

on Burden of Truth (concert; second major work: Transiens)

It was a full house in the Cell Block Theatre of the National Art School in Darlinghurst... Under the Artistic Direction of Antony Pitts they have expanded their repertoire broadly with works from 9th century music through to the most contemporary... Somehow the concert was easy to see as a complete work which only an artistic genius with visionary talent could put together. The audience was mesmerised and stayed silent a long time afterward before bursting into enthusiastic applause at the close.

on Transiens - Part 3 The Future; William Byrd: Ave verum corpus (from Burden of Truth concert)

The Sydney iteration of Burden of Truth is a collaboration between The Song Company and VOX... These fresh and supple, highly trained voices combined in gorgeous, lush harmonies as they gave the world premiere run of Pitts’ own work, Transiens, as well as a new a cappella arrangement of Gavin Bryars’ famous Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet... Pitts’ conducting was precise and the singers tightly synchronised; no easy feat with [the] chant’s often ambiguous rhythm... Transiens is a monumental new work, profoundly influenced by Renaissance sacred choral music in general... Pitts should be extremely proud, not only of the composition, but also of the multiple young collaborating choirs and the remarkably unified sound he has achieved with them.

on 25-part motet Transiens (recorded on Burden of Truth )

The Song Company’s Burden of Truth program with guest singers from the Conservatorium High School, Sydney Philharmonia VOX and The SongCo Chorale was built around the première of a new version for a cappella singers of Gavin Bryars’s cult classic Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet and a specially written companion piece Transiens... It captures a purely private moment of spontaneous un-self-conscious music making – untrained yet true – and the setting here against trained singers created a carefully moulded background of subtly shifting balance and a listener experience of still reflectiveness... Transiens subjected the intervals and contour of Wylkynson’s original to bewildering proliferation like a mantra that takes the listener to new levels of awareness and transcendence...” (Peter McCallum)

on Sound Patterns installation (SCALA #1, Tabakalera - Pitts credited as producer/masterer of the source recording)

Spanish sound artist Xabier Erkizia used tracks mastered by our producer Antony Pitts to create a sophisticated audio system that spatializes the original recording across eight speakers, placed at various levels in a stairwell.

on Circle of Virtue (staged live performance)

Holding the Medieval trumpet he was later to use in the Symphonia Antony Pitts (Artistic Director of The Song Company and Musical Director and Music Editor of this performance) introduced Hildegard von Bingen’s visionary work, Circle of Virtue, heartily welcoming the LIVE audience in the first of two sold-out concerts in Sydney... The production in the Cell Block Theatre was extraordinary!... This was a thoroughly enthralling experience with superb singing throughout. It is a tribute to The Song Company that a composition nearly nine hundred years old could appear so fresh and modern.

on Messiah, Part I (December 2020 concert)

Little did I realise the next Messiah I would see would be performed live online by just 12 singers, a string quartet, piano and chamber organ... This was a thoroughly enjoyable night in... it’s not every night you get to sing with Taryn Fiebig right?!

on Adelaide Festival: 150 Psalms (March 2020, Song Company’s Powerlessness and Celebration of Life programmes)

The remarkable 150 Psalms project concluded last night with a glorious performance celebrating life by the Netherlands Chamber Choir... The Song Company with Antony Pitts... ‘That’s the magic of choral singing; it connects us, it unifies us.

on The Song Company at Adelaide Festival

The Song Company, under the leadership of Antony Pitts, provided a varied program extending from the early Renaissance of Ockeghem and Josquin to Britten and our near-contemporary Sven-David Sandström.

on Adelaide Festival: 150 Psalms (March 2020, Song Company’s Powerlessness and Celebration of Life programmes)

Festivals provide the ideal opportunity to stage events... Closing off the cycle, the only non-Psalmic setting was the ethereal, audacious marvel of English Renaissance composition, the 40-part motet, Spem in Alium, which brought together all four choirs... Australia’s The Song Company.

on Book of Travelers (December 2020, Song Company Ensemble Artists recital)

Book of Travelers presented by two of The Song Company’s Ensemble Artists, baritone Hayden Barrington and tenor Ethan Taylor, accompanied by Associate Artistic Director Francis Greep on piano, bookended the vast history of song cycles with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and Gabriel Kahane’s Book of Travelers... it was a showcase of intricate vocal repertoire sung with nuance and flare.

on Messiah, Part I (December 2020 concert)

The Song Company’s clever virtual presentation of Handel’s Messiah is an example of how to make the most of challenging circumstances... it is ensemble singing which earns The Song Company its justifiable fame... In these choruses, vocal elements balanced beautifully with the instrumental group, who despite their small size rose to match the singers... The Song Company’s virtual Messiah is an innovative opportunity to see a group of Australia’s finest singers sing a beloved work with deep familiarity, effortless style and boundless affection.

on Hildegard of Bingen: Ordo Virtutum - NARRATIO (from Ordo Virtutum / Circle of Virtue)

Ordo Virtutum is a morality play by the twelfth-century composer, poet and Benedictine Abbess, Hildegard of Bingen... Leonie Cambage designed simple staging for Music Director Antony Pitts’ sensitive reworking of the plainchant from original sources with added accompanying drones and occasional rudimentary polyphony. Jessica O’Donoghue was regal in voice and stature as Humility, the queen of the virtues, while Roberta Diamond sang with shapely colour and pure line as the Soul.

on The Song Company concert (plainchant reworking with drones)

Music Director Antony Pitts’ sensitive reworking of the plainchant from original sources with added accompanying drones…

on Cries of Justice (February 2020 concert)

The Song Company’s Cries of Justice concert, heard in the iridescently resonant acoustic of St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, canvassed 3000 years of the Psalms of David with particular focus on the peerless, serenity of Renaissance polyphony... If this is the music of paradise, it seems to live up to the hype.

on Cries of Justice (February 2020 concert)

The Song Company’s performance in the Art Gallery of Ballarat last Monday evening went straight to the heart of the relationship of music and humanity... The work of artistic director/conductor Antony Pitts displayed positive results at every level.

on The Song Company 2019 season opening tour - Eton Choirbook program - reviewed under headline “More divine than human”

The Song Company and its director Antony Pitts are to be highly commended for this opening tour in their 2019 season with a program of five works from the Eton Choirbook.

on 50-part motet XLX - Mente cordis sui

a new work by internationally acclaimed composer Antony Pitts, led by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Artistic and Music Director Brett Weymark. The a cappella work is composed with 50 parts with the intention that the choirs be positioned around the famous Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. For this work 34 members of the Symphony Chorus are positioned at the southern end of the Concert Hall, underneath the organ. The 36 members of the Chamber Singers are split across the East and West sides of the hall whilst the 50-strong Capella St Crucis is split across the main stage and the northern end of the hall, to the rear of the audience. This work moves from ethereal ghostly voices that surround the audience to a sound that washes over the audience in waves as different groups dominate the sound. A delightfully immersive experience, this work shifts mood from deep and dark to brighter overtones with a complexity of the staggered sound from the 50 parts presented by the 120 singers that give the work a full sound....” (Jade Kops)

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

80s pop hits star in Song Company mashup

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

Pushing their own boundaries, which are far and wide, The Song Company brought a somewhat futuristic metamorphosis of musical styles together for its latest show, Mind Over Matter... The performers/singers were Anna Sandström, Pip Dracakis, Max Riebl, Ethan Taylor, Nathan Lay, Maggie Chen, and Antony Pitts who wrote the musical, sang, directed and played the piano. The glittering and multi-coloured clothes matched the eclectic music and story... Steppin’ Out, by Joe Jackson began the show, then a personal favourite of this reviewer, Take On Me by the much-underrated Norwegian group a-ha and then Mad World by Tears for Fears, all sung in a Song Company style. And, yes, they have their own style, which is a beauty. In fine countertenor voice, Riebl in his first appearance with The Song Company, played the part of Professor Karl Rime. He performed a haunting version of Running Up That Hill, by Kate Bush. He captured the strength and passion of the song even though it didn’t have that pulsating thump of the drums that fills the original version... There was a lot in this show. Such as sections of body clapping, twirling at twisting stage props, streamers, smoke and colourful stage lights. They all added to the surreal context. Essentially a comic opera, it’s a play that takes place centred around two elevator lifts on either side of the stage where occupants travelled to some place for some reason. The players were convincing, and all acted well and with conviction, but the singing was the star of the show... This is a 75-minute entertaining and singable show with good production values and unique tonal music from Pitts. It’s also a show that any Dadaist would adore.

on Nineteen to the Dozen (concert, Canberra series)

THE current Australian compositional landscape is filled with innovative and expressive composers. For this series of eight concerts, The Song Company commissioned 19 composers from across Australia to voice their talents... The Song Company never fails to entertain. But this time, they did much more, they enchanted. This was a concert of much more than beautiful singing.

on Songs Before Sleep (July 2019, SongCo SOLO recital)

The Song Company has started new life, even sprouting a new arm, SongCo SOLO... Andrew O’Connor showed conclusively that his future in his new art song career is well and truly assured.

on Dance of Redeemed Creation (Mind Over Matter – The Song Company chamber opera)

The Song Company’s Mind Over Matter was a unique and explosive chamber comic opera with strong performances

on Dance of Redeemed Creation (Mind Over Matter – The Song Company chamber opera)

I had absolutely no idea what to expect... the only thing I was sure of was that my companion and I were in for a unique experience! ...The cast took their places in a semi-circle on stage. Faces painted white and bodies clad in 80s power suits in pink, turquoise, check, and iridescent green sequins, they performed hits by Joe Jackson, a-ha, and Tears for Fears in glorious five-part harmony. This part of the show still had elements of a recital, but with a sense of fun and physical looseness, especially Antony when he led the ensemble in an a cappella rendition of a-ha’s Take On Me. If tunes like Mad World weren’t so engrained in our collective consciousness, these arrangements could almost pass for Renaissance motets, especially with countertenor Max Riebl’s pure voice soaring over the top. Max was then centre-stage to perform Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, and his captivating voice resonated throughout the auditorium... The Prelude and Fugue [ Dance of Redeemed Creation], composed by Antony, was an overture of sorts before the action began. You could hear the Baroque form infused with elements of boogie woogie and modern harmony, yet it was tense and virtuosic nonetheless, creating a foreboding feeling of technology about to run amok... The intensity and pace of Mind Over Matter’s allegorical tale of “the consequences of humanity’s actions and the role of technology” was well-matched by Antony’s through-composed chamber opera: its frenetic music was constantly in motion, all the while with the four-hand piano part unrelenting... overall, Mind Over Matter was a unique and explosive show with strong performances from all cast members, especially Pip Dracakis, whose performance of a BABEL-infected Mabel was very convincing... After The Song Company’s challenges of late, Mind Over Matter cemented it as a force with which to be reckoned; unafraid to be bold and make a point.

on Mind Over Matter (Song Company chamber opera concert; constituent work: Roland Orzabal arr. Antony Pitts, Mad World)

I had absolutely no idea what to expect... The Prelude and Fugue [Dance of Redeemed Creation], composed by Antony, was an overture of sorts before the action began... The intensity and pace of Mind Over Matter’s allegorical tale of “the consequences of humanity’s actions and the role of technology” was well-matched by Antony’s through-composed chamber opera... After The Song Company’s challenges of late, Mind Over Matter cemented it as a force with which to be reckoned; unafraid to be bold and make a point.

on Mind Over Matter (August-September 2019 concert)

I had absolutely no idea what to expect... After The Song Company’s challenges of late, Mind Over Matter cemented it as a force with which to be reckoned; unafraid to be bold and make a point.

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

A retrofuturist vision from Antony Pitts

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

The Song Company’s Mind Over Matter, which is set to tour seven Australian cities, was a really, truly, very, very interesting way to get back in the game... ...although I’m usually ambivalent about going in blind, I’m glad I did so here. It’s hard to imagine “expecting” something so aesthetically unique, dramaturgically engaging, and musically polished! Sleekly and colourfully dressed by costume designer Isabel Hudson for the program’s centrepiece, the five singers and Antony Pitts (on piano and conducting) opened with some zesty arrangements of ’80s hits including Steppin’ Out, Take On Me, Mad World, and Kate Bush’s beautiful Running Up That Hill, which countertenor Max Riebl lilted through with great sensitivity. The Take On Me arrangement leaned into the song’s weirdly discontinuous structure, while the Mad World arrangement very effectively extended the disturbed (and clichéd) emotions of the original into harmonic dissonances a bit more pressing and appropriate for 2019. Excepting an arrangement of Wang Chung’s Dance Hall Days, which served as the program’s finale and had a more easy and joyful character, these ’80s hits were served with a stiff pathos that really suited the retrofuturist aesthetic of Pitts’s Mind Over Matter, a comic chamber opera in which steely office workers in a near-future cyber-corporation contend with threats of viruses, rogue AI, and one another. They work in a 127-storey tower with only two lifts; surely you’d imagine the lifts being an important dramatic constraint. So important, in fact, that the two lifts were played as characters by Maggie Chen and Pitts, who on piano four hands would now and then interject with announcements of “going, going up!” and “down, going down!”. All the ensuing lift-related comedy really tied together Pitts’ frenetic, tech-anxiety-fuelled score... There was plenty to watch, and even though I fell well behind the narrative, there was dramatic, vocal, and pianistic talent in spades to keep me thoroughly entertained. This is not to mention the really, truly, very, very much superb lighting design from Ben Brockman, which shrouded much of the show in what felt like screen-lit cyber-chiaroscuro. This is a hugely compelling program... I do think audiences will come away from this program with piqued interest in how matter and mind cannot truthfully be wrested apart. Just watch Chen and Pitts’ fingers on the keys for proof! Or, for that matter (so to speak), hear Anna Ladychester Sandstrom, Pip Dracakis, Ethan Taylor, Nathan Lay, and Riebl’s exceptional larynxes!

on The Song Company concert (with organ)

With great intent, conductor Antony Pitts directed singers, ensemble, and organ, from which he elicited a fluid, coherent sound... Pitts maintained complete, uninterrupted (and hugely impressive) control for the entire 75-minute duration.

on Arvo Part: Passio (April 2019 concert, Melbourne, with Trinity College Choir)

Passio is through-composed, with no separate movements... With great intent, conductor Antony Pitts directed singers, ensemble, and organ, from which he elicited a fluid, coherent sound... Pitts maintained complete, uninterrupted (and hugely impressive) control for the entire 75-minute duration.

on Nineteen to the Dozen (concert, Melbourne Recital Centre)

On the 1st November, chamber vocal ensemble The Song Company presented Nineteen to the Dozen at the Melbourne Recital Centre... The Song Company are clearly a sharply talented and forward-thinking vocal group, and one to certainly watch out for in the classical and cross-over scene in Melbourne.

on XLX – Mente cordis sui, op.281 (Sydney Opera House premiere, 20 April 2019)

Everything started with Antony Pitts’ featured new work XLX MENTECORDIS SUI. The delightful voices of various split choirs well-positioned inside the Sydney Opera House sounded like calm ocean waves that washes away the weariness of the soul, in reflection of the Holy Week.

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

Delightful takes on 1980s pop songs bookend an almost nonsensical chamber opera.

on Mind Over Matter (The Song Company) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

The Song Company has eclectic tastes and ambitions. Later this year they perform a concert of English Renaissance choral works, and another featuring 19 newly-commissioned songs by Australian composers. Currently the Company, which has a new lease on life after a significant donor intervened... is presenting this program of 1980s pop songs book-ending the titular chamber opera, Mind Over Matter... With luxuriant hair and white suit reminiscent of a mature Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music’s former frontman), The Song Company’s Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, provided piano accompaniment for a vocal quintet for the first song, Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out. He then joined them for an a cappella interpretation of a-ha’s Take On Me, before conducting a more complex arrangement of Tears for Fears’ Mad World, which was reminiscent of Gary Jules... Dressed in over-sized, mostly loud suits typical of the 80s, the singers were Ethan Taylor, whose pure tenor shone in brief leading parts, sopranos Anna Sandström and Pip Dracakis, baritone Nathan Lay and countertenor Max Riebl. The latter performed a fourth song solo with Pitts on piano. Like the program’s other retro hits, Kate Bush’s poignant Running Up That Hill is quality pop to begin with, but here, the minimalist arrangement and Riebl’s exquisite, expressive voice put through a slight reverb effect, made it one of the best musical experiences I’ve had all year. After this spine-tingling peak, the program stalled as Mind Over Matter, which Pitts wrote in 1993 for European Chamber Opera, waxed nonsensical about artificial intelligence, human identity and relationships. It began interestingly enough with Pitts’ solo piano prelude, which perhaps suggests a stream of data merged with the New York bustle and jazz of Gershwin. He was then joined by Maggie Chen for the busy piano-for-four hands score... Lay (the boss disguised as a guard) made his biggest impact toward the end as a calm voice of reason that hinted at German lieder gravitas thanks to his warm, controlled baritone. We quickly plunged back into farce, however, as the previously rarely seen Dracakis (Mabel) appeared after the show’s only costume change, sporting a shimmering jumpsuit and zapping the other characters senseless with an unseen force – she had been taken over by the sentient supercomputer

on Mind Over Matter (Song Company chamber opera concert; constituent work: Roland Orzabal arr. Antony Pitts, Mad World)

The Song Company has eclectic tastes and ambitions... With luxuriant hair and white suit reminiscent of a mature Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music’s former frontman), The Song Company’s Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, provided piano accompaniment for a vocal quintet for the first song, Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out. He then joined them for an a cappella interpretation of a-ha’s Take On Me, before conducting a more complex arrangement of Tears for Fears’ Mad World, which was reminiscent of Gary Jules... After this spine-tingling peak, the program stalled as Mind Over Matter, which Pitts wrote in 1993 for European Chamber Opera, waxed nonsensical about artificial intelligence, human identity and relationships.

on Treble Helix Unlocked (Eton Choirbook concert), referencing the prior Dow Partbooks project (Byrd-Round-Table) related to Vinum et Musica

The Song Company delves deep into the Eton Choirbook in vibrant performances with an edge of danger.

on Treble Helix Unlocked (Eton Choirbook concert), referencing the prior Dow Partbooks project (Byrd-Round-Table) related to Vinum et Musica

The Song Company’s ten singers were humming a chant melody as they walked – processed, even – into the Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room for the company’s latest concert... The melody – soon given the words ‘Jesus autem transiens’ – plunged the audience into the medieval sound world of Treble Helix Unlocked: The Eton Choirbook at the crossroads of the Renaissance... With the singers standing close around facsimiles on just a few music stands, seeking to recreate the conditions in which the Choirbook’s original singers may have read those pages, the concert opened with Walter Lambe’s Nesciens Mater. The choir brought a lean yet vibrantly alive sound, and clear diction, to the music – and in the intimate Utzon Room it felt as though the audience, too, were huddled around the manuscript... Dan Walker brought a clean, articulate tenor to the Evangelist in Richard Davy’s St Matthew Passion, the first Passion setting in musical history by a named composer, his solo narration contrasting the denser polyphony of the spoken lines – the crowd’s cries of ‘Barrabam’ and ‘Crucifigatur’ particularly thrilling. While the Utzon Room’s close quarters make any real pianissimos difficult to pull off, the stripped-back texture as bass Andrew O’Connor sung his ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ (‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’) was quite moving. The highlight of the program, however, was John Browne’s Stabat mater dolorosa, the singers drawing a ringing sound from the music’s weaving lines in a deft thematic shift from the Passion’s description of the women watching from afar to Christ’s mother at the foot of the cross. The contrasting timbres of soprano (Roberta Diamond) and bass (O’Connor) in the ‘Quis non potest contristari’ (Who could not sorrow with her) were beautiful, while the blooming word-painting of the ‘Stabat mater rubens rosa’ (‘The mother stood, a reddening rose’) and the powerful ‘Plebs tunc canit clamorosa’ (‘The crowd roared cacophonously’) were exquisite. The concert’s finale saw the return of Jesus autem transiens, Robert Wylkynson’s canonic setting of the Apostles Creed... the parts accumulating to create an impenetrable, seething – yet ultimately resplendent – wall of sound. Treble Helix Unlocked was an ambitious program (last year’s Byrd-Round-Table, drawing on the Dow Partbooks, was ‘nursery slopes’ in comparison, Pitts quipped) and while there was an edge of danger to performances in which much is decided in the moment and communicated with hand gestures, it made for a rewarding performance

on Missa Unitatis album

Once again, however, and happily, the music itself is totally accessible. Unusually, for a setting of the Credo, there seems little attempt to illustrate the different stages of the text, preferring instead a lively, rather jazzy, non-stop setting that really swings... There are many echoes of earlier music, with the odd dose of organum and harmonies that, whilst rarely straying far from tonality, are frequently spiced up by false relations such as you might hear in early music. The work was composed for and first performed by two different choirs, each with its own identity, function and purpose. The composer’s aim in writing the work was to promote the idea of ‘bringing together’, the unity to be found in the work’s title... Missa Unitatis is a splendid work, superbly written for voices. It will appeal to any choral music lover looking for something a little out of the ordinary. It is impossible to imagine a finer performance than this one from Cappella Pratensis and the Netherlands Chamber Choir under the no doubt inspiring direction of Stephen Layton...” (William Hedley)

on 50-part motet XLX - Mente cordis sui

one dives into a lake not to reach the shore but to luxuriate in the water. With four choirs at the front, back and side galleries of the Opera House Concert Hall in addition to that on the main stage, Antony Pitts’ new work XLX - Mente cordis sui created a comparable immersive experience in polyphonic vocal sound. Vocal lines from all directions mingled, phrases were echoed in quick succession from left and right, front and back, and ideas would grow from one group to dominate all like the moment of a wave. Pitts’ work takes as its starting-point an eight-bar passage from Bach’s Magnificat in D, BWV243, with the words ‘in the imagination of their hearts’, teasing out Bach’s harmonies with modernist slides and dissonances like a fraying memory, yet all the while maintaining a sense of wholeness. The combined forces of the Sydney Philharmonia Chamber Singers, Symphony Chorus and the visiting Capella St Crucis from Hannover under conductor Brett Weymark confronted the considerable challenges of maintaining pitch, balance and tonal cohesion in such a large space with professional focus, to create an intriguing tapestry of engaging interest...” (Peter McCallum)

on Nineteen to the Dozen (project)

The Song Company’s Nineteen to the Dozen project was a wild and wonderful ride through the landscape of Australian contemporary music punctuated by venerable European milestones. The 70-minute continuous performance contained 21 new Australian works each without a title or words, each showing a distinctive fresh voice... Bach and Stravinsky weren’t bad either.

on Treble Helix Unlocked (Eton Choirbook concert), referencing the prior year’s Dow Partbooks project related to Vinum et Musica

Sweet polyphony with an original twist

on Treble Helix Unlocked (Eton Choirbook concert), referencing the prior year’s Dow Partbooks project related to Vinum et Musica

With its project last year of singing from the 16th century Dow Partbooks from Oxford and with this current program from the Eton Choirbook, The Song Company has demonstrated that, far from sterile antiquarianism, this is a richly rewarding way of exploring precious remnants of a musical tradition the English Reformation tried to destroy. The close listening partbook reading requires the singers to rediscover the natural rhythmic flexibility and vivid natural balance in these superbly crafted aural tapestries. The Eton Choirbook originally contained three pieces from the 15th century of which 64 survive, some only in fragments. Walter Lambe’s Nesciens Mater highlighted the richer harmonic world English composers cultivated when compared with their European contemporaries, while in the Magnificat by William of Stratford, the danger of singing without the safety net of the modern bar line became good-humouredly manifest. Richard Davy’s St Matthew Passion was an early example of the dramatisation of evangelist, crowd and Christ personas familiar from Bach’s later passions, while John Browne’s Stabat mater dolorosa mixed 14th and 15th century characteristics in a contrapuntal masterpiece. The virtuosic conclusion was Robert Wylkynson’s canon Jesus autem transiens

on Bach, Sorrow and Joy (April 2019 concert, with the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral)

The Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral and The Song Company joined forces in superbly resonant chambers of the terrazzo-floored, stone-arched St Mary’s crypt for music of Bach, both as arranger and composer. A highlight was The Song Company’s Swingle-style vocal rendition of the final incomplete quadruple fugue from Bach’s Art of Fugue.

on Tallis, Hope and Crown (September 2019 concert)

The newly-resurrected Song Company’s Tallis, Hope and Crown concert on Friday in St Mary’s Crypt with students from the Conservatorium High School... showed too much Tallis is scarcely enough... This music slows the pulse to its own spiritual pace and one could have listened to it 40 more times.

on Nineteen to the Dozen (concert, Art Gallery of Ballarat)

At the Art Gallery of Ballarat last week The Song Company presented an extraordinary program... Conductor Antony Pitts deserves much credit for the virtuoso singing and the dramatic presentation... The standing ovation from the audience suggests the new was not such a shock.

on Treble Helix Unlocked (concert) – Lambe Nesciens Mater, William Stratford Magnificat, Browne Stabat Mater, Wylkynson Credo in Deum

Difficult but poised, The Song Company takes on musical challenges

on Treble Helix Unlocked (February 2019 concert, Eton Choirbook)

The concert presented by The Song Company in the Art Gallery of Ballarat last week brought together superb singing and an exciting choice of program... The emotive and spiritual power of the earlier works was rounded off with a simple statement of faith.

on One-Equal-Music (November 2018 concert)

Described as a vocal symphony, One-Equal-Music is something of a requiem to the World War I fallen... They thoroughly deserved the almost capacity audience’s enthusiastic reception.

on True-Love-Story - The True Story Of Guillaume De Machaut & Peronnelle d’Armentieres (June 2018 concert)

Antony Pitts seems to be one of those exceptional musicians gifted with musical talent, a spirit of adventure and enormous energy. As Artistic Director of The Song Company, one of his multiple roles in the Melbourne International Singers Festival was to direct The Song Company’s fascinating presentation, True-Love-Story

on Four-Colour-Season (September 2018 concert)

this concert will need a different mindset, an interpretation that travels beyond traditional Western music programming... It’s a brave expression of the new path The Song Company is travelling on, and one beautifully expressed in the repertoire of this storytelling concert

on Missa Unitatis album

As director of TONUS PEREGRINUS, Antony Pitts’s spiritually imbued sacred settings have evolved hand in hand with his vocal ensemble over the years, as heard on recordings such as ‘ Alpha and Omega ’ (Hyperion) and the modern oratorio Jerusalem-Yerushalayim (1equalmusic). However, running in parallel with his work with TONUS PEREGRINUS have been several projects with other groups, including the Missa Unitatis (‘Mass of Unity’)... The two-choir version heard here unites Cappella Pratensis with the Netherlands Chamber Choir under Stephen Layton. The result is a fascinating, multi-layered work that blends chant, polychoral elements and medieval and Renaissance polyphony with techniques drawn from more recent neo-tonal and minimalist styles. The opening Kyrie starts in relatively straightforward fashion, with each choir alternating short modal statements in a manner resembling a kind of medieval tuning meditation. Far more complex layers are overlaid in the Gloria, which ends with the simultaneous combination of up to 16 individual lines using complex rhythmic and metrical juxtapositions. A rhythmically charged Credo leads to more homophonic statements in the Sanctus and Benedictus, while the concluding Agnus Dei radiates a quiet luminescence...” (Pwyll ap Siôn)

on double album Jerusalem-Yerushalayim (1EMJOY) - the 2017 remix of the oratorio-musical Jerusalem-Yerushalayim with narration by David Suchet

An engaging, postmodern evocation of the holy city

Antony Pitts is something of a musical polymath: composer, choir director, conductor, teacher and radio producer are some of the strings to his musical bow. He may be best known to Australian audiences as Artistic Director of The Song Company... Textually, the work uses the Jewish (and by extension, Christian) scriptures to evoke the city regarded as holy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, beginning with the genealogy of Abraham and concluding with Isaiah’s vision of a peaceful Jerusalem. Musically, the score is thoroughly postmodern. Pitts peppers his kaleidoscopic pop-style writing with numerous references to Western art music ranging from Dunstaple, White, and Tallis through to Handel and Parry. This studio remix of a 2011 recording (with biblical verses read by David Suchet) eagerly communicates the commitment of the young performers, underlining the composer’s hope that the oratorio will have wide audience appeal, regardless of listeners’ backgrounds. The challenging but rewarding score could provide a unifying focus for performers of different origins in the midst of very real conflict in the Middle East.” (Tony Way)

on Thou wast present as on this day (The Song Company LIVE: In Illo Tempore CD)

An appealing mix of ancient and modern from one of our finest

on Thou wast present as on this day (The Song Company LIVE: In Illo Tempore CD)

Taken from performances in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney..., The Song Company’s latest disc is a three-part exploration of the Easter story using a thoughtful blend of Renaissance polyphony and contemporary works. At the core of the program is Monteverdi’s Missa In Illo Tempore, along with the motet by Gombert which gives the mass its name.... Between these movements of intricate polyphony come a number of contrasts. Thou Wast Present As On This Day by The Song Company’s Artistic Director Antony Pitts appears with increasing intensity in each section of the program: Tomb, Hades, and Throne. The composer’s stark but striking use of harmony and texture works well in this context. Elliott Gyger’s Creator Alme Siderum and Alice Chance’s And the Lord said, Fiat Lux provide effective Australian counterpoint to older styles, the latter showcasing the upper voices. An anonymous 15th-century Credo sung by the lower voices adds clarity of texture, while Byrd’s O Salutaris Hostia delights with its spicy dissonances. William Mundy’s In Aeternum provides a fittingly serene conclusion to a richly absorbing program. Delivered with appealing beauty of blend, rock-solid intonation and great empathy of style, this program confirms the important contribution The Song Company makes to our national musical landscape

on Missa Unitatis album

The Missa Unitatis stands out because of its size: it is a marvellous work full of enchantment, soul, depth and color. The Cappella Pratensis and the Nederlands Kamerkoor astonish equally with their virtuosity and musicality in abundance, in a throbbing performance that elevates the listener from beginning to end. An anthological album, without a doubt.” [translation] “La Missa Unitatis destaca por su envergadura: es una maravillosa obra plena de arrobo, de alma, de hondura y de colorido. La Cappella Pratensis y el Netherlands Kamerkoor asombran por igual con su virtuosismo y musicalidad a raudales, en una interpretación palpitante que eleva al oyente de principio a fin. Un álbum antológico, sin duda.

on In illo tempore (album/concert)

A time. A place. Another world. The Song Company’s latest album was recorded live in the Crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney... It is intoxicating stuff: in the Cathedral’s stone crypt voices ring on long after the singers have finished, lending layers of organic polyphony to the artifice of the composer. Music director Antony Pitts and his ensemble sculpt the moving air with superb finesse, and sound engineers Bob Scott and Ross A’hern shepherd it into an immersive, uncannily clear surround sound.

on Ross Edwards: De Spiritu Sancto (world premiere, from Ross Edwards at 75 concert)

French composer Gabriel Fauré, fin-de-siecle genius of haunting melody and harmonic sensibility, might not be the first composer to spring to mind to celebrate the birthday of the 75 years young Australian Ross Edwards... Conductor Antony Pitts’ tempi throughout Fauré’s Requiem were unrushed, while Hill’s arrangement was transparent to the point of sparseness... Andrew O’Connor sang the baritone solo in Fauré’s Libera Me with smooth line and rich tonal complexity, leading into another harp flourish which led off Edwards’ De Spiritu Sancto like a shooting star

on Byrd-Round-Table (Dow Partbooks concert, precursor to Vinum et Musica); White Lamentations, Byrd Ne irascaris

Parts add up to a magnificent whole

on Byrd-Round-Table (Dow Partbooks concert, precursor to Vinum et Musica); White Lamentations, Byrd Ne irascaris

While Sydney has been enjoying the beach, The Song Company, under the imaginative direction of Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, has spent the summer rediscovering the art of singing from renaissance partbooks, using the rich collection of Tudor music copied in Oxford in the 1580s by Robert Dow... This exploration of the high polyphonic craft of William Byrd and Robert White and some lesser known contemporaries provided a range of musically persuasive answers... The most substantial music was White’s magnificent Lamentations of Jeremiah, a set of six glorious Tudor polyphonic tapestries, both expressive and serene. The Song Company created utterly absorbing listening and one was disappointed when it ended. Comparably rich was Byrd’s Ne irascaris, a masterpiece of polyphonic art that, in the clear, resonant acoustic of the Yellow House Gallery, drew the listener into the texture’s interior to create sensuous vividness... The Dow Partbooks also contain instrumental numbers, and in works by Byrd, Richard Farrant, and Nicholas Strogers, soprano Anna Fraser and tenor Robert Macfarlane sang solos while the lower voices imitated instrumental articulation... One left with ancient musical textures echoing in one’s head with freshness, immediacy and joy.

on Byrd-Round-Table (Dow Partbooks concert), noted in year-end review alongside Treble Helix Unlocked

Year in Review: Brahms and Kosky cap off majestic 2018

on Byrd-Round-Table (Dow Partbooks concert), noted in year-end review alongside Treble Helix Unlocked

The year’s major operatic event was Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Adelaide Festival swirling with nebulous wisps and deep subconscious resonance in a production by Neil Armfield that brought Shakespeare’s inner theatre memorably to the operatic stage... Those who missed The Song Company’s superb exploration of Tudor polyphony, Byrd-Round-Table earlier this year, can sample their luminous approach to this music in a presentation of music from the Eton Choirbook in the Utzon Room in February [2019]

on The Song Company renaissance partbooks program - reviewed under headline “Parts add up to a magnificent whole”

The Song Company, under the imaginative direction of Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, has spent the summer rediscovering the art of singing from renaissance partbooks.

on The Song Company concert

Music director Antony Pitts and his ensemble sculpt the moving air with superb finesse.

on Four-Colour-Season (September 2018 concert)

The printed program of The Song Company’s latest tour Four-Colour-Season is not a list but a series of concentric circles tracing the calendar for Bundjalung, Kaurna and Western peoples... This is an imaginative and joyously intercultural exploration of time’s eternal circle.

on Steve Reich’s Clapping Music (Byrd-Round-Table concert, incl. selections from The Arrow of Song & Dreamers of the Day)

The centrepiece of the justly-famed Song Company’s Byrd–Round–Table program, focused on the Tudor period, was Robert White’s sublime Lamentations for five voices... all were instantly converted at the gripping, exciting performance of Reich’s Clapping Music, and even Cage’s ingenious speech quartet Story from Living Room Music... Ruth McCall’s splendid arrangement of Waltzing Matilda was a great encore.

on Song Company’s Forward & Bach from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

The Song Company’s latest tour, Forward & Bach, takes three of Bach’s motets as pillars around which to arrange a clutch of new works commissioned from five Australian composers all starting, like Bach, from the chorale melodies of Martin Luther. The result is five works which duck and weave through the rich baggage of the liturgy, five highly individual voices which add new layers to an ongoing tradition. Matthew Hindson embraces the broad theme of musical limitations most overtly. His Saviour of the Heathens, dedicated to outgoing Chair of the Song Company, Penny Le Couteur, experiments with a musical algorithm as groundwork for a spare, slightly ghostly meditation. Paul Stanhope’s De profundis is a more muscular work, carving out great chunks of vocal sound interspersed with passages using the mathematical transformations of Bach and before to create a slick and fascinating mini-drama. In Ein Feste Burg Brett McKern also references the tricks and tools of baroque counterpoint, but then, starting with a slippery basso continuo, subverts their assumed predictability, sliding into new sound worlds. Ella Macens’ Stāvi Stīvi, Ozoliņ and Andrew Batt-Rawden’s Out of the Deep step a little further from the tree. Although they both start from Martin Luther’s “Out of the Deep I Cry to thee”, Macens adopts a new text, adapted from a Latvian folk verse. Stāvi Stīvi, Ozoliņ describes a great oak tree which stands, unflinching, accepting, as a great storm threatens, arrives, then passes, leaving the tree still there. First developed at the Gondwana National Choral School earlier this year [led by Paul Stanhope and Antony Pitts], it is an exquisite, assured piece of choral writing which reveals an exciting new voice. By contrast, Andrew Batt-Rawden’s Out of the Deep is perhaps the least assured, but that’s not to say it’s any less effective. Batt-Rawden comes to the text as an outsider, a non-believer, and a contemporary sound artist living in a relentlessly chilling modern world. As such, he strips away the comforting homophonies and predictable patterns, winding long, tense, strung out melodies and frantic cries into a strange, beautiful and deeply personal new thing... Of course, none of this could work without the performers. The Song Company, along with guests Tobias Cole, Richard Butler, Jessica O’Donoghue, Neal Peres Da Costa, and Daniel Yeadon, dive fearlessly into new musical realms and deal with the intricacies of Bach with commitment and intelligence. Meanwhile, Antony Pitts directs with a calm, ‘less is more’ approach to the mind-boggling complexities, exuding faith in the skill and wisdom of his extraordinary team of musicians.” (Harriet Cunningham)

on Song Company’s Arvo Pärt Passio from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

St Mary’s Passion

In a bold collaboration The Song Company, the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral and Omega Ensemble have come together to perform Arvo Pärt’s Passio, his setting of the St John Passion... this was a mesmerising performance which felt much shorter than its 75 minute duration. The Evangelist Quartet — The Song Company’s Richard Black, Mark Donnelly, Anna Fraser and Susannah Lawergren — carried the narrative, along with the quartet of orchestral instruments... After a tentative start, they tuned in to the tintinnabuli with an impressive consistency. Nothing stuck out. Nothing jarred. It was just enduringly fascinating. In the role of Jesus, Andrew O’Connor, The Song Company’s resident bass, had few words, but the scoring and his rich, even tone made every line count. As Pilate, Richard Butler, who is Principal Lay Clerk at St Mary’s, cut through the crowd with his crisp, acid responses. Meanwhile, the contrast between the well-drilled ranks of the Choir of St Mary’s and the blood-curdling sound they made as they yelled “Crucify” was one of the dramatic coups of the evening... The four members of the Omega Ensemble found their way through the labyrinthine score with unfussy style, and David Drury drew power and glory and strangeness out of the cathedral’s organ... Congratulations are due to everyone who made this happen... Congratulations in particular on the work of The Song Company’s Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, not just in holding the performance together but also for his specialist knowledge, intricate understanding, and commitment to bringing this work to Australia.” (Harriet Cunningham)

on Song Company’s Accidental Plans from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

The Impossible Cor

There’s not much that can defeat The Song Company. This tight knit group can sing, act and, most important, think their way around pretty much anything you can throw at them... The performances are, as you’d expect from The Song Company, wild and wonderful. They’re all fine singers but, more than that, they are sound artists. Something like Steve Reich’s ‘voicetruments’. Plus they occupy the stage with a highly tuned awareness of the interplay between themselves and the audience. No shy genius hiding behind a score here. It makes for a very intense experience: the music is beautiful but discombobulating, nothing is predictable, and the threat of audience participation hangs in the air. You’re never quite sure whether you are being entertained, educated or are in fact the subject of a covert scientific experiment. As a way of portraying this curious artist I found it superbly effective... We knew we were in safe hands, safe voices, with The Song Company. I did, however get glimpses into Cardew’s relentless questioning, his moments of High Nihilism, and it was a scary place. Scary but necessary, because asking questions is what art is all about, and that’s why The Song Company is one of the bravest ensembles around.” (Harriet Cunningham)

on Lully Lulla (November-December 2017 carols concert)

Six songsters – three male, three female – consort in concert to present Christmas carolling as a medieval nativity narrative in The Song Company’s swansong for this year, Lully Lulla... An edifying antidote to the mush and slush of Carols by Candlelight.

on Song Company’s Forward & Bach from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

Pitts gives Bach a shake-up

It’s risky business mixing very old music, especially when it’s Bach’s, with very new. It’s even riskier having the audacity to write new music settings for Martin Luther’s 500-year-old words, previously set by masters like Bach. But in a recital that told a story of rising out of the depths, finding friends, building a mighty fortress and, finally answering the call home to heaven, Australian [British] musician, conductor and composer, Antony Pitts, and his Song Company gave the risk a pretty solid shake up. In a program of chorales and hymn settings by Australian composers, Paul Stanhope, Andrew Batt-Rawden, Ella Macens, Brett McKern, and Matthew Hindson, alongside English composers Jeremy Thurlow and Paul Ritchie, and juxtaposed to music by Luther and Bach, the Song Company gave a performance of exquisite balance, tonal quality and expression. Such was the atmosphere and marvellous music-making of this group, the hushed audience barely dared even to breathe. But the audience itself did get a chance to sing, in the final verse of... Luther’s... well-known hymn, “A Mighty Fortress”. The rhythm was slightly different to that used today, but the tune was familiar and audience sang it with gusto......A highlight was the plainchant, Veni Redemptor Gentium, performed by the group’s two tenors, standing on either side of the stage. Even placed so far apart they achieved extraordinary balance and timing with a tone that floated through and filled the cavernous space of Wesley Uniting Church. It was a most moving performance. Bach had the last say, with his motet Komm, Jesu, komm. It was a farewell, even a good riddance, to the world, the protagonist’s work completed. But it was good riddance from neither the Song Company nor the audience. The Song Company gave a very fine recital. Four curtain calls prove it.” (Clinton White)

on Song Company’s Round Robin programme, part of Taking Flight - An International Showcase at the 2017 Canberra International Music Festival

Magic amid the distracting airport melee

The Song Company wisely encouraged their audience to gather around them as they stood in a circle to perform some stunning vocal pyrotechnics, delighting with a lovely arrangement of “Sakura, Sakura”, followed by compositions by Arvo Part, William Cornysh, Adrian Self and Antony Pitts.” (Bill Stephens)

on Song Company at the 2017 Canberra International Music Festival

Exceptional performances gild enjoyable concert

Questions were asked. There was Thomas Tallis’ song, Why fum’th in sight?. There were lots in Andrew Ford’s Waiting for the Barbarians, like “[Why do] politicians sit there and do nothing?”. Handel’s question, “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?” was posed. And they all were linked across six centuries. Thomas Tallis’s song got a very finely controlled, tuned, and balanced rendition by The Song Company, The Australian Voices, and Luminescence Chamber Singers, singing a cappella and very ably conducted by The Song Company’s Artistic Director, Antony Pitts. It was so good it morphed seamlessly from 16th century Tallis to Ford’s complex and at times atonal song, an early 20th century Greek poem about the people capitulating to the barbarians, translated, modernised, and set to 21st century music.” (Clinton White)

on Song Company’s Sticks & Stones from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

A concert of exceptional beauty

The confluence of two quite different vocal traditions produced a concert of exceptional beauty in the austere surroundings of the Wesley Church in Barton. The Song Company, singers very much in the western style of harmony and polyphony, were joined by Palestinian singer Oday Al Khatib from a contrasting tradition of modal melody and rhythm... The concert was a mix of renaissance and baroque church music by Henry Purcell, Thomas Tallis and Gregorio Allegri interspersed with songs in Arabic by Oday al Khatib... The opening Purcell motet was sung with the choir off to the side in the choir stalls, out of sight of the audience in the nave. They moved to the stage for another short work by Tallis followed by Al Khatib entering from the back singing solo. Simple but effective theatrics and superb singing. The two major western works were Tallis’ The Lamentations of Jeremiah and the well-known Miserere by Allegri. The Lamentations were split into two, separated by two Palestinian songs and a total joy to hear... He [Oday Al Khatib] is one of those singers who you feel simply privileged to have heard and a concert that will linger in the memory.” (Graham McDonald)

on Song Company’s Dreamers of the Day from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

Song Company’s Dreamers of the Day was non-stop entertainment

The concert, or maybe a more accurate description, the entertainment Dreamers of the Day presented by The Song Company is a 75 minute near non-stop journey through bits and pieces of music from Handel and Bach to the present day... The longest work... was Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement by the musical director of The Song Company, Antony Pitts. A tape recording with pianos, percussion and additional voices created a foundation on which he could float his dramatic ideas Pitts wrote vocal lines as diverse as Schoenbergesque Sprechstimme to simple church hymn-like melodic fragments to convey his musical argument. It seems that he is steeped in many musical traditions from period English music of the 1920’s and 1930’s to the music of Philip Glass and the ‘soundtrack’ had a relentless minimalist feel to it. Pitts was most fortunate to have soprano Anna Fraser as the protagonist in this work. She was magnificent vocally and in the conveying of the dramatic pathos embedded in the text of the work. Indeed, the other Song Company performers in this current production, Alexandria Siegers, Robert Macfarlane, and Andrew O’Connor brought great enthusiasm and deep musicality to this work...” (Alan Holley)

on Song Company’s Accidental Plans from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

engaged the audience from beginning to end” “Listening to The Song Company in the Yellow House, Potts Point was for many in the audience a trip back in time... Short works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, John Cage and William Walton were interspersed with snippets of Cardew’s music – mostly simple in approach and also, mostly political in content. His most known works are meant to be approachable by both performers and audience... Singing the ‘role’ of Cardew baritone Mark Donnelly was suitably sensitive and at times dramatic. He brought a gravitas to the character that led the audience into the world of this disturbed individual... All the singers gave finely tuned performances – crystal clear soprano lines from Anna Fraser and Susannah Lawergren were beautifully matched by the insightful singing of Richard Black and Andrew O’Connor. Artistic director Antony Pitts skilfully contributed from the electric keyboard – such a ‘60’s and ‘70’s instrument.” (Alan Holley) HUNTER PROFESSIONAL ARTS July/August 2016 on The Song Company’s A Strange Eventful History: “The Song Company’s Shakespearean offering at the Conservatorium last month was an epic. The brilliant bonding of Shakespearean quotations matched with music evocative of the era created an eloquent and inspiring experience. This was achieved by using the seven ages of man as the link and balance for the narrator, Gary Watt, an English Shakespearean actor who came especially for this Song Company series. Antony Pitts, the new Artistic Director of the Song Company, has delivered a concert to be long remembered in the best tradition of this illustrious a cappella group. Even the program was a work of art produced on a sepia long sheet in the manner of the times.

on Accidental Plans (The Song Company, 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

engaged the audience from beginning to end

on Accidental Plans (The Song Company, 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

Listening to The Song Company in the Yellow House, Potts Point was for many in the audience a trip back in time... Short works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, John Cage and William Walton were interspersed with snippets of Cardew’s music – mostly simple in approach and also, mostly political in content. His most known works are meant to be approachable by both performers and audience... Singing the ‘role’ of Cardew baritone Mark Donnelly was suitably sensitive and at times dramatic. He brought a gravitas to the character that led the audience into the world of this disturbed individual... All the singers gave finely tuned performances – crystal clear soprano lines from Anna Fraser and Susannah Lawergren were beautifully matched by the insightful singing of Richard Black and Andrew O’Connor. Artistic Director Antony Pitts skilfully contributed from the electric keyboard – such a ’60’s and ’70’s instrument.

on Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement (The Song Company’s Dreamers of the Day, 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

Song Company’s Dreamers of the Day was non-stop entertainment

on Why restless, why cast down? commissioned for the Choir of New College Oxford’s Like as the Hart album

A collection of settings of Psalm 42 in various translations curated by Catherine Alette Clover, author of New College-themed novel The Templar’s Garden... Antony Pitts’s strophic Why restless, why cast down? is a fascinating neo-hymnic Rubik’s cube of a piece...” (Andrew Mellor)

on Missa Unitatis album

This is a mesmerizing work that folds time in on itself, beautifully blending old and new... [for] the centuries-old Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady (whose members included Hieronymus Bosch), Antony Pitts created a double-choir version of his Missa Unitatis (the work can be performed by a single or double choir). On this superb recording, Cappella Pratensis are joined by the Nederlands Kamerkoor under conductor Stephen Layton. The music, just for voices, sounds both ancient and modern, and speaks powerfully to the 21st-century listener.

on Song Company at the 2017 Canberra International Music Festival

The concert opened with great promise: choristers processing down the centre aisle of the Fitters’ Workshop, pausing at various points to sing a verse by Thomas Tallis. The Tallis text – “Why fum’th in sight?” – hoisted a war-torn banner proclaiming the thesis of this extraordinary programme: perplexity and confusion at the age-old conundrum – why do the nations continue to rage so furiously together? Moving onto the stage, the choristers embarked on an affecting piece by Andrew Ford, Waiting for the Barbarians, to a very conflict-driven text by CP Cavafy. Its multiple lines and inner voices were delivered with persuasive panache by the choristers and the new director of The Song Company, Antony Pitts...” (Vincent Plush)

on Song Company’s Accidental Plans from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

The Song Company delivers a strange yet compelling ‘kind-of-opera’ about an unusual musical life.

Against the blank white walls of the Yellow House, The Song Company – artists dressed in white – performed a preview of Accidental Plans, a musical journey through the life, work and death of one of the stranger musical personalities of the 20th century, English composer Cornelius Cardew. The ‘kind-of-opera’ was created with guest artist designer and writer Adrian Self. The story is told by five singers – led by Artistic Director Antony Pitts from the keyboard – through a series of chapters mingling Cardew’s words and works with those of other composers, and it begins with Cardew’s death... Baritone Mark Donnelly is Cornelius Cardew, emerging periodically from the ensemble’s sound as soloist and protagonist with a penetrating timbre... The Song Company’s vocal flexibility and inventiveness is on display throughout the performance – a particular highlight was a kind of rhythmic riffing on philosophers, drawing attention to the textural sound of the names Lichtenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida. Accidental Plans presents the fascinating life of a man who wanders through many significant musical and political movements of the 20th century, who seems to cling desperately to the next ideology (or father figure?) before becoming disenchanted and moving on...” (Angus McPherson)

on Accidental Plans (The Song Company, 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

The Song Company delivers a strange yet compelling ‘kind-of-opera’ about an unusual musical life.

on Missa Unitatis album

Pitts’s mass is woven like a scarlet thread through this album. That takes a bit of getting used to, but there is much to be said for this choice. It is thus a symbol of the interwovenness of the pieces and the participating choirs. With the five movements of the Missa Unitatis we were, of course, totally in awe in our [earlier] review about the concert. This renewed acquaintance, however, makes it even clearer what a beautiful and timeless piece Pitts has written, and above all how wonderfully it is sung here by the two choirs and how well the sounds of both ensembles match.” [translation] “Pitts’ mis is als een rode draad door dit album verweven. Dat is wel even wennen maar er is veel te zeggen voor deze keuze. Het is zo een symbool van de onderlinge verwevenheid van de stukken en de deelnemende koren. Bij het vijfdelige Missa Unitatis stonden we natuurlijk reeds uitgebreid stil in de recensie naar aanleiding van het concert. Deze hernieuwde kennismaking maakt echter nog duidelijker wat een prachtig en ook tijdloos stuk Pitts schreef en bovenal hoe geweldig hier gezongen wordt door de twee koren en hoe goed de klanken van de beide ensembles op elkaar aansluiten.

on Song Company’s Sticks & Stones from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

Two expressions of optimism, thinly connected by more than 70 years of conflict, emerged from last week’s music... The Song Company under Artistic Director Antony Pitts began their concert in the Yellow House singing from a downstairs gallery giving their blooming clarity and balance in Purcell’s Remember not, Lord, our offences, an edge of lonely distance that set the tone for the texts of exile that followed. In Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam’s If the sun drowns to a poetic text by Ahmed Fouad Negm, and in love songs based on medieval texts, Oday Al Khatib’s voice had an attractive silvery edge that rose at peak moments to touching iridescent intensity. Rahil / Bordeaux and Sodfa by Ramzi Aburdewan, who founded the Al Kamandjati music school in Ramallah where Oday studied, provided mellifluous opportunities for collaboration between Oday and the Company, while the contrapuntal richness of Tallis’s Lamentations and his glorious Suscipe quaeso, Domine were sung with polyphony of lucid vividness. The concert ended with a version of Allegri’s Miserere in which the famous top C - one of the most popular misreadings in the history of music - was restored to something plausibly close to the original performance convention.” (Peter McCallum)

on Song Company’s Accidental Plans from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

Maxim Vengerov and Accidental Plans reviews: Two sides to the classical canon

Season openers by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Song Company brought canonical works of Western classical music and 1960s counter-cultural revolution into thought provoking juxtaposition last week... The Song Company by contrast, set out to smash the social contract (to borrow the title of one song) that allows art music its protected aesthetic space in a neo-liberal world. Their program, Accidental Plans under artistic director Antony Pitts, with guest artist Adrian Self, explored the stylistic development of English composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music was introduced to Sydney in the 1970s by the late David Ahern. Cardew’s progress from Canterbury Cathedral choirboy, to avant-garde disciple of Stockhausen, to founder of the Scratch Orchestra, a vehicle for free creative improvisation for musicians and non-musicians, to Maoist and post-Maoist revolutionary is chronicled in an evening that is engaging, intriguing and provoking. Though Cardew would have rejected such a musical narrative around his life, the Song Company wove a thought-provoking tale through the demanding complexity of Stockhausen, the harmonic richness of Miles Davis and the anarchy of Cage and Cardew.” (Peter McCallum)

on Accidental Plans (The Song Company, 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites) – antecedent work for The Process, op.284

Maxim Vengerov and Accidental Plans reviews: Two sides to the classical canon

on Accidental Plans (concert program featuring music of Cornelius Cardew)

Their program, Accidental Plans under artistic director Antony Pitts, with guest artist Adrian Self, explored the stylistic development of English composer Cornelius Cardew... in an evening that is engaging, intriguing and provoking.

on The Song Company (general profile of ensemble under Pitts’s direction)

Just their six amazingly agile and skilful voices can collectively handle anything their Artistic Director – conductor and composer Antony Pitts – puts on their music stands, and that’s often some of the most challenging and interesting classical and contemporary concert music you’ll ever hear performed live.

on Song Company’s Dreamers of the Day from the 2017 season The Attraction of Opposites

One of Australia’s premier choral ensembles present an eclectic program that ranges from the Baroque to Steve Reich

If listening to a big choir singing Handel is like taking your ears on scenic bus trip, a concert by The Song Company is more like a curated jaunt around the CBD in a Ferrari. Just their six amazingly agile and skilful voices can collectively handle anything their Artistic Director – conductor and composer Antony Pitts – puts on their music stands, and that’s often some of the most challenging and interesting classical and contemporary concert music you’ll ever hear performed live. This line-up – spanning from Handel’s 1727 coronation anthem to Steve Reich’s 1972 Clapping Music – seems to aim at a nothing less than a transcendental experience for the listener.

on Bach & Forward (February 2016 concert)

What a fascinating program. The Song Company, under the musical direction of their new leader Antony Pitts, sang three Bach motets alongside choral music from the 19th century which specifically reflected Bach’s influence... The performance of such a program was a tour de force.

on Song Company’s In Tempore Paschali

From the first intake of breath the exquisite vocal machine of Song Company overawed

I was yet again overawed by the exquisite vocal machine that is Song Company. If the ensemble was a car, it definitely would be a Ferrari! As In Tempore Paschali unfolded, exploring the Easter story with music old and new, the audience were enchanted and seduced by the possibilities of the voice – at once reverent, distant, sombre, joyful and spiritual. The ‘filigree detail of each individual vocal part’ was brought alive by Susannah Lawergren, Anna Fraser, Hannah Fraser, Richard Black, Mark Donnelly and Andrew O’Connor....Artistic Director Antony Pitts created a concert in three parts exploring the subjects of Tomb, Hades and Throne. Into this musical setting was interwoven some of the most beautiful, intricate and intimate hymns, psalms, a capella Mass parts, plainchants and motets. Clever artistic direction placed Australian composers in amongst the ancient greats – I particularly loved the way Alice Chance’s stunning Fiat Lux by the three glamorous female singers of Song Company, followed a Credo by ‘Anonymous’ (1469) for the four male voices, including Antony Pitts himself. The intimate and crisp acoustics of the Independent Theatre were perfect for a concert of such beauty and spirituality. Extensive, educative and detailed program notes explained the historic musical journey we were on and the definition of polyphony – ‘the combination of apparently independent voice parts into a harmonious whole’, adding it was ‘one of the noblest inventions of the human mind’. A big claim, but in the hands of Song Company, we were true believers!” (Lliane Clarke)

on A Strange Eventful History (July-August 2016 concert, Song Company Shakespeare series)

The Song Company’s Shakespearean offering at the Conservatorium last month was an epic... Antony Pitts, the new Artistic Director of The Song Company, has delivered a concert to be long remembered in the best tradition of this illustrious a cappella group.

on Song Company’s In Tempore Paschali

A three-part polyphonic soothing of the soul for Easter

Given the holy location, the superb singing and the well thought out programme, it was quite a success. The concert was divided into three parts, representing three aspects of Easter: Tomb, Hades and Throne. The sections ran onto one another without applause, maintaining the sense of gravitas and mystery, connected only by a few thespian readings of poems by polymath Pitts himself. Each section incorporated a movement from Monteverdi’s Missa In illo tempore, using and exploring themes and motifs from works by Gombert which in turn featured in the programme. Each section also worked in Thou wast present as on this day from Pitts’ Requiem for the Time of the End. The unifying element was the fluidity of time, the connection between past, present and future and, of course, the musical thread of polyphony that can arouse a sense of the eternal in the hands of a dexterous composer. The singing throughout was precise and unforced, the vocalists taking advantage of the Crypt’s natural amplification. Pitts’s direction from within a circular arrangement ensured a tight relationship between vocalists, as well a democracy of the six singers...” (Andrew Luboski) SYDNEY MORNING HERALD Feburary 2016 on The Song Company’s Bach & Forward: Antony Pitts delivers perfect new chapter “...As composer, conductor and new artistic director of The Song Company Antony Pitts explains, there is something reassuringly solid about Bach’s music. His scores are complex and technically challenging, but they unfurl with a sense of unbending certainty. Have faith and it will all work out in the end. Perhaps this is why the beginning of this, the ensemble’s first concert in 2016, has proved so delicious. One voice, gradually joined by other voices from unseen figures around the hall, singing an unadorned melody. From silence, to one, to many, it felt like the perfect opening to a new chapter......One of the highlights was Brahms’ Warum ist das Licht gegeben, an intensely emotional, harmonically volatile series of verses, in which the eight voices blended with mahogany warmth......However, the main event was Bach, and Pitts drew a fastidious, cogent and very beautiful performance of three motets from these fine performers. This is virtuoso ensemble singing: eight individual voices, all moving independently, often in different directions, at speed and at the extremes of the singers’ registers and dynamic ranges. It’s hard to imagine a better performance......The new chapter reads well.” (Harriet Cunningham) AUSTRALIAN STAGE Feburary 2016 on The Song Company’s Bach & Forward: “...What a fascinating program. The Song Company, under the musical direction of their new leader Antony Pitts, sang three Bach motets alongside choral music from the 19th century which specifically reflected Bach’s influence... this was seriously interesting programming... This was one of two extraordinary feats in this concert; the other being a Swingle-singers like rendering by the singers of the eight-part Contrapunctus from The Art of Fugue, a reminder the staggering virtuosity of which the Song Company is capable... The performance of such a program was a tour de force, showing us once again what a brilliant outfit the Song Company is, and whetting the appetite for further concerts under their new director. What will they think of next?” (Nicholas Routley)

on Thou wast present as on this day (The Song Company’s In Tempore Paschali concert)

A three-part polyphonic soothing of the soul for Easter

on Song Company’s performance with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Metropolis New Music Festival 2016’s Cityscapes

For their second Metropolis concert, the MSO teamed up with The Song Company to take us from sweeping urban vistas right down into the streets of renaissance Paris and London... With the MSO ranged expectantly on stage, The Song Company burst into Clément Janequin’s sixteenth-century setting of Parisian street cries. Singing from the gallery high above the audience, the cries of Paris rang out with an eerie clarity, like ghosts haunting the MRC. This haunting effect was even stronger in Orlando Gibbons’ The Cryes of London as the ensemble hummed a viol consort accompaniment. Weaving street cries into polyphonic music was a popular renaissance trope suggesting an awareness of the correlation between the multiple independent lines of polyphonic music and renaissance rationality and individualism. The cries are also a snapshot of the unique problems of urban life, including how to feed such a large concentration of people and how to control the rats and mice that accompany people wherever they go. Luciano Berio updated the trope with atonal polyphony in his The Cries of London in 1974. The Song Company’s lucid and nuanced performance of this modern masterpiece was by far the highlight of the evening...” (Matthew Lorenzon)

on Song Company’s performance with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Metropolis New Music Festival 2016’s Cityscapes

Sydney’s The Song Company interleaved this Americana with Jannequin​’s mid-Renaissance Les cris de Paris, Gibbons’ Jacobean-era The Cryes of London, and was responsible for the night’s real new music: Berio’s 40-year-old update Cries of London. The group, expanded to eight voices under new director Antony Pitts, gave character-rich interpretations of all three a cappella works but excelled in the Berio: unflappably fluent, sensibly shading in their dynamics, spellbindingly confident in negotiating the composer’s rasping dissonances.” (Clive O’Connell)

on Song Company’s In Tempore Paschali

The Song Company review: a concert of rare and transcendent beauty

it was Monteverdi’s Missa In illo tempore and Gombert’s motet that formed the central thread of the three parts of The Song Company’s radiant presentation in the acoustically miraculous crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral under their new artistic director, Antony Pitts. Standing in a circle on the terrazzo floor under the central vault, the building amplified and echoed the interweaving lines with iridescent resonance, building to a peak of intensity in the elaborate counterpoint that closes the Gloria and Credo of the mass that was quite magical... Pitts’ music expanded classic polyphonic vocal textures to incorporate modern harmonies within a broadly consonant framework and an original and sensitive understanding of the voice. As new director, Pitts continues and honours The Song Company’s special expertise in the glories of the Renaissance under previous director Roland Peelman, while also bringing a distinct and cogent personal perspective. This was a concert of rare and transcendent beauty.” (Peter McCallum) on In Memoriam (DELPHIAN DCD34146): “Here is a lasting memorial in music to the late director of music at King’s College London, and of St Mary’s Bourne Street, David Trendell, who died suddenly in 2014. Under the direction of then acting director of music Gareth Wilson, the 30-strong choir sings with assured intonation and a controlled vibrancy which brings alive the many contemporary works featured here (notably by Francis Pott, Antony Pitts, Matthew Martin, Francis Grier), framed by Byrd, Lhéritier, Clemens non Papa and Palestrina... For quality of performance and diversity of repertoire, this is an outstanding disc.” (Matthew Power)

on The Song Company concert (three motets) - reviewed under headline “Antony Pitts delivers perfect new chapter”

Pitts drew a fastidious, cogent and very beautiful performance of three motets from these fine performers... It’s hard to imagine a better performance.

on The Song Company Renaissance program - reviewed under headline “a concert of rare and transcendent beauty”

As new director, Pitts continues and honours The Song Company’s special expertise in the glories of the Renaissance under previous director Roland Peelman, while also bringing a distinct and cogent personal perspective.

on Bach & Forward (February 2016 concert)

As composer, conductor and new artistic director of The Song Company Antony Pitts explains, there is something reassuringly solid about Bach’s music... Pitts drew a fastidious, cogent and very beautiful performance of three motets from these fine performers. This is virtuoso ensemble singing... It’s hard to imagine a better performance... The new chapter reads well.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS #1 album of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Naxos

8.555860):

Daunted by contemporary music? Look no further...Time is often the best judgement of art’s longevity; however much the critics heap adulation of a new play, book or piece of music, if it doesn’t start a life there and then, its future can’t be guaranteed. The history of music is littered with pieces that were heard just once – and have never seen the light of day since. Here’s a list of 10 pieces, composed since 1982, that have established a hold on the repertoire and in some cases notched up a fair number of recordings. It’s not exhaustive, but it does speak eloquently of what ignites public appreciation

on music from the Eton Choirbook

making the quality offered here on a par with Christophers, and with the added bonus of a first recording (Kellyk’s Magnificat) and the presence of the first ever created “passion” complete with narration), that of Richard Davy’s Matthew. The performances are first rate, and the Church of St. Alban’s captured very well in a recording that is a sterling addition to any Renaissance collection, and also makes a fine introduction to the music of the Eton composers...” (Steven Ritter)

on There is a green hill part of Hymns and Songs of the Church

There is a green hill far away should be in every high school choral library. It is a wonderful teaching resource for the late Renaissance style even though it is newly composed. Short and strophic, slow moving and heartfelt, use this piece early in the school year. It will help your students learn to sing in harmony with beautiful phrasing...” (Jack Senzig) FANFARE January/February 2013 on music from the Eton Choirbook, part of Milestones of Western Music: “...Pitts has shown a sensitivity to the range of early music that places him among the leading interpreters. Collectors will want this just for the Kellyk work, but it stands on its own as a single disc of this repertoire....” (J. F. Weber)

on Music from the Eton Choirbook (Naxos recording) – Kellyk Magnificat

Pitts has shown a sensitivity to the range of early music that places him among the leading interpreters. Collectors will want this just for the Kellyk work, but it stands on its own as a single disc of this repertoire.

on music from the Eton Choirbook

An Imposing English Board: Fabrice Fitch Applauds Those Who Have Recorded Music from the Extraordinary Storehouse of Early English Polyphony That Is the Eton Choirbook... “...Each of the remaining recordings listed here, all issued in the last four years, offers something distinctive, as though the Eton discography were entering a mature phase: the groundwork laid, these ensembles stamp the music with their own approach......Perhaps the most enterprising selection of the most recent crop comes from TONUS PEREGRINUS. Their trick of alternating lower-and higher-voiced choirs for the verses of William, Monk of Stratford’s Magnificat, is a felicitous idea, injecting a note of dynamism into what was a rather stodgy piece in The Sixteen’s box-set. In the concluding verse, the two choirs combine like organ stops - a wonderful sound. It’s by no means impossible that such an approach may have been taken at the time the piece was written, at least on occasion. Theirs is the only available reading of Davy’s setting of the Passion, a work of more than historical interest in which psalmist and choir alternate in the manner memorialised much later by Schutz. The way in which this segues into Browne’s Stabat mater (whose text is an extension of the Passion story) is a deft piece of programming...” (Fabrice Fitch)

on St Pancras Canticles, op.171 (Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis) - LFCCM’s first commission and first BBC Radio 3 broadcast

Our first commission was a Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis by Antony Pitts, which we sang on the first LFCCM broadcast on Radio 3 in 2004 – a service which celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Martyrdom of St Pancras. Other works in that service were Francis Pott’s The Souls of the Righteous and Tarik O’Regan’s Locus iste. It was a fairly hair-raising experience, with a scratch choir and one rehearsal for the service, and we didn’t finish the run-though until eight minutes before the service went live!

on double album Jerusalem-Yerushalayim (1EMJ2O) - the world premiere recording of the oratorio-musical Jerusalem-Yerushalayim

I am not alone among my MusicWeb colleagues in enjoying Pitts’ own music and the performances by his group TONUS PEREGRINUS of his music and that of others; the new release is equally fine... I was able to listen only to the mp3 version...but the sound there is very good indeed, so the lossless versions should be stunning. In addition to the pdf booklet which comes with the download, a separate 52-page souvenir booklet is available, currently reduced from £5.00...” (Brian Wilson)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

This sampler by TONUS PEREGRINUS is on a par with the best of previous recordings and, by accident or design, involves relatively little duplication with those previous recordings. Unless you insist on boys’ voices rather than those of women, this mixed-voice choir deserves your surely delighted attention. We get to hear such fascinating works as Davy’s St. Matthew Passion - or what remains of it, the opening pages being amongst the material lost. Its treatment of its text is subtle and expressive. The sheer beauty of much of its polyphonic writing is notable. Wylkynson’s extraordinary 13-part canonic setting of the Apostle’s Creed is also memorable. Other rare delights include Browne’s powerfully expressive Stabat mater, simultaneously redolent of the affective spirituality of the middle ages and, at moments seeming to anticipate a kind of madrigalesque word-painting. Kellyk’s beautiful Magnificat is one of the 24 Magnificats included in this particular choir book. It makes one wonder how much more lovely and profound music by this composer we have lost... the alternation of choirs of high and low voices works very well. At every turn these are fine performances, excellently recorded by Geoff Miles using new, experimental microphones with happy results... Almost without exception the choices made by Pitts and his choir are thoroughly satisfying...” (Glyn Pursglove) AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, January/February 2013 American Record Guide Critic’s Choice on music from the Eton Choirbook: “...performances leave nothing to be desired in technical polish or stylistic poise. They employ expressive dynamic contrasts, but not to the point of subjective excess. Admirers of this repertory will not be disappointed... The recorded sound is remarkably clear and warm, thanks to a pair of experimental microphones devised by recording engineer Geoff Miles to reduce what he calls “intermodulation”, a non-harmonic distortion in high resolution recording that produces a hard or glassy tone. On the evidence of this recording, he is on the right track.” (Bill Gatens)

on world premiere of They shall awake

Each half of the programme concluded with a first performance. I’ve heard some of Antony Pitts’ music previously on CD, including a disc devoted to some of his choral music ( review ) so I was keen to hear this latest piece. Apparently They shall awake forms an appendix to Pitts’ Requiem which was inspired by the death of Alexander Litvinenko. It was poignant then, if coincidental, that as I was driving to the concert I heard on the BBC News that the British government had just declined to hold a public enquiry into the circumstances surrounding Litvinenko’s murder in 2006. In this piece Pitts sets words from a sermon preached by John Donne in 1627/8: part of this wonderful text was also used by William Harris in his fine anthem Bring us O Lord God. Pitts responds to the image-rich words with very intense music. The choral textures are rich and full and the writing often includes long melodic lines, especially for the sopranos. The harmonic language is adventurous yet the music is always accessible despite the complex tonality. The piece followed immediately after Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin so the semi chorus was once again positioned in the gallery, to excellent effect. This is an arresting and impressive piece that grabbed and held my attention. The composer, who was present, was clearly delighted by the performance...” (John Quinn)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

sung brilliantly on this new recording by the vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS conducted by Antony Pitts... This recording by TONUS PEREGRINUS moves to the top of my list of favorites. There are some familiar works on the recording, like John Browne’s superb six-part Stabat Mater, but few performances match the intensity of this one by TONUS PEREGRINUS... The performances by TONUS PEREGRINUS are state-of-the-art... The sound quality is a story unto itself. Recording engineer Geoff Miles used experimental microphones that cloud distortion... and results in a recording of striking immediacy and clarity. This is as fine an album of Renaissance polyphony as I’ve heard in a while...” (Craig Zeichner)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

These performances are commendable, displaying unearthly breath control in the long phrases of works such as Kellyk’s Magnificat, and great clarity of texture in the dense counterpoint...” (Anthony Pryor) ALLMUSIC August 2012 Editor’s Choice on music from the Eton Choirbook: “This exemplary album by the British chamber choir TONUS PEREGRINUS, led by its founder Antony Pitts, includes seven works of Renaissance polyphony and plainchant from the surviving 64 pieces from the Eton Choirbook, which dates from around 1500. It’s a mixed ensemble rather than the choir of men and boys that would have originally sung this music, but this is such an exceptionally fine performance that anyone who loves this repertoire, apart from the most diehard purist, is likely to be delighted with the chaste purity, expressiveness, and interpretive choices of TONUS PEREGRINUS... The choices are convincing and add considerably to the warmth and appeal of album... Naxos’ engineers use experimental recording technology that beautifully captures and differentiates various polyphonic lines with unusual clarity and a clean, balanced blend.” (Stephen Eddins)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

The subtle, non-treble-dominated approach taken by TONUS PEREGRINUS gladdens the heart. In a wonderful programme... they radiate delight in the music with exemplary accuracy and delicacy of interpretation.” (Rebecca Tavener)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

Connoisseur’s Choice” (David Mellor) on music from the Eton Choirbook: “...even collectors who have recordings of this repertoire will want to hear their unique application of scholarship to the questions of cross-relations and unwritten accidentals, which give these performances a piquancy missing from some of the competition.” (Steve Holtje)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

this astounding Naxos recording... The music is richly captivating, breathtaking and inspirational... Acoustics are phenomenal... It’s as though one is being lifted up to the heavens! Bravo, beautiful and brilliant!” (Christie Grimstad) MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL August 2012 Bargain of the Month on music from the Eton Choirbook: “...I wasn’t expecting to find any revelations here. I was wrong: in the booklet Antony Pitts writes ‘This recording is perhaps the jewel in the crown of our Naxos series of ‘milestones of Western Music’.’ Omit the ‘perhaps’ and I agree; this is superb, and the performances and recording do the music full justice...” (Brian Wilson)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

The fluency, rapt reverence and sheer beauties of these pieces are conveyed here by the vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS with subtlety of texture and expression, opening our ears to some real glories of Tudor church music...” (Geoffrey Norris)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

TONUS PEREGRINUS’s thirteen singers include the pick of vocalists working in this field of music... the singing being of excellent technical quality in a beautifully balanced recording.” (David Denton) BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE on Alpha & Omega: “Antony Pitts and Tonus Peregrinus are probably best known for their series of excellent early music recordings for Naxos, showcasing such seminal figures as Léonin, Perotin, Adam de la Halle and Dunstaple; but with Hyperion they have embarked on a programme of recording works by Pitts himself, and Alpha and Omega is a companion album to Seven Letters (2005). Embracing both large public works (the a cappella coda for an oratorio, Jerusalem-Yerushalayim commissioned for a concert hall in Israel) and intimate occasions (the Sanctus and Benedictus were written for the silver wedding of Pitts’s parents), all the pieces here confirm the composer’s command of the entire history of choral music. The eight voices of Tonus Peregrinus take the range of harmonic environments, sinuous melodies and complex textures in their stride. The beauty of the choir’s sound is as impressive as its technical accomplishment, doing full justice to their director’s fascinating, inventive compositions.” (Barry Witherden) CHURCH TIMES 2012 on Bach and the Art of Bee-keeping: “Gratitude was my overwhelming emotion, too, on hearing Radio 3’s Sunday Feature: Bach and the Art of Bee-keeping, because it demonstrates how the BBC can still find space for the eccentric and ambitious. Antony Pitts is well known both as a com­poser and radio producer, and this programme demonstrated again his fascination with musical forms and their correspondence with theo­logical precepts. The programme began with a boy in conversation with a bee-keeper. The connection with Bach came with a poem by Charles Tomlinson, which speculates about how Bach might have conceptualised his music had he been a bee-keeper: “All those notes Suspended above the other In the air of his ear”. We were treated to miniature essays on everything from Big Bang theory to double-leading-note ca­dences to quantum mechanics...” (Edward Wickham)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

the desirable qualities of the human voice remain as they have been for centuries: purity, accuracy, high tonal quality, and the ability to subsume oneself into the lyrics. Music from the Eton Choirbook has all these characteristics in excellent performances of five-century-old works taken from a manuscript found in Eton College Chapel. The composers are little known today, if at all: Walter Lambe, Richard Davy, John Browne, Hugh Kellyk, Robert Wylkynson and William, Monk of Stratford. And the works, one and all, are on religious themes that are presented with restrained intensity and a deep sense of belief, from Davy’s St Matthew Passion to Browne’s Stabat mater and Kellyk’s Magnificat, which here receives its première recording. But what gives this Naxos CD its communicative power, even in our more secular time, is the tonal richness and beautiful ensemble work of TONUS PEREGRINUS under Antony Pitts. Written for a much earlier age, these pieces continue to have a good deal to say to ours.

on music from the Eton Choirbook

Fascinating music...vibrant and alive... Eton has produced many prime ministers, but just one Choirbook.” (Robert Anderson)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

A very rewarding compilation of music from ‘one of the greatest surviving glories of pre-reformation England’. Music for 4 parts to an amazing 13 in Wylkynson’s Jesus autem transiens/Credo in Deum. Excellent annotation by Antony Pitts, and superbly recorded with Geoff Miles’ special “elephant ears” microphone. A disc to play again and again...” (Peter Grahame Woolf)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

it’s pretty much impossible not to reach a state of bliss after listening to a new album featuring seven pieces chosen by English a capella choir TONUS PEREGRINUS from the Eton Choirbook... TONUS PEREGRINUS, recorded at a church in London, used specially constructed microphones to try and bring high-definition clarity to the long lines of undulating, intertwined voices. The result is particularly vivid, highlighting the character of individual voices, and making the Latin texts perfectly intelligible... A fascinating treat is the final piece, a 13-part canon by Robert Wylkynson... It starts with the words ‘Jesus walked among them’ before the Apostles’ Creed. Because of the piece’s structure, it really sounds is as if a figure singing through every voice in the choir. It’s pure magic...” (John Terauds)

on Alpha & Omega & Seven Letters

As director of TONUS PEREGRINUS, Antony Pitts clearly has the music of renaissance composers in his blood and they are a clear influence on his own music, as also is Arvo Pärt whose music the group has also performed. It’s almost as if one of his renaissance predecessors has been miraculously restored to life, been allowed to catch up with all that has intervened, and then set pen to paper – except that my description doesn’t begin to do justice to the individuality of his music. Jeremy Summerly’s notes, available on the Hyperion webpage, do it better. The result is not ‘easy’ listening... but it is absolutely enthralling and there can be no better take on it than these two recordings from his own ensemble, both very well recorded and documented in the Hyperion style. It clearly arises from the composer’s own religious faith, but you don’t need to share that faith to respond – after all, it spoke to me as an Anglo-Catholic/Buddhist agnostic... The enthralling opening work [ CDA67668 ] is the coda from Pitts’ Jerusalem-Yerushalayim, a work still awaiting its premiere recording in full, and one which I hope someone will be prepared to take up. The received etymology of the name Jerusalem links it with the Semitic root s-l-m, peace, and that’s the spirit that breathes through this work. If you’re still not prepared to go the whole hog and buy either of these recordings, you’ll find Adoro te, perhaps the most striking work from CDA67507, on a Hyperion sampler of contemporary choral music, Dreamland...” (Brian Wilson)

on Music from the Eton Choirbook (Naxos recording)

I wasn’t expecting to find any revelations here. I was wrong: in the booklet Antony Pitts writes ‘This recording is perhaps the jewel in the crown of our Naxos series of ‘milestones of Western Music’.’ Omit the ‘perhaps’ and I agree; this is superb, and the performances and recording do the music full justice

on O Holy of Holies performed at New Lamps for Old

Antony Pitts’s O Holy of Holies was not so much paired with Sheppard’s Reges Tharsis was combined with it to make a new work. Pitts wrote O Holy of Holies utilising the structural scheme of a respond, where polyphony alternates with chant, but did not write the chant. Instead the work is performed in lieu of the chant in Sheppard’s Regis Tharsis, so that Pitts’s fascinatingly chromatic settings, at once dense and transparent, alternated with Sheppard’s lively polyphony to create a very satisfying whole...” (Robert Hugill) GRAMOPHONE Awards 2012 issue on music from the Eton Choirbook: TONUS PEREGRINUS open the great early English sourcebook “...It is great to have a new recording from the Eton Choirbook... It is also great to have a new recording of Richard Davy’s Passion setting... In particular it is good to have what may be the first recording of the Magnificat by Hugo Kellyk... And it is good that Antony Pitts has applied his composer’s instinct and experience to the very tricky matter of editorial accidentals in this music, resulting in a far wider range of chromatic colour than even the boldest of available recordings... TONUS PEREGRINUS is an ensemble that has recorded music from all centuries, from the 11th to the 21st, with particularly famous recordings of Pärt and Antony Pitts himself....the CD is an undoubted success.” (David Fallows)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

A 500-year-old manuscript is brought to glorious life by TONUS PEREGRINUS

This new collection from the 14 mixed voices of TONUS PEREGRINUS is exceptionally successful and sonorous, and includes a five-part Magnificat by Hugh Kellyk, previously unrecorded... for sheer contrapuntal virtuosity you cannot beat the oddest piece, the final 13-part canon by Robert Wylkynson.” (Nicholas Kenyon)

on Music from the Eton Choirbook (Naxos recording) – Kellyk Magnificat, Wylkynson canon

A 500-year-old manuscript is brought to glorious life by TONUS PEREGRINUS

on music from the Eton Choirbook

The 15th-century collection of sacred music known as the Eton Choirbook is regularly extolled but far less often performed. So three cheers to Antony Pitts’s subtly expressive choir TONUS PEREGRINUS for resuscitating half a dozen numbers. They include Richard Davy’s St Matthew Passion, a sonorous and symbolic 13-part canon by Robert Wylkynson, and pieces by Walter Lambe and Hugh Kellyk so harmonically fascinating that one feels ashamed to ask ‘who they?’. These ravishing melismas seem to lead the ear on and on towards eternity - as, probably, they were intended to do.” (Richard Morrison)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

The Choirbook required the skins of “112 average-sized calves” to produce; none died in vain, as this recording proves... TONUS PEREGRINUS’ already high reputation is only enhanced by its interpretations of the Eton Choirbook... Naxos is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It describes this recording as “perhaps the jewel in the crown of its series of Milestones of Western music.” Only “perhaps?”...” (Michael Schwartz)

on music from the Eton Choirbook

Immaculately performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS, this gorgeously recorded release is an essential purchase.

on Who is my neighbour?, op.234 (Road to Jericho project cover feature)

Composer Antony Pitts has created a new piece for the tour based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Entitled Who is my Neighbour? the piece fuses aspects of both western music and traditional Palestinian music, creating a symbiotic musical language symbolic of the project as a whole. Other repertoire includes Arabic Oriental Classical music alongside Dvořák.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS #1 album of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Naxos

8.555860):

If you don’t know the phenomenon that is Arvo Pärt, this inexpensive, stunning release of what may remain his masterwork will open your ears and heart. Bass Robert Macdonald sings Jesus’ lines with utmost dignity and rich, dark tone; tenor Mark Anderson as Pilate begins sounding puzzled and moves into clean-hands irony as the situation becomes clear. The four voices of the Evangelist are ideally matched and they sing as one; the instrumental soloists are similarly superb.... I dare say a newcomer will be bowled over by the work’s exquisite austerity in this performance by TONUS PEREGRINUS. The sonics are superb—spacious, clear, with pure silences...” (Robert Levine)

on Road to Jericho - Who is my neighbour?, op.234 (world premiere announcement)

the guys will be giving the world premiere of Who is my Neighbour? by Antony Pitts, written especially for the project.

on Road to Jericho - Who is my neighbour?, op.234 (premiere day programme)

At 7.30pm Fifth Quadrant and Dal’Ouna perform a Dvorak Quartet, traditional Palestinian music and the world premiere of Who is my Neighbour? by Antony Pitts

on Road to Jericho project (context for Who is my neighbour?, op.234 commission)

The Road to Jericho brings both ensembles together for joint concerts and projects with young musicians in Britain and the Palestinian Territories.

on Road to Jericho project / Aldeburgh residency (context for Who is my neighbour?, op.234)

This week the Road to Jericho boys are on board - Fifth Quadrant from London and Dal’Ouna from Ramallah, working together on instruments eastern and western.

on Who is my neighbour?, op.234 (pre-premiere commentary by co-commissioner)

Here are many quartertones, accompanying a fairly timeless story, presented, with my implicit consent, in a very Christian tradition.

on musicGPS (Pitts’s musicDNA/equal.music platform spinoff iPhone app)

No2: MusicGPS This iPhone app produced by musicDNA - not to be confused with MusicDNA, the possible successor to the MP3 which launched in January – is focused on pairing music with maps. Users download the app to their iPhone and as they travel while listening to music, MusicGPS records which songs are listened to where. While the community is still small, at only just over 700 members, the potential applications for the sort of data collected are significant if it gained enough popularity. Similar to GigsWiz, MusicGPS collects local data about musical tastes, but is listener-driven rather than artist-driven. While it has huge potential for targeted advertising and local revenue generation, it is also a step in the development of the semantic web.

on In My Father’s House

I was entirely unprepared for the stunning performance by St Pancras Church Choir... and the dark new work they premiered by Antony Pitts came in finely sculpted waves of polyphony. It was quite something to sit in this grand church, proofed against the traffic roaring past outside, and hear such fabulous music free of charge.

on A Wireless Revelation on BBC Radio 3

Saturday’s Between the Ears - ‘A Wireless Revelation’ was an excellent case in point: I can’t think of anywhere else that this project would happen.

on A Wireless Revelation on BBC Radio 3

It is almost impossible not to be drawn in by such resonant, dire phrases, many of them familiar... It is an ambitious undertaking. There is no commentary, no interruption; the book is unabridged, read in its entirety by half a dozen voices, and it speaks for itself apart from the briefest of introductions. Once you settle in to the voices in counterpoint, the noise of it all, it is compelling. Pitts sees the words and music very much as in harmony: ‘It does require you to shut other things out and give it your undivided attention,’ he says. ‘It covers the end of the world played out over a huge expanse of time and place. I treat the words as sounds, as music. There are two approaches for the listener: one is semantic and one is visceral. The combination of both those things is what makes it powerful, challenging.’

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion

CDA67668)

One of the things that makes the sacred a cappella work of Antony Pitts (born 1969) stand out from that of the many excellent emerging choral composers of his generation is his fearless defiance of harmonic and melodic conventions; just when you think he’s heading for an easy landing, he veers off into unexpected, exhilaratingly wild territory.... In the double quartet that he conducts, TONUS PEREGRINUS, Pitts has assembled an ensemble for which he can write with impunity. Their ability to negotiate the music’s extreme demands is staggering, and they do it with wonderfully pure tone, warm blend, and impassioned expressiveness. Pitts is a composer to watch out for: these remarkably assured and compelling works should be strong interest to any fan of contemporary choral music.”(Stephen Eddins) CHOIR & ORGAN January/February 2008 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion CDA67668) “TONUS PEREGRINUS is proving to be one of the most skilful vocal groups around. Its composer/founder/director demands much from his singers, which they accomplish with impressive fluency and musicality. Pitts shows considerable ingenuity and flair in his settings of sacred texts, which include The Peace of Jerusalem, Sanctus and Benedictus, A Thousand Years and the totally captivating My Dove. The outstanding work is The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus, which Pitts constructs using various combinations of voices and intervals from the unison to the octave, but never in a mathematical sequence. The moods range from the austere to the ecstatic, from the simplistic to a dissonant but ordered turmoil – it’s a remarkable achievement.” (Shirley Ratcliffe)

on The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus (the outstanding work of the disc)

TONUS PEREGRINUS is proving to be one of the most skilful vocal groups around. Its composer/founder/director demands much from his singers, which they accomplish with impressive fluency and musicality. Pitts shows considerable ingenuity and flair in his settings of sacred texts, which include The Peace of Jerusalem, Sanctus and Benedictus, A Thousand Years and the totally captivating My Dove. The outstanding work is The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus, which Pitts constructs using various combinations of voices and intervals from the unison to the octave, but never in a mathematical sequence. The moods range from the austere to the ecstatic, from the simplistic to a dissonant but ordered turmoil – it’s a remarkable achievement.

on The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus (principal work of the disc)

Not yet 40, Antony Pitts, together with John Rutter and Taverner is perhaps one of the most sought-after British composers of contemporary choral works. He is already the recipient of several prestigious awards such as the Prix Italia... The first Hyperion issue dedicated to choral works by this prodigious composer got some truly rave reviews, and this second disc will undoubtedly make its mark... The principal work on this programme is the “I AM” sayings of Jesus which at 40 minutes makes up almost two thirds of total playing time. The comforting yet perplexing texts allow Pitts free reign to express his vivid word painting and the music is also informed with great restlessness and agitation. The other four works are similar to the main opus but each has its own distinct message to convey. TONUS PEREGRINUS... perform with spellbinding excitement matching spirituality with technical prowess. This is a sumptuously beautiful disc on all counts.

on GOLDEN RADIO production of In memoria for BBC Radio 3’s Between the Ears

Radio Choice Martin Hoyle

Tonight’s Between the Ears is Radio 3 at its best, by turns freewheeling, precious, touching, aggravating and riveting. Renaissance motets and modern compositions alternate with liturgical readings, children’s voices and a man’s heartbreaking account of his wife’s tragic death. Frequently beautiful, cumulatively moving - and fascinating radio (9.15pm).” FANFARE 2008 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion CDA67668) “In terms of sheer beauty of performance and recording, this disc takes some beating. Antony Pitts was born in 1969. From early on, he was immersed in the world of the choir, first at the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace and then... at New College, Oxford. In the year of his graduation, he formed the vocal ensemble captured on the present recording, TONUS PEREGRINUS. Their previous disc of music by Pitts was unreservedly welcomed by James Carson in Fanfare 29:2, and I find myself waxing just as enthusiastic about the present release. Pitts’s frame of reference is large. His use of suspensions in particular refers back to the 16th century, but the overarching use of dissonance is decidedly of our era. Occasional jazzy rhythms sit side-by-side medieval hocketing with little sense of disjunction. The first piece on the disc, The Peace of Jerusalem, is actually the choral coda of a new oratorio called Jerusalem-Yerushalayim... Pitts shapes the piece as a single trajectory from gentle pianissimos through to radiant climax. The singers of TONUS PEREGRINUS are exquisitely blended. There is a purity to the three female singers that is very effective in its evocation of reverent piety. The Mass of the English Renaissance informs the Sanctus and Benedictus (1993), two brief settings that celebrate stasis. A Thousand Years (1999) comprises two movements that form a meditation on the line ‘A day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day’. The use of unison, rhythmic chanting is highly effective in the middle section. All credit to the sopranos for coping with the high, sustained writing of My Dove (1997), a gentle lullaby setting of a text from the Song of Songs. The remainder of the disc is taken up by The “I AM” sayings of Jesus, a cycle of eight motets each of which uses a different number of voices. Composition stretched from 1996 until 2007. Each movement is based on a different interval, from the seconds of the opening through to the sevenths of ‘I AM Alpha and Omega’. The booklet notes, by Jeremy Summerly, point out the influence of Medieval music on the first movement, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’, while a comfortable mixolydian basis for ‘I AM the bread of life’ creates an atmosphere of cozy security which is disturbed by the story of Lazarus in ‘I AM the Resurrection and the Life’. The final, almost ecstatic melismas of this movement are taken over as an ostinato basis for the brief ‘I AM the light of the World’. Again, Pitts connects this movement to the one that follows, this time by placing the resolution of the final sonority of ‘I AM the light of the World’ at the very beginning of ‘I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life’. As the basic interval widens to a fifth, a sense of space is clearly invoked. ‘I AM the True Vine’ is by far the lushest and longest movement so far. Textures are magnificently managed by TONUS PEREGRINUS. Francis Brett is the superb bass soloist in the penultimate motet, ‘I AM the door — I AM the good shepherd’ before the final, and longest, motet, ‘I AM Alpha and Omega’, provides an expansive end to this most impressive cycle. The use of the octave to suggest infinity is coupled with a thematic summing-up by sequential quotations from the preceding movements before ending on a question mark. Full English texts are provided, and Jeremy Summerly’s notes are consistently illuminating. A winner.” (Colin Clarke) OXFORD TODAY Trinity 2008 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion CDA67668) “...Pitts is a real composer: his gestures are highly expressive, fresh-minted by the words, without cliché. Alpha and Omega (CDA67668) is also uncompromising music, often using eight parts with complex chords and a high level of dissonance - though in such expertly blended voices ‘dissonance’ is an academic misnomer for ‘colour’. Like Monteverdi’s, this music paints words, moment by moment; it doesn’t build obvious musical structures or even remain long in one overarching texture (except perhaps ‘I AM Alpha and Omega’). However, some of the eight ‘I AM’ sayings of Jesus are set in fewer parts, permitting broader brush-strokes, such as a vaguely minimalist backdrop for ‘I AM the Light of the World’. Pitts’s friend Jeremy Summerly suggests that, in their unblinking focus on the words, these works are ‘as much theological statements as stand-alone pieces of music’. If so, Pitts appears a stern Magister. Performances are by the utterly brilliant, and utterly fearless, choir TONUS PEREGRINUS...” (Graham Topping) CLASSICAL.NET April 2008 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion CDA67668) “Not yet 40, Antony Pitts, together with John Rutter and Taverner is perhaps one of the most sought-after British composers of contemporary choral works. He is already the recipient of several prestigious awards such as the Prix Italia... The first Hyperion issue dedicated to choral works by this prodigious composer got some truly rave reviews, and this second disc will undoubtedly make its mark... The principal work on this programme is the “I AM” sayings of Jesus which at 40 minutes makes up almost two thirds of total playing time. The comforting yet perplexing texts allow Pitts free reign to express his vivid word painting and the music is also informed with great restlessness and agitation. The other four works are similar to the main opus but each has its own distinct message to convey. TONUS PEREGRINUS... perform with spellbinding excitement matching spirituality with technical prowess. This is a sumptuously beautiful disc on all counts.” (Gerald Fenech)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Alpha and Omega (Hyperion

CDA67668)

Antony Pitts, a composer not yet 40 years of age, has rapidly crafted a place for himself as one of Britain’s more enterprising writers of choral music.... The recording contains five works, captured most sensitively at Bromley Parish Church last year, and its ambitious pretext certainly marks it as a disc worthy of serious attention. The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus, which inspired Pitts to create eight musical depictions culminating in ‘I AM Alpha and Omega’, the title of the disc itself, form a significant work lasting over forty minutes.... An intriguing aspect to the work as a whole is the manner in which it functions using a varying number of voices, from one to eight, providing a further structural dimension to this most assiduously put-together choral work. The other works on the disc, ‘The Peace of Jerusalem’, ‘Sanctus and Benedictus’, ‘A Thousand Years’ and ‘My Dove’, are also steeped in the architectural building blocks of the English Renaissance and yet continually tinged with Pitts’s inimitable piquancy of language. This is a most successful recording, TONUS PEREGRINUS never wearied by the vastness of its task and the vision of Christ always palpable in the composer’s creative insights.” (Mark Tanner)

on The ‘I AM’ Sayings of Jesus (with movements I AM Alpha and Omega, I AM the Light of the World)

Pitts is a real composer: his gestures are highly expressive, fresh-minted by the words, without cliché. Alpha and Omega (CDA67668) is also uncompromising music, often using eight parts with complex chords and a high level of dissonance - though in such expertly blended voices ‘dissonance’ is an academic misnomer for ‘colour’. Like Monteverdi’s, this music paints words, moment by moment; it doesn’t build obvious musical structures or even remain long in one overarching texture (except perhaps ‘I AM Alpha and Omega’). However, some of the eight ‘I AM’ sayings of Jesus are set in fewer parts, permitting broader brush-strokes, such as a vaguely minimalist backdrop for ‘I AM the Light of the World’. Pitts’s friend Jeremy Summerly suggests that, in their unblinking focus on the words, these works are ‘as much theological statements as stand-alone pieces of music’. If so, Pitts appears a stern Magister. Performances are by the utterly brilliant, and utterly fearless, choir TONUS PEREGRINUS

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos

8.557337)

The performances cannot be criticised – full of brilliant and often amusing characterisations, with top-quality and expressive singing from all, as I have come to expect from TONUS PEREGRINUS. “Adam de la Halle was a thirteenth century trouvère from Northern France, a composer and a poet, who travelled widely and moved in courtly circles. He wrote both words and music for his drama Le Jeu de Robin, and, as such, it is one of the earliest extant examples of a secular play set to music. Not much survives of the original play - mostly spoken texts with some unaccompanied melodies. This reconstruction is an attempt to make the recording as authentic as possible through the combination of the existing texts of the play along with plainchant, motets and rondeaux of the period. These components might have formed part of such an entertainment and, in any case, would have been common sounds to de la Halle’s audience. Cleverly, this includes the text spoken in the original French dialect, which is to be heard on the left speaker, while the songs (in French) and English dialogue emerges from your right. This is an interesting method which works extremely well; much fun to be had playing with balances! The whole result is one of spontaneity and improvised freedom, which is very appropriate. The play, about an amorous knight who makes a play for a shepherdess despite her affection for her lover, is very much based in pastoral tradition. It is full of references to bucolic life, including such aspects as peasant party games and food-related jokes. Consequently, the spirit of the whole piece israther “silly”, but it is none the worse for this, and, as a reconstruction of a mediaeval “musical comedy”, is both entertaining and fascinating from a historical point of view...” (Em Marshall) EARLY MUSIC (Vol. XXXV, No. 2) March 2007 (online) on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos 8.557341): “TONUS PEREGRINUS’s Dunstable anthology Sweet Harmony is particularly valuable, in that it includes no fewer than three masses otherwise unrepresented on recordings, as far as I am aware, rather than the usual collection of motets (though the disc also includes the much-recorded Quam pulchra es and Veni Sancte Spiritus—Veni Creator). It is true, as Antony Pitts observes in his notes, that this seminal figure in the history of English music is little known and under-performed; part of this, certainly, is the off-putting aspect of the modern printed editions, but it is also on account of the fact that specialist groups have made only isolated discographical incursions into this repertory (for example, one-off discs by the Hilliard Ensemble and the Orlando Consort, and, further back, the pioneering recordings on Archiv by Pro Cantione Antiqua under Bruno Turner). It will take recordings such as this to bring it within the sights of most normally constituted choirs who routinely tackle later polyphony, for the sublimely high quality of the music is instantaneously evident from these loving performances. I am somewhat bothered by the cavernous resonance of Chancelade Abbey, which occasionally lends a certain ponderousness to the singing (this actually affects Quam pulchra es the most) and the occasional over-enthusiastic entry from the gentlemen, but in general this is a fine recording and a very important addition to the discography. It ends with a canonic Gloria, newly transcribed by Margaret Bent.” (Ivan Moody)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of

Leonin

/ Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340) “In charting the history of music in the West, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Paris loom large as a golden age of innovative polyphony, a golden age that is much the fruits of two composers, Leoninus and Perotinus. Their famous magnus liber organi—the great book of organum—preserves polyphonic settings of responsorial chants, works that define and establish Gothic sound much as the cathedral in which they were sung, Notre Dame in Paris, defines and establishes our notions of Gothic space. TONUS PEREGRINUS offers three of the most substantial Notre Dame works—the two-voiceViderunt by Leoninus and the four-voice Viderunt and Sederunt by Perotinus. Pitts divides his ensemble into lower- and upper-ranged forces, and the opportunity to hear this repertory in both ranges is a welome one. In the main, these forces remain discrete and the polyphony is performed appropriately by soloists. In one instance, however—at the end of the two-voiced Viderunt—Pitts combines the registers. The octave doubling in itself is not problematic, but in that the doubling requires transforming a solo line into a choral one, there is a loss of responsiveness and flexibility in the process, and that is a loss, albeit only a momentary one. The performances of these large-scaled organa are otherwise impressive. In the discantus sections—the sections where the notes of all the parts move together in rhythmic pattern—Pitts allows the music to unfold at a congenially leisurely pace. This contrast to many modern performances allows singer and listener alike to dwell in the time rather than to push the time ahead; the more contemplative turn is an attractive one. In the solo sections, Richard Eteson deserves special mention for his wonderfully contoured sense of both individual notes and phrase. Similarly, Rebecca Hickey’s monophonic conductus, Beata viscera, is rapturous, expressive, and exquisite, a memorable opening to the whole program. The program is one that shows the signs of special care in its construction, for it is obvious that Pitts wants to demonstrate historical development here. For instance, the two-voiced organal setting ofViderunt is followed by substitute clausulae and a motet on part of its foundational chant. The clausulae are short sections of a minute or less, whose purpose in the program is surely instructive, rather than aesthetic. And these are followed in turn by the four-voice setting of the same chant. Thus, in large part, the program is showing a notable variety of ways of treating the same pre-existent melody, and this variety developed within the school of Notre Dame. In a similar vein, Pitts remains instructive with the inclusion of a psalm whose twenty verses are sung in different intervallic configurations to demonstrate the range of possibilities described in the ninth-century treatise, theScholia enchiriadis, famous for being among the first theoretical sources to describe polyphony. It is an interesting pedagogical aside in the program, but one that does not distract from the splendid singing of the large-scale pieces. The ensemble’s use of Roman Latin pronunciation is curious, and one might have welcomed their sonic palette being extended and enriched with period French pronunciation. This, however, is but a small quibble; the recording is impressive.” (Steven Plank)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s

Le Jeu

de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): “This CD represents a bold attempt to make Adam de la Halle’s Le jeu de Robin et Marion (The Play of Robin and Marion, ca. 1280), perhaps the first secular music drama in the Western tradition, intelligible to a general modern audience. The English ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS (the name means wandering tone and is taken from a detail of chant theory) combines a scholarly background with a desire to put the fruits of the group’s scholarly labors across to nonspecialists. The most unusual detail of this recording is that the play’s dialogue is not only included (the manuscripts that preserve the play contain dialogue interspersed with unaccompanied songs) but also translated into English as it goes along... The result is surely the first Jeu de Robin et Marion that can be listened to by glancing at the booklet rather than keeping one’s eyes glued to it... The small instrumental group works well, and the musicians convincingly inflect de la Halle’s sparse songs in the direction of romance as required... The performance gives the play the charming directness and earthiness one sometimes finds in medieval art.” ( read more... )

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of

Sweet Harmony - masses and

motets by John Dunstaple[Dunstable] (Naxos 8.557341): “Goodness me, how many superlative groups of ancient music specialists can there be? Here is yet another, predictably brought to us by Naxos. There are 8 singers directed by Antony Pitts, and the group photograph also shows us Jeremy Summerly himself in a daft-looking hat as producer, and also, most properly, the engineer Geoff Miles whose work I would call absolutely outstanding... At the musical level by and large the liner-note is awesomely learned but slightly heavy going. It is worth absorbing slowly, but the most significant thing it says is really its naïve proclamation of how marvellous the music is. This is the dawn of the elaborate harmonisation that makes European music, so far as I know, unique, and the thrill and sense of awe that go with that are enormous for one kind of listener at least... The recital starts with one motet and ends with another, followed by a gloria that ‘we’ have completed from the restored but deficient MS. ‘We’ have done just brilliantly if I may say so - this is what music-making is all about, but it needs the right level of talent. The performing artists consist of 2 sopranos, 1 female and 1 male alto, 3 tenors and a single bass. I have to take the historical authenticity of this, just as I have to take the tempi adopted, on faith once again. I believe the phrase is ‘It works for me’. What is beyond much question is the sheer quality of the singing, and what I want to sing my own praises of is the recording, which has a perfect sense of spaciousness together with perfect clarity. I hope I will be believed when I say that I have no link of any kind with Naxos. I collect their discs because of what these are and because of what my tastes and standards in good music are... Go forth in droves and acquire this disc.” (read more...)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s

Le Jeu

de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): “In a review of two anthologies that included excerpts from Adam de la Halle’s play about Robin and Marion (Mar/Apr 2005) I expressed my wish for a DVD of the complete work. While this recording is not what I still wish for, Antony Pitts has released a new version of the complete work that presents some problems but is also quite fascinating. While the earlier truncated recordings were made only in the original Old French [starting with Binkley’s very truncated version from 1966, rereleased on Teldec 21709; see also May/June 1992 & Mar/Apr 1994), this recording is an exercise in right and left brain discrimination. Centered in the mix are the original songs in their original language. In the left channel John Crook presents the full text of Adam’s playas a dramatic narration in Old French, and alternating with the original in the right channel is a modern English adapta tion by Rosemary and Antony Pitts. While this may at first sound a bit like a Berlitz language tape for Old French, I found that I became involved directly in the story through the Eng lish version but was also trying to hear and learn the subtleties of Adam’s original words-and the distinction between the two on this recording is more than linguistic. The Old French narrator is miked closely, almost as if it were an audio book recording, while the English dramatic version is more distant, as if the players were on a stage acting out this sometimes rather funny mini-drama. While the notes say it is possible to adjust the balance in favor of one language or the other (the songs are common to both), 1 found on various machines that I could never entirely fade out the other side-there were always a few linguistic “ghosts” around. As inventive as this solution is for the pre sentation of a 13th Century French drama for a contemporary English audience. I still think current technology is not quite up to a multi layered presentation of recorded material. My ideal would have been either two separate recordings (along the lines of the German and English versions by Ute Lemper of Cabaret Songs, Sept/Oct 1997:279 & May/June 1997: 281) or, perhaps by eliminating the extra ron deux, motets, and the excerpt from Adam’s Li Jus du Pelerin, the two versions could have fit separately on a single disc. The first solution was most likely unfeasible owing to basic eco nomics, and the second would have been per haps a bit too academic. Pitts has supplied a creative alterative that is reasonable and sometimes extremely funny. My only com plaint is that texts and translations are only included for the play’s songs and not for the rondeux and motets used as interludes.” (Brewer)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s

Le Jeu

de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): “This is a story of a shepherdess and her lover whose bliss is briefly interrupted by a randy, passing knight. Composed circa 1286 for the (then) French court in Naples, it has 30 little tunes, but is otherwise mostly dialogue, resembling a musical more than an opera. There have been other recordings of this piece in France (...) but they do little with the music and concentrate on dramatic effect. Here, the approach is more complex. Out of your left speaker comes the original French text spoken by John Crook and, out of your right, the songs are in French and the play is acted out in English. Owing to excellent recording techniques, this is not as confusing as it suggests. Characters are portrayed simply but with dramatic flair. Kathryn Oswald gives us an almost Julie Andrews-like Marion and Alexander L’Estrange is perfect as silly Robin. Bare melodies are prettily decked out with percussion and strings and we get some extra motets and songs for good measure. It would be hard to present this medieval entertainment in a more winning manner.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of

Sweet Harmony - masses and

motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos 8.557341): artistic quality 10 / 10 sound quality “This is an interesting adventure for early music fans - 70 minutes devoted to one of the most influential and respected English composers ever, but one who is rarely heard today except as an occasional contributor to early music compilations... This disc’s title, ‘Sweet Harmony’, comes from the uniquely sonorous feature of Dunstable’s music that inspired imitation by composers throughout Europe--the manner in which he used and combined thirds, whether in blocks or as coincidental occurrences among polyphonic parts. The result produces pleasingly vibrant sequences of harmonic consonance, often interrupted with surprising cross-relations or redirected with unusual “backward” harmonic shifts--and there are many times where the boldness of the harmony and complexity of the rhythm can only leave you with renewed respect for this 15th-century music’s sophistication and inherent expressive qualities. The eight voices of TONUS PEREGRINUS - two sopranos, alto, countertenor, three tenors, and bass--make the most of those expressive qualities, in clear, vibrato-colored timbre, captured in the ideally resonant acoustic of Chancelade Abbey in Dordogne, France. The program, which primarily consists of a group of Mass movements framed by two of Dunstable’s better-known motets, concludes with a remarkable, recently-discovered Gloria in canon, reconstructed by Margaret Bent and first recorded on the [abovementioned] Orlando Consort disc in five parts - the original probably had six or seven (the full manuscript is not intact). Here, the singers fill out the existing reconstruction with their own realization, adding an accompanying two-part canon to more closely approximate the style and presumed structure of the original. However authentic or inauthentic, it’s a marvelous piece and a sublime rendition that, along with the rest of these works, fully justifies the words of Dunstable’s famous epitaph, which honors one ‘who had secret knowledge of the stars’ and ‘scattered the sweet arts of music throughout the world.’ Outstanding!

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

8.557681):

artistic quality 9/9 sound quality “Fans of Orlando Gibbons’ church music will be pleased with this generously filled program, which purports to contain ‘all of the hymn melodies ascribed to Gibbons’ and included in George Wither’s 1623 collection Hymns and Songs of the Church. The English chamber vocal ensemble Tonus Peregrinus and its director Antony Pitts have made a fine impression in several earlier recordings (particularly their ambitious Naxos Book of Carols project and their award-winning version of Arvo Pärt’s Passio), and they offer the same high standard of performance here. This is uniformly well-balanced ensemble singing, tonally rich, vibrant, and clearly articulated, and the straightforward style perfectly suits Gibbons’ functional, easily singable tunes. Throughout, Gibbons’ original melodies and bass lines are fully realized by contributions of inner parts by various arrangers--primarily director Pitts. Sometimes these settings are strictly traditional, but often Pitts and his colleagues take us into entirely new (for Gibbons), strikingly modern harmonic territory. There are a half dozen or so original pieces by Pitts and others among the 42 tracks, most of which have some direct textual or thematic link to Gibbons and the celebrations of the church year. In addition, the program is very intelligently organized with an ear toward key transitions from one track to the next--and with a sense of how to hold interest with so much “block-harmony” style. Both chamber organ and double bass are used now and then (although I can’t figure out the rationale for the latter in this context), and the program’s eight sections are separated by ‘Amen’ interludes apparently arising from a Pitts family mealtime tradition. Besides the various settings of Gibbons’ beloved hymn known as ‘Song 1’, highlights include the delightfully jazzy hymn by Alexander L’Estrange ‘As now the sun’s declining rays’ and the subsequent ‘Amen’. And, hooray(!), Naxos handily displays track listings on the back cover of the CD booklet!

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

8.557681)

9/10 “...this is more than a museum piece as Antony Pitts, the director and organist of Tonus Peregrinus, and Alexander L’Estrange, the counter-tenor and double-bassist, have used Gibbons’ 1623 original as a resource and trigger. The songs are arranged into eight sequences that follow the Church’s year from the “Songs Of Joy” at Advent to the “Songs Of Hope” at All Saints’ Day when we consider the life to come. The collection is interleaved with original compositions from the Pitts family as well as new settings of old favourites such as There Is A Green Hill Far Away in the style of Gibbons. The singing is first class throughout and the arrangements are beautifully done. This budget-priced disc must be of interest to any listener who enjoys choral singing either ancient or post-modern.” THE GRAMOPHONE Awards issue 2006 ‘Truth in the inward parts’ as Pitts and Co offer an intriguing harmony lesson on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos 8.557681): “...a valuable documentary for anyone interested in the early development of English hymnody. The collection consists of the melodies and their bass parts, leaving the organist (or even the choir) to improvise the middle parts.... Antony Pitts and Alexander L’Estrange have excelled in fulfilling this task, illustrating both the customary techniques of Gibbons and his generation and introducing some modern, even contemporary harmonizations. We hear Gibbons’s attractive and familiar melodies in many guises.... There are also a few examples of new compositions by L’Estrange, Pitts and his younger brothers

on There is a green hill far away (Hymns and Songs of the Church, Naxos 8.557681)

this is more than a museum piece as Antony Pitts, the director and organist of Tonus Peregrinus, and Alexander L’Estrange, the counter-tenor and double-bassist, have used Gibbons’ 1623 original as a resource and trigger. The songs are arranged into eight sequences that follow the Church’s year from the “Songs Of Joy” at Advent to the “Songs Of Hope” at All Saints’ Day when we consider the life to come. The collection is interleaved with original compositions from the Pitts family as well as new settings of old favourites such as There Is A Green Hill Far Away in the style of Gibbons. The singing is first class throughout and the arrangements are beautifully done. This budget-priced disc must be of interest to any listener who enjoys choral singing either ancient or post-modern.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s

Le Jeu

de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): “...Biographies of Adam de la Halle are littered with the word ‘probably’ as we know precious little about the life of the French-born composer and poet. The few facts that we have for certain are his period of birth taking place in the mid-13th century and the certainty of his having travelled outside of France. This lack of knowledge is at odds with an unusual amount of his music that has survived, the quality proving that he studied with learned teachers. Through his life he took music technically forward, and moved it away from its sacred roots, his songs pointing to a composer well versed in the music played in French and Italian courts. It is here described as the first known opera, but in reality it is a collection of songs, some probably ‘borrowed’ by Adam from the popular ditties of the day. These he neatly linked together by spoken text to create a little light-hearted play. The end result - as presented here - is highly attractive, its elements of naughtiness handled with good taste. Two solo singers, who are both outstanding, are employed together with a small chorus, the singing and diction being excellent throughout. The work is performed in an English translation with a narration in French. To separate the two elements, the narrator is placed in a dry acoustic with a lively sound given to the action this is taking place around it...” (read more...) ON AN OVERGROWN PATH theovergrownpath.blogspot.com 20 March 2006 What exactly is a classic? on live performance and recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Naxos 8.555860): “...the verdict on Arvo Pärt’s Passio was passed down soon after its 1982 Munich première - a contemporary masterpiece that endures today through live performances and recordings... On Saturday night Norwich’s soaring Norman Cathedral was the setting for a performance of Passio. The six immensely demanding solo roles were taken by members of TONUS PEREGRINUS, the instrumentalists were the principals from Chamber Orchestra Anglia, and the University of East Anglia Choir supplied the chorus and promoted the performance. Howard Williams provided incisive conducting which successfully maintained the balance between the soloists and the unusually large choir. ‘Remaining in print’ may seem a cruelly commercial criteria for judging a work of art. But Arvo Pärt’s masterpiece, which is not yet 25 years old, held the large audience spell-bound in rapt silence for more than an hour, surely proof that Marc van Doren’s definition is more than just a criteria for bean-counters? Passio has been recorded several times. If you don’t know this work look no further than TONUS PEREGRINUS’ award-winning, and very low-priced, Naxos version directed by Antony Pitts, and stunningly recorded in the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul in Dorchester-on-Thames, here in the UK. The principal roles are taken by Robert Macdonald (Jesus) and Mark Anderson (Pilate) - the same soloists as for the Norwich performance.” (read more...) THE TELEGRAPH 4 February 2006 - Classical CD of the Week on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple[Dunstable] (Naxos 8.557341): “This fascinating disc provides a first-class introduction to the earliest named English composer who had a substantial body of great music to his credit. Even better, its bargain price puts it within the reach of any listener interested in exploring a period when England was one of Europe’s most important and influential musical nations. John Dunstable (c1390-1453) was renowned on the continent for his use of the ‘contenance angloise’, the sweetly harmonious style characterised by successions of thirds and triads. This helped to transform the 15th-century musical landscape - and still makes his music immensely pleasant to listen to. The richly sonorous motet Quam pulchra es and the Kyrie at the start of this well-planned programme have a beauty and expressiveness that transcend the lapse of time, as does the ethereally lovely Sanctus for three high voices. In these pieces, as in the faster-moving and more intricately polyphonic Gloria and Credo settings, TONUS PEREGRINUS sing with an impressive understanding of this highly sophisticated music, with its complex rhythms, luxuriantly interweaving melodic lines and exciting climaxes, enabling listeners to share their obvious enjoyment of it..” (read more...)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Adam de la Halle’s

A stirring Robin Hood tale and the first medieval ‘opera

Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (Naxos 8.557337): “This is a CD that demands the undivided attention of the listener......This is unquestionably an intriguing and highly original presentation of Adam’s masterpiece. One has to accustom oneself to the fine medieval French narration coming in at one’s left ear, and the modern English conversational version, giving the gist of it, entering at one’s right ear......As the story unfolds, it is studded with gems of songs with stirring rhythms, some unaccompanied, others delicately accompanied by a selection of close on 20 early instruments......This is an enchanting entertainment, well worth the effort of trying to gather together all the various strands, and then to picture the complete drama in its original medieval context.” FANFARE May/June 2006 on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple[Dunstable] (Naxos 8.557341): “...It has been a decade since the last full Dunstable disc, one made by the Orlando Consort (19:5)... Even if the field were not so sparse, Pitts’s new disc would be welcome for the Mass movements as well as the fine performances. Pitts is giving us an interesting series of medieval programs with this ensemble, consisting of eight voices on this disc. It was made at the same time as the group’s recent Perotinus disc. Even with some small duplication among the three CDs of Dunstable, this will make a good addition to any collection.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

8.557681):

Glenn Gould’s favourite composer was Orlando Gibbons (1583 1625), a fact not lost on Tonus Peregrinus’ director Antony Pitts, who in his booklet notes quotes Gould extensively. Quite apposite, really, because this new recording, the first of all the hymn melodies by Gibbons which George Wither included in his 1623 collection Hymnes and Songs of the Church, shows Pitts and his youthful vocal ensemble to be just as inventive as Gould when playing Gibbons on the piano. Pitts has divided the disc into eight sections to reflect the Church calendar; within each section Gibbons’ tunes (arranged by Pitts or countertenor and jazz bassist Alexander L’Estrange), are contrasted with contemporary hymn settings, also by Pitts and L’Estrange. The arrangements utilise four-part harmony, unison singing and solo voices accompanied by organ and/or double bass, so there’s plenty of variety from verse to verse. Since Gibbons provides only the melody and bass line, there’s also plenty of scope for realising the inner parts. Here Pitts’ writing tends to be more melismatic and modally inflected than L’Estrange’s but the results are equally beautiful. The original compositions, too, are filled with gentle dissonances and tasteful word-painting - Pitts’ Miserere Domine is particularly fine. Tonus Peregrinus’ luminous sound is matched by its near perfect intonation and a real empathy for both music and texts. Those familiar with its previous recordings will know what to expect.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

Gentle Chromaticism

8.557681): “...very attractively and cleverly arranged in a series of eight sequences, each rounded off with a different setting of Amen [ listen -- track 27, 0:00-0:15 ] all drawn from the collection of director Antony Pitts whose family devised them, and many others, for their own mealtimes [ listen -- track 33, 0:00-0:13 ]. The sequences include Pitts’ realisations of all the Gibbons Songs (except the few that are sung as unison lines) beautifully interspersed with original hymns by Antony Pitts, his two brothers John and James, and Alexander L’Estrange, the countertenor of the ensemble -- and all with delightful stylistic and devotional cohesion. The gentle chromaticism that invades both the Gibbons arrangements and the new pieces assists each sequence to flow from then to now successfully, and in one case now was just three weeks before the recording session when Antony Pitts completed Hark, my soul! [ listen -- track 32, 1:01-1:33 ] This new hymn ends the sixth sequence, Songs of unity. Gibbons was an all time favourite composer of Glenn Gould, who was most fond of the hymn Song of Angels included in the group representing joy [ listen -- track 3, 0:00-0:45 ] sounding well with inner parts by Pitts who also plays the chamber organ -- upon which there are occasional interludes based on the Gibbons melodies. Other groups represent love, sacrifice, lamentation, triumph, faith and hope, that last short sequence including the Prayer of Hezekiah, one of several for which George Wither provided words, followed by the final Amen [ listen -- track 41, 0:43-1:22 and track 42, 0:00-0:17 ]. Some Gibbons songs make more than one appearance; No 13 in the Wither collection for instance is presented with two texts, one by Wither and the other by Frances Havergal, and is also used twice in contrasting organ interludes. The only small doubt in the Wither collection is whether Gibbons did write his 17th contribution, When one among the Twelve there was [ listen -- track 29, 0:00-0:30 ] for it had appeared a few years earlier in a Welsh Psalter by Edmund Prys. But it matters little, and the Pitts arrangement is neatly made.” (Patric Standford)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

8.557681)

TONUS PEREGRINUS are getting quite a name for themselves. They have been concentrating on medieval and renaissance music. Yet as their conductor is the ever-energetic Antony Pitts it’s not surprising that they have recently released a fine disc of music by him on Hyperion. On the present CD he is again featured as a composer and more especially as an arranger. In this he is joined by his brothers and by Alexander L’Estrange also known as a fine arranger of choral music. The background to this collection is unique and needs some explanation. For the original 1623 publication, Gibbons, in setting texts by George Wither, with whom he collaborated, only wrote the melody and the bass line. Why? Because he took it for granted that musicians would be adding the inner parts by improvising or by following fairly well oiled rules. In other words the composer, in one sense, only did half the job. It is up to musicians performing this music to make their own contributions. That is what is happening here. Antony Pitts and Alexander L’Estrange have made theircontributions. As Pitts tells us in his booklet notes he has approached the task in three different ways. I quote: ‘We have adopted a variety of approaches from unadorned melody via pastiche to exuberantly post-modern counterpoint’. He adds later ‘The new hymns by L’Estrange, myself and two ofmy younger brothers, serve both to vary the palette and to show the continuing influence of Hymnes and Songs of the Church on hymn-writing today.’ You might think that there is a curious and somewhat bizarre nepotism going on here but an explanation can be made with regard to the eight different Amens which end each of the sections listed in the header. Pitts tells us that that at the family home ‘the Amen was and is sung with ad hoc harmonies by my family at the end of grace before mealtimes’. I wish they would invite me to dinner! So, all the Pitts boys are composers. Therefore why not, if you run a fine choir creatively involve your family? Yet it should be emphasized that what makes this disc so fascinating, for me anyway, is that it is a collaboration, a holding of hands across the centuries between Orlando Gibbons and four young British composers. The music is performed by a fine group of 21st Century young singers of real talent and commitment. It’s the freshness of the singing that attracts me even in what could be considered a somewhat cerebral project. In all of their discs the choir radiates a real sense of discovery and thrill... Of course Antony Pitts’ scholarship and exciting sense of discovery spills over into the singing. When they are called together for a new project there must be a real feeling of ‘What we will be doing next?’...Antony Pitts has also provided a most detailed and interesting description of each section of the CD. There he discusses not only the individual pieces but also the theological basis behind each section, how they are balanced in the full context and how he came to construct the programme

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507) and Leonin/Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340)

Here for starters are four of the best new classical releases featured On An Overgrown Path in the last twelve months... To complete the journey from medieval to modern there is another release featuring Antony Pitts, this time with him both as conductor and composer. Seven Letters is an always topical choral setting of St John’s damning indictment of the depravity of the first-century church in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelations... It was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, but wasn’t on the radar of the Grammy Recording Academy.

Not the Grammy Awards

Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507) and Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “...Here for starters are four of the best new classical releases featured On An Overgrown Path in the last twelve months which didn’t appear among the Grammy winners... to show I do really love Naxos I nominate for a ‘Not a Grammy Award’ their excellent release of medieval sacred music from the Notre-Dame school featuring works by Leonin and Perotin. The performers are TONUS PEREGRINUS directed by Antony Pitts, and this noteworthy CD featured in both my Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade and Raindrops are falling on my chant articles. The good news is that although this disc didn’t make the Grammys it is the only early music recording shortlisted for the 2006 BBC Music Magazine Awards. To complete the journey from medieval to modern there is another release featuring Antony Pitts, this time with him both as conductor and composer. Seven Letters is an always topical choral setting of St John’s damning indictment of the depravity of the first-century church in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelations. It was composed in 1998 but was not recorded until last year, and is scored for SSAATTBB. All credit to Hyperion for investing in new choral music, and for reminding everyone that recorded contemporary choral music is alive and kicking on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, but wasn’t on the radar of the Grammy Recording Academy. Take An Overgrown Path to Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade for more about Seven Letters and a four minute audio sample of this fine contemporary composition.” (read more...)

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

My first Christmas songlist is actually one album - one which is the closest thing I have heard to the definitive album of Christmas carols. The Naxos Book of Carols is a collection of 24 carols, arranged to represent one for each day of Advent. Commissioned especially for the Naxos label, performed by eight-person choral ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS, and is an excellent mainstream collection. The performance in the opening track of ‘O come, o come, Emmanuel’ was quite a profound revelatory experience for me. A song that I was barely familiar with was transformed in one foul swoop into my favourite Christmas carol of all. Some of the old standards are there, like ‘Silent Night’, ‘Away in a Manger’ (the first Christmas carol I ever learned), ‘O come all ye faithful’, ‘Ding dong merrily on high’, ‘While Shepherds Watched’ and so on. As serious Christmas carol collections go, this one will do me.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church (Naxos

Classical CD of the Week

8.557681): “This disc is an ingenious solution to the problem of making an attractive recording out of a corner of Orlando Gibbons’s output which, though very tiny, is far from insignificant. Indeed, it may well be true that the 18 melodies he contributed to the poet George Wither’s 1623 collection of Hymnes and Songs of the Church are much more widely familiar than even the best known of his larger works. Antony Pitts and Alexander L’Estrange have made a splendid job of arranging the tunes in different ways, sometimes with impeccable 17th-century harmonies, full of luscious false relations and richly ornamented, sometimes in more up-to-date and imaginative styles that suit them very well. The use of solo voice and double bass to introduce the Lamentations-based How Sad and Solitary is particularly effective, and Tonus Peregrinus bring an air of suitably restrained sensuality to the settings of texts drawn from the Song of Songs. Some of the melodies appear several times in various ingenious guises, and the programme is a fine tribute to the durability and versatility of Gibbons’s strong and dignified tunes.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts

(Hyperion CDA67507):

Qui est Antony Pitts, me demanderez-vous, et je vous répondrai: aucune idée. Je lis donc le livret et voici ce que l’on peut en distiller. Pitts est producteur à la BBC depuis une douzaine d’années, ce qui ne l’empêche pas de composer et de remporter de nombreuses distinctions internationales, en particulier pour ses œuvres chorales - dans la lignée des grands musiciens de chœur anglaise - que chantent tous les plus grands ensembles britanniques et continentaux. Son langage musical, tonal mais pas trop, moderne sans être radical-boulézien, beau sans jamais être “facile”, se situe sur une ligne tracée entre Holst et Britten en passant par Vaughan Williams, Byrd, Pärt, Tallis, et certains quartiers de Harlem - une ligne singulièrement courbe, certes, mais parfaitement continue pour peu que l’on veuille bien la suivre. C’est Antony Pitts en personne qui dirige le chœur Tonus Peregrinus, qu’il a fondé en 1990.

on Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos

the first collection of Dunstable that truly makes clear what was different about his music” “English composer John Dunstable was the Beethoven of the fifteenth century, a transitional figure whose work swept away all that went before it... TONUS PEREGRINUS, a vocal ensemble made up of first-rank singers led by Pitts, address the considerable intricacies of this music with a deft touch and flawless intonation. The texture moves from anywhere between two to eight voices, but sounds neither asthmatically thin nor well-fed and tubby; throughout it is perfectly rounded, well balanced, and seems suspended in mid-air, just as cathedral music should sound. The Gloria and Credo “Jesu Christe Fili Dei” are given in particularly deep and moving performances... Notwithstanding the Orlando Consort and others who have interpreted his music, this seems like the first collection of Dunstable that truly makes clear what was different about his music versus that of his predecessors, or for that matter, successors. This is attributable to Pitts’ superb grasp of what makes Dunstable’s music tick. After some time spent immersed in John Dunstable: Sweet Harmony - masses and motets, one will hear the biting dissonances of Dunstable’s false relations as though they are consonant intervals, much as his audiences heard them in the early fifteenth century. John Dunstable: Sweet Harmony - masses and motets serves as a wonderful gateway to the music of the man who fostered the Renaissance. “ (read more...)

on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos

one of the very best recorded options ever made for this music” “...a group of expert singers...TONUS PEREGRINUS, under the direction of Antony Pitts,...emphasizes the importance of skilled solo singers in this literature by inaugurating the disc with an outstanding rendering of Perotin’s monophonic conductus setting of Beata viscera, sung magnificently by Rebecca Hickey......TONUS PEREGRINUS marries these principles to a setting of Psalm 115, Non nobis domine, and in some places the voices seem to lift into the stratosphere - it is a truly ‘heavenly effect’ that has to be heard to be believed. In works by Léonin and Pérotin, the Organum travels at the same speed as the plainchant, a radically different approach from virtually all other choirs, which tend to perform the Organum at a faster clip as opposed to the chant. It makes a huge difference in the sound of the composition, and makes total sense in terms of realizing this style......the manifestation of the Organa in Leonin/Perotin: Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral is redolent with the atmosphere we know from the books, architecture, and painting of that distant time, and is one of the very best recorded options ever made for this music.” (read more...)

on Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos

Following their excellent survey of the Notre-Dame school TONUS PEREGRINUS release this showcase for one of English music’s giants... There are very few CDs of his music in catalogue, so this one is doubly welcome......the structural adventurousness is unalloyed Dunstaple, and Antony Pitts talks us through the subtle complexities of his rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal explorations in the informative booklet. Ultimately, of course, it is not the technical inventiveness that involves us, but the beauty and the mystery of the sound...;on these counts both the compositions and TONUS PEREGRINUS’s performances score highly

Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony

Pitts “...striking use of dynamic and spatial effects. The performances are excellent.

on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873, programmed and conducted by Simon Halsey)

to keep the best to last: that is XL, an impressively inventive and resourceful companion to Spem by Antony Pitts

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

striking use of dynamic and spatial effects. The performances are excellent.

on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873) performed by the Berlin Radio Choir / Simon Halsey

helped by imaginative surround sound and rich choral singing, [the disc] is crowned by Antony Pitts’s Tallis-inspired XL.” ON AN OVERGROWN PATH theovergrownpath.blogspot.com 18 August 2005 on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873) etc: “Great news for new music. Yesterday on an overgrown path was read by more people than on any day since it started twelve months ago. And what attracted that record number of readers at a time when many are taking a well deserved holiday? - two posts about contemporary composers Odaline de la Martinez and Antony Pitts....the bottom line is that those two new music posts attracted more readers than Leonard Bernstein, Jacques Loussier, or those BBC Beethoven MP3 files. That’s great news for all of us who are rooting for new music.” BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE August 2005 - Choral & Song Choice “An utterly beguiling introduction to Léonin and Pérotin” on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “...none of the available collections, I think, quite matches the approach of this album in the way it helps the listener make connections between the different forms of organum......Scholarly the approach may be, but dry it ain’t.....on the contrary, this is an ideal introduction to this music, better even - and I thought I’d never say this - than David Munrow’s Music of the Gothic Era. The clarity, balance, sensitivity and sheer beauty of the performances makes for an utterly beguiling 70 minutes, from the opening Beata viscera, a lovely solo by soprano Rebecca Hickey, to the final four-part compositions.” THE GRAMOPHONE August 2005 - Editor’s Choice on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “Gloriously sung by this superb choir, Antony Pitts’s collection of choral music has the potential to be a real runaway success. His is a compositional voice of real personality and imagination (no surprise to those of us who have admired Pitts’s work as a truly original producer at BBC Radio 3...) Beautifully recorded, here’s a collection of new music that has immediate appeal without ever relaxing into the ‘easy’ or the saccharine.” THE TELEGRAPH 6 August 2005 - Classical CD of the Week on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “Building a programme of music around a non-musical concept may or may not work in practice, but this utterly spellbinding disc is a fine example of how successful such a project can be. It relates the increasing complexity and sophistication of the music written for the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris during the later 12th century to the contemporaneous stages of its construction. This is truly great music. Rebecca Hickey brings a beautiful tenderness and sense of wonder to Pérotin’s unaccompanied single-line Beata viscera. The disc also reveals Léonin’s varied and fascinating exploration of the possibilities of two-part writing, and the overwhelming grandeur and mind-boggling intricacies in Pérotin’s monumental four-part settings of Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes. TONUS PEREGRINUS sing with forthright confidence and a strong sense of rhythmic purpose, in both lilting triple-time passages and more harmonically static sections, which develop an almost hypnotic quality. They communicate their infectious enthusiasm for this distant sound-world, and recreate it most persuasively.

Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony

Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “...the originality and inventiveness of the music bowled me over......I need not stress that this group delivers immaculate performances of these works coupled with Hyperion’s usual taste for the unusual and outstanding engineering; this is a disc to treasure.” ON AN OVERGROWN PATH theovergrownpath.blogspot.com 26 July 2005 on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “Antony Pitts seems to be having the last laugh on the Jerry Springer – The Opera affair as his highly acclaimed new work Seven Letters is a choral setting of St John’s damning indictment of the depravity of the first-century church in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelation...” ON AN OVERGROWN PATH theovergrownpath.blogspot.com 26 July 2005 on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “This budget priced CD is one of the most rewarding I’ve heard for years......The opening track with Rebecca Hickey singing Perotin’s Beata viscera contains six minutes of the most ravishing sounds you will ever hear...” SEQUENZA 21 www.sequenza21.com 26 July 2005 Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507) BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE Proms 2005 on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873) programmed and conducted by Simon Halsey: “...to keep the best to last: that is XL, an impressively inventive and resourceful companion to Spem by Antony Pitts...” CLASSICS TODAY July/August 2005 on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873) conducted by Simon Halsey: artistique 10/10 technique “XL, pour choeur extra-large! XL, pour 40, 40 comme le nombre de voix du célèbre motet de Tallis, Spem in alium. XL, titre d’une ambitieuse partition chorale du compositeur anglais Antony Pitts (né en 1969), en hommage à Tallis, son glorieux prédécesseur à la Chapelle Royale. Cet enregistrement devrait faire date dans le répertoire choral. Le SACD est techniquement réussi: cinq configurations différentes ont été adoptées, en fonction de l’agencement spatial des compositions, les possesseurs d’installations multicanal apprécieront!...L’oeuvre de Pitts est fort intéressante, lisible et par moments hyper-expressive, notamment la troisième partie qui explose sur les paroles “et dedit in ore meo”....La prise de son contribue à ce résultat étonnant......XL, comme excellence!” (Sylvain Gasser) INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW July/August 2005 on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “...it is enormously encouraging that every bar of his music is eminently singable......he is, undoubtedly, a serious and committed composer, and the quality of the singing here is quite outstanding.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

the originality and inventiveness of the music bowled me over... this is a disc to treasure.

on XL (Harmonia Mundi HMC801873, conducted by Simon Halsey)

XL, pour choeur extra-large ! XL, pour 40, 40 comme le nombre de voix du célèbre motet de Tallis, Spem in alium. XL, titre d’une ambitieuse partition chorale du compositeur anglais Antony Pitts (né en 1969), en hommage à Tallis, son glorieux prédécesseur à la Chapelle Royale. Cet enregistrement devrait faire date dans le répertoire choral. Le SACD est techniquement réussi: cinq configurations différentes ont été adoptées, en fonction de l’agencement spatial des compositions, les possesseurs d’installations multicanal apprécieront! ...L’oeuvre de Pitts est fort intéressante, lisible et par moments hyper-expressive, notamment la troisième partie qui explose sur les paroles “et dedit in ore meo”. ...La prise de son contribue à ce résultat étonnant... ...XL, comme excellence!

on Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos

8.557341):

rating 9/10 “John who? For many years we were not even sure of his name as it is sometimes given as Dunstaple. Likewise, we do not even know for certain when he was born. Some time round 1390 seems most likely. So why should we care? Can you name an English composer earlier than Dunstable? And he is of more than local interest as he is arguably the forefather of the musical Renaissance......Under Antony Pitts TONUS PEREGRINUS have become a leading vocal ensemble and present Dunstable’s work as beautifully as we could wish. The booklet notes are informative and the price is generous so there is no good reason not to investigate further.” OXFORD TODAY Michaelmas Term 2005 on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507) and Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “...The discs cover music 800 years apart. Pitts’ own works ( CDA67507 ) display a remarkable control of structure and a gift for striking musical phrases (like the one pervading Adoro Te ). The music has the cold fire of the ascetic; dissonance floods across pure lines like sudden wind across clear water... Pitts’ disc of the earliest Western polyphony, by Leonin and others ( 8.557340 ) is likewise superbly sung

Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony

Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): rating 10/10 “A number of contemporary composers are exploring early music as a source of inspiration, among them Arvo Pärt. Antony Pitts is clearly influenced by Pärt’s ideas and if you like Pärt, you’ll probably like this too. The pieces set texts from St Thomas Aquinas, the Gospels, Revelation, Angelus Silesius and the Advent ‘O’ Antiphons to shifting choral harmonies sung exquisitely by TONUS PEREGRINUS. All eight are soloists in their own right and won acclaim with Pitts for their award-winning recording of Pärt’s Passio on Naxos. The voices are unaccompanied throughout but the texture is rich. I imagine these pieces are difficult to learn but oh so rewarding to sing once it all falls into place. I particularly like The First and Last which has hymnic qualities and a decidedly hummable melody. I’ve played this CD a lot and expect to play it a good many times more.” EARLY MUSIC TODAY October/November 2005 FRONT COVER FEATURE on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340) and Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “...with the high-profile resignation from the BBC over its Springer television broadcast behind him, [Antony Pitts] is immersed in a series of Naxos recordings examining landmarks in choral history with his vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS. And landmarks don’t come much more dramatic than that represented in the music written by Léonin and Pérotin for Notre-Dame......the sound is bright and clear, blessed with that floaty Chancelade Abbey acoustic......the haunting sounds of sopranos Joanna Forbes and Rebecca Hickey provide some of the most memorable moments. In the Naxos/TONUS PEREGRINUS pipeline are CDs devoted to such projects as masses of John Dunstable and music by Gibbons. Intriguingly, Hyperion have just released the recording which in fact first attracted Naxos chief Klaus Heymann to TONUS PEREGRINUS - an album of music by Pitts himself focused on his Seven Letters, claimed as perhaps ‘the only choral setting of St John’s damning indictment of the 1st-century Church in Asia Minor.’ That Pitts. Just can’t keep away from controversy.” MUSICWEB www.musicweb-international.com September 2005 RECORDING OF MONTH on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “...recorded by the nine-strong group TONUS PEREGRINUS. It follows their wonderful recording of the Missa Tournai which came out last year. This disc has proved to be even better. In fact it is one of the most intriguing discs of 12th/13th-century music issued for some time......TONUS PEREGRINUS have a new approach, in fact several new approaches. These throw new light on this repertoire and make for a fascinating and generous seventy minutes of listening......an ideal acoustic with real atmosphere. It is also aided by superb singing which is not only powerful but also sensitive to dynamic variation......a terrific sense of accumulating architecture.......a simple and moving unaccompanied performance of Perotin’s Beata Viscera by the perfect Rebecca Hickey......The CD booklet is a model of its kind. All tracks are clearly explained. There is a superb introductory explanation by an expert... To sum up. A wonderful seventy minutes of the earliest polyphonic music known in Europe. Praise cannot be high enough for the entire project and team. One of my recordings of the year so far. You should go out and buy it instantly.” (read more...)

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507); constituent works: Adoro Te, O Wisdom of God

A number of contemporary composers are exploring early music as a source of inspiration, among them Arvo Pärt. Antony Pitts is clearly influenced by Pärt’s ideas and if you like Pärt, you’ll probably like this too... I particularly like The First and Last which has hymnic qualities and a decidedly hummable melody. I’ve played this CD a lot and expect to play it a good many times more.

on Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (Naxos

8.557341):

The singing of the stratospherically high solo voices in the Sanctus (sine nomine) is stunning, but the star of the show is the newly-deciphered canonic Gloria with its splendid passing dissonances. The ensemble has a highly developed sense of line (which allows the music time to speak), as well as of ensemble; and if the voice types aren’t always a complete match, the sound is ravishing.” FANFARE November/December 2005 on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340): “We have heard this vocal group in a Mass of Tournai with the anonymous St. Luke Passion, a juxtaposition of French and English music of the late Middle Ages, and Arvo Pärt’s Passio at the other end of the millennium. Now they have turned to an even earlier period, Notre-Dame polyphony, using new editions made by Antony Pitts, the director of the ensemble. Eight adult mixed voices make up the group, singing in octaves in the chant Viderunt which precedes the two-voice setting, which is then followed by the four-voice setting attributed (by Anonymus IV) to Perotinus....Three of the seven pieces named by Anonymus IV as works of Perotinus are included on this disc, including the two masterpieces for four voices that are connected with events of 1198 and 1199... These relaxed performances seem less intense than the previous recordings that have been successive hallmarks of the repertoire. The sound of mixed voices, which would never have been heard in Notre Dame at the time, is a problem. So are the dates assigned to each name, which are speculative and undocumented, hence can be misleading even if “flourished”; and “circa”; are added to the dates. The disc was produced by Jeremy Summerly, exactly a year before he made the new Tallis disc with his old ensemble. The venue was Chancelade abbey in the Dordogne, a wonderfully reverberant space not known before as a recording site... Despite the caveats, this is a marvelous disc.” (J. F. Weber) (read more...) FANFARE November/December 2005 on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “...As the comparisons with Pärt and Lauridsen suggest, Pitts’s harmonic language is rich with added seconds and piquant cross-relations-though the earliest piece, The First and Last, is robustly, joyously triadic, and I for one hope that Pitts hasn’t revoked his self-granted permission to write in this mode when he feels like it. Most of the music on this program is performed one to a part; in this context, unlike a larger ensemble, one expects individual voices to be discernable, but still sufficiently well matched in strength and timbre as to produce a seamless musical fabric. I cannot find even the tiniest fault with TONUS PEREGRINUS in this respect....My first impulse on hearing this disc was to commend it unreservedly to each and every man, woman, and child on the planet, including those who think they don’t like religious music, choral music, or music... Heatedly recommended.” (read more...)

on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340) and Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

with the high-profile resignation from the BBC over its Springer television broadcast behind him, [Antony Pitts] is immersed in a series of Naxos recordings examining landmarks in choral history with his vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS... That Pitts. Just can’t keep away from controversy.

on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340); constituent work: The Mass of Tournai recording (Naxos 8.555860)

We have heard this vocal group in a Mass of Tournai with the anonymous St. Luke Passion, a juxtaposition of French and English music of the late Middle Ages, and Arvo Pärt’s Passio at the other end of the millennium. Now they have turned to an even earlier period, Notre-Dame polyphony, using new editions made by Antony Pitts, the director of the ensemble... Despite the caveats, this is a marvelous disc.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

As the comparisons with Pärt and Lauridsen suggest, Pitts’s harmonic language is rich with added seconds and piquant cross-relations... My first impulse on hearing this disc was to commend it unreservedly to each and every man, woman, and child on the planet... Heatedly recommended.

A composer on a spiritual quest who’s found the near-perfect singers for it” Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts (Hyperion CDA67507): “The Amen motet, two separate four-part groups of singers sharing the single word for almost nine minutes, comes at the end of this recital and impresses as a summation of Antony Pitts’ work as represented. It seems rhapsodic but is carefully structured: a rich harmonic and contrapuntal score that always engages and can entrance......Pitts has also a fund of lively musical ideas. In the Seven Letters a solo voice (different each time) takes up the epistle’s text while the other singers may hold a chord or punctuate with a monosyllabic or a staccato commentary; and then often a particularly lovely effect is achieved as all eight parts enter in fluid polyphony......TONUS PEREGRINUS is a double quartet of expert singers brought together by the composer. With firm, fresh voices and precise intonation, and almost (not quite) invariably sensitive to balance, they sound as ideal a group.....as he is likely to find this side of the Heaven to which so much of his music aspires.” (John Steane)

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

The Amen motet, two separate four-part groups of singers sharing the single word for almost nine minutes, comes at the end of this recital and impresses as a summation of Antony Pitts’ work as represented... TONUS PEREGRINUS is a double quartet of expert singers brought together by the composer.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

Gloriously sung by this superb choir, Antony Pitts’s collection of choral music has the potential to be a real runaway success. His is a compositional voice of real personality and imagination (no surprise to those of us who have admired Pitts’s work as a truly original producer at BBC Radio 3...) Beautifully recorded, here’s a collection of new music that has immediate appeal without ever relaxing into the ‘easy’ or the saccharine.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

it is enormously encouraging that every bar of his music is eminently singable... he is, undoubtedly, a serious and committed composer, and the quality of the singing here is quite outstanding.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts

(Hyperion CDA67507):

This collection of pieces indicates that Antony Pitts is an original and thoughtful composer with his own distinctive voice. His music is accessible but I should imagine it makes considerable demands on the performers, not that you’d be aware of that while listening to the assured singing of Tonus Peregrinus. Pitts writes well for the human voice and, crucially, has a discerning eye for a text and for verbal imagery. This is an interesting and satisfying disc, which I’m very happy to recommend.

on Leonin / Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral (Naxos 8.557340); constituent work: The Mass of Tournai recording (Naxos 8.555860)

recorded by the nine-strong group TONUS PEREGRINUS... one of the most intriguing discs of 12th/13th-century music issued for some time... One of my recordings of the year so far. You should go out and buy it instantly.

on O Love (op.129), from Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

O Love is a setting of a seventeenth-century text. The music is in an infectiously lilting triple time and the main melody, given to the sopranos, seems to spiral ever higher.

on XL / blog coverage mentioning Antony Pitts as a contemporary composer (not a substantive critique of the music itself)

Great news for new music. Yesterday on an overgrown path was read by more people than on any day since it started twelve months ago. And what attracted that record number of readers at a time when many are taking a well deserved holiday? - two posts about contemporary composers Odaline de la Martinez and Antony Pitts. ...the bottom line is that those two new music posts attracted more readers than Leonard Bernstein, Jacques Loussier, or those BBC Beethoven MP3 files. That’s great news for all of us who are rooting for new music.

on Seven Letters and other sacred choral music (Hyperion CDA67507)

Antony Pitts seems to be having the last laugh on the Jerry Springer – The Opera affair as his highly acclaimed new work Seven Letters is a choral setting of St John’s damning indictment of the depravity of the first-century church in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelation

on Adoro Te (Seven Letters and other sacred choral music, Hyperion CDA67507)

The discs cover music 800 years apart. Pitts’ own works (CDA67507) display a remarkable control of structure and a gift for striking musical phrases (like the one pervading Adoro Te). The music has the cold fire of the ascetic; dissonance floods across pure lines like sudden wind across clear water... Pitts’ disc of the earliest Western polyphony, by Leonin and others (8.557340) is likewise superbly sung

on The Naxos Book of Carols (predecessor book/score to The Patmos Book of Carols)

The record label Naxos... has collaborated with Faber Music and the professional chamber choir TONUS PEREGRINUS in this venture... A good amateur choir will easily be able to perform these pieces.

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

These new arrangements, interspersed with a small number of originals, have been commissioned especially for this recording from the director of the eight part vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS, Antony Pitts. Organised as an Advent sequence with a carol for each day, the twenty-four carols are bracketed into four groups, The Hope, The Message, The Baby and The King of Kings....With an eye on the lucrative seasonal music market amongst amateur choirs, the music is all down-loadable via the Faber Music website.....a disc that is a pleasure to listen to for the quality of the singing alone....In O quickly come, a quirky little original in 7/8 time, the detailed counterpoint is strikingly effective and whilst no doubt tricky to sing (TONUS PEREGRINUS make it sound admirably easy with diction of the highest quality) I can see this becoming a popular addition to the seasonal choral repertoire. In similar fashion Ding! Dong! merrily on high features some athletic and admirably well-articulated singing, the semi quaver runs that abound being heard with crystal precision......I particularly enjoyed the more familiar Personent hodie, Pitts weaving In dulci jubilo into the organ part of the final verse whilst a sparklingly joyful realisation of Good King Wenceslas also works particularly well

on A Pebble in the Pond on BBC Radio 3

this richly dazzling piece of radio

on A Strange Eventful History on BBC Radio 3

Last night’s Between the Ears (Radio 3), A Strange Eventful History, was a weird melee, possibly best enjoyed, like much late night on this network, not completely compos. The seven ages of man, as delineated by Jacques in As You Like It.....The hero of the programme was, of course, the oldest man, a veteran soldier.....He had never given death a thought before reaching 90 and now anticipated the Second Coming first. ‘I firmly believe in the Coming of the Lord. When that happens, things will change a great deal.’ Indeed. At one point, he suddenly asked the producer how old he was. ‘Thirty-five.’’Thirty-five? Oh yes,’ the veteran said, knowledgeably. At the very end, he was heard suddenly asking: ‘It’s the first time you’ve done this sort of thing, is it?’ Marvellous.” CHOIR & ORGAN September/October 2004 on book (score) of The Naxos Book of Carols: “The record label Naxos, which with its competitive prices and wide repertoire has already proved its power to reach parts of the retail market that other classical labels can only dream of, has collaborated with Faber Music and the professional chamber choir TONUS PEREGRINUS in this venture, partially launched last Christmas and now come to full fruition......These 24 carols, presented in groupings telling the Nativity story chronologically were released on CD last year, performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS for whom they were written or arranged by the group’s director Antony Pitts. Through a page on Faber’s website audio samples of the carols could [ and can still ] be heard or sheet music of individual pieces downloaded for £10 per carol. Now the complete collection has been published in a single volume book and CD package, at the excellent price of £9.95 for one, or £79.95 for 10-packs (each book still coming with CD)......A good amateur choir will easily be able to perform these pieces. Less confident singers are unlikely to be intimidated by the task of learning a handful of the arrangements within a few weeks in preparation for a Christmas service or concert, and the accompaniments are not difficult - although for pianists with small hands there are a few awkward stretches, and keyboard players who are used to getting through Christmas on auto pilot will have to keep their wits about them......Whether a few of these carols are interspersed with seasonal music by other composers, or whether they form a Pitts Nine Lessons and Carols the results should be refreshing and rewarding.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Best Choice)

This is truly a painstaking recording with the composer making detailed clarifications to the recorded disc from the Naxos studio resulting in a finished definit[iv]e performance on all counts. This choral work has very little of the traditional structure about it and has the genuine power to enthrall and shock even on first listen.....The performance is heroic and this must be essential listening for 2003.

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

Naxos Records took a forward-looking step, commissioning an Advent Sequence of Carols from Antony Pitts and his very talented group, Tonus Peregrinus. Pitts took his commission—and using 23 canonical carols and one of his his own, rearranged them, re-realized them, and grouped them into four sequences, each focusing on a different portion of the Christmas story. These arrangements are intended for widespread use and are available online and, for the most part, do not stray from the soprano, alto, tenor, baritone paradigm.....Collectively, this sequence of carols is almost an assembled oratorio, expertly dissolved in the Spirit. Maestro Pitts’ arrangements never stray too far from the collective unconscious, but there are several startling reworkings. The Holly and the Ivy juxtaposes the original melody with one of earlier and simpler origin. Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night provided new harmonies above and beyond the standard to great effect. Pitts shows the same harmonic courage as his predecessors Tallis and Wright and later, Walton and Holst. And, indeed, it is Antony Pitts’ informed scoring and composition that makes this set the treasure it is. This is perhaps best illustrated in the fourth sequence in the fabulously angular readings In Dulci Jubilo and Good King Wenceslas. The Naxos Book of Carols makes a superb addition to the holiday carol canon..” THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 21 December 2003 Nicholas Lezard on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction: “The arrangement of Away in a Manger had discovered some rather interesting new harmonies - it turned out it was by Antony Pitts of TONUS PEREGRINUS, who has remarkable ways with music

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

We are all, as a Chinese fortune cookie has doubtless observed, selectively ignorant, but no record label in recent years has done more to illuminate this truth than Naxos, with its burgeoning catalogue of worthwhile music long ago consigned to silence. The 14th century Mass of Tournai and the 15th-century St Luke Passion represent respectively the earliest complete polyphonic settings of the Ordinary of the Mass and the Passion narrative (taken from St. Luke’s Gospel), yet who, today, save a few specialists, knows these anonymous late-medieval masterworks? On this recording, the six movements of the Mass of Tournai are heard without intervening plainchant to aid appreciation of the music’s diversity and the splendid eight voice New College, Oxford, TONUS PEREGRINUS deliberately varies the ensemble colour in the Passion to highlight expressive demands. Congratulations to Antony Pitts and his expert singers.

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

This is another very enterprising disc from Naxos which couples the earliest-known polyphonic Mass setting with the earliest-known setting of the St Luke Passion. Both have been recorded before...but this recording provides worthy competition for those past efforts.....The choir has to cope with a variety of styles from the switchback, archaic rhythms of the Kyrie (snappily done, and with nice dynamic contrast) to the complex melismas of the Amen at the end of the Gloria (performed with captivating excitement)

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

Antony Pitts’s swift, agile direction draws engagingly elegant, eloquent performances from his singers and musicians in a beautifully framed recording. Powerful and persuasive.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

This superb first budget version.....I realised, even before listening, when I read Antony Pitts’ notes that I was about to hear a great interpretation. Pitts, who directs his TONUS PEREGRINUS (“wandering tone”) group with a vision that recalls that of his producer Jeremy Summerly’s excellent discs for the same label with the Oxford Camerata, interviewed Pärt for BBC Radio 3 in 2000. Like Paul Hillier before him, he has an acute awareness of what Pärt is about, musically speaking, and this could be one of Naxos’s most important releases to date. The original recording on ECM [...] is a classic but there are things here that do tangibly improve upon it.....You ought to hear it and Antony Pitts has provided you with the perfect opportunity. Perhaps if our supposedly religiously motivated leaders listened to this tonight they may act differently tomorrow. I wish.

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

Naxos have invited Antony Pitts to blow the cobwebs from familiar festive season music and to bring this fresh look to the new Naxos Book of Carols, with a volume added each year. The recording features a wide range of styles from the red-blooded O come, O come, via the Early Music view of Alleluya, to the spiritual setting of O little town of Bethlehem. I very much enjoy Pitts’s rather ‘tongue-in-cheek’ approach to many of the best-known melodies. They open traditionally enough but change to something very different as the work progresses. Try track 5, Lo! He comes, for a particularly good example. When you have enjoyed the disc you can download the music from the Naxos and Faber Music websites; the music will be available from Faber in sheet form by next Christmas. Excellent news for choirs looking for something new, though Pitts at times will test your skills, as TONUS PEREGRINUS found out in Ding! Dong! Merrily. Very good sound quality, and its going to be a top seller..

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

I enjoyed the Mass very much. Compared with other performances, it sounds more like a piece of music and less like a historical demonstration, and the music benefits from it.....Most of the Passion is chant, nicely sung by Benjamin Rayfield (Evangelist) and Francis Brett (Christ).....The minimal music is there to give a religious, not a musical experience. But the disc is so cheap that it shouldn’t be a deterrent, and it may ease insomnia, relieve stress or convert you to Christianity.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

a deeply moving, intimate performance which...captures the spiritual authority of the biblical text......the sound engineers have done a brilliant job in the acoustic of St Peter and St Paul’s at Dorchester-on-Thames with Pitts securing a wonderful sound from choir and soloists. If you still haven’t dipped your toe into Arvo Pärt’s extraordinary sound-world, this is the ideal starting-point

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Editor’s Choice)

Antony Pitts’s TONUS PEREGRINUS deliver an elegantly agile and eloquent performance of depth and distinction...” (review): “...An ascetic spiritual journey, pared to the musical bone but extraordinarily powerful. Fine singing and first-rate sound.....Antony Pitts comes up trumps. His is an excellent reading, always alert to Pärt’s shifting harmonic plane and with consistently fresh voices, the women especially.....Viewed overall, TONUS PEREGRINUS and Naxos have done Pärt proud. If this is your first Passio, rest assured that all the essentials are there

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

A new release from Naxos, targeted at the classy end of the annual end-of-year spending spree, drops the usual carbon-copy Naxos cover design, adopting instead a gold-on-black presentation and a classiness which permeates the whole package: the brilliant idea, the new arrangements of traditional tunes (one for each of the twenty four days of Advent), heavenly performances by the eight singers of TONUS PEREGRINUS, and the accompanying dedicated website with downloadable scores (in association with Faber Music). Four groups of carols -- The Hope, The Message, The Baby and The King of Kings focus on different parts of the story of the birth of Christ, breathing new life into traditional settings. For example, taking the boredom out of endless verses repeatedly sung to the same tune, Pitts, in the opening O come, o come, Emmanuel, sends his performers on a two thousand year journey through Western harmony as the eight verses unfold......The arrangements are all by Antony Pitts, commissioned specially by Naxos for the CD, and are sometimes jazzy and often contemporary in feel. Two of the tracks contain not arrangements, but brand new carols: O quickly come and the final track, Hail to the Lord’s Anointed. This is a setting of James Montgomery (after Psalm 72), which ends on the word ‘love’ and a soaring soprano final high D that could almost be a Messiaenic ondes martenot. In its various musical forms, that priceless two-thousand-year-old message doesn’t get any clearer than this! This scholarly yet sublimely joyful recording is dedicated to the world’s victims of persecution and to those who can’t worship or sing freely, and will make a delightful and magnificent stocking-filler!

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (Album of the Week)

Radio Three producer and conductor Antony Pitts has invested heavily in preparing the score and his impressive vocal ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS for this Naxos release.....Pitts consulted the composer about his exact intentions and shapes [a] powerfully direct performance as a result. The title is backed by a national poster campaign and full-page ads in the classical press

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

Altogther more interesting to me was The Naxos Book of Carols, a project entrusted to Antony Pitts and his TONUS PEREGRINUS, a group of individual musicians ‘each forging their own diverse careers’, which was founded at New College Oxford......It is a unified ‘concept’ collection, an Advent Sequence in well structured groups, The Hope; The Message; The Baby and The King of Kings. Some of the carols are composed, and many are arranged cleverly, by Antony Pitts, with plenty of solo contributions for the members of TONUS PEREGRINUS, some of the tracks judiciously supported by the organ, which provides variety and helps to shape the sequences. There are good notes by Antony Pitts, who dedicates this admirable disc to ‘victims of persecution - - unable to sing and worship freely’. Choirs around the country will probably want to tackle some of these carols, and they can download the Faber scores inexpensively from www.naxoscarols.com. And the CD, lavishly presented with full texts and coloured illustrations, is - of course - only £4.99!

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

Here’s an interesting idea! Naxos and Faber Music have invited Antony Pitts, the director of TONUS PEREGRINUS, to revisit the traditional carol repertoire and assemble a collection of new arrangements or, in a couple of cases, brand new settings. The music for all the items can be downloaded (via www.naxoscarols.com ) until January for £10 per carol, a price that includes permission to make a limited number of copies [30] for choir members.....this is a most imaginative way of disseminating new Christmas music....the first thing to say is that, without exception, the performances by the eight voices of TONUS PEREGRINUS are very fine. The voices blend beautifully, balance is excellent and diction and tuning are exemplary......Pitts’ arrangement of The holly and the ivy is especially ingenious for he combines the very familiar tune with another much less well-known (and very good) one, which, in fact, was transcribed from a tape held by the BBC......Here is an expertly performed, generously filled CD recorded in good sound at a super budget price.....In addition, the musical downloads are offered at what seems to me to be a very reasonable price. So this is not just ‘another’ CD of carols. It’s an inexpensive and enjoyable way for singers to explore new repertoire and for that all involved in the project deserve congratulations....I recommend this CD, especially to all those who will be planning their 2004 carol concerts rather sooner than they might wish!

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

This Naxos disc stands out from the crowd. Naxos offer something distinctive as concept and in detail. They offer 24 carols one for each day of Advent. Each is recorded in a version arranged by the conductor and composer Antony Pitts. His choir TONUS PEREGRINUS comprise only eight singers. Naxos commissioned these arrangement especially for this recording and the scores are downloadable from www.naxoscarols.com in affiliation with Faber Music. The disc is at bargain price and is exceptional value at a playing time of 78.59. A well judged blend of new and old is to be found here. Even the old is given freshness by Pitts’ touches and twists of harmony, texture and tempo. The chaste O come O come is redolent of Dufay and Busnois (tr. 1). Rocking celebration is to be found in the Father’s Heart begotten. The spiritual-Tippett flavour resounds through O quickly come...... Silent Night has a suitably sleepy poise - all the trappings of tradition without complete subjugation to the style. Many of these tracks give the impression of tracking the evolution of carols fifty years from now. Away in a manger is subject to harmonic diffraction and strange juxtapositions. The Czech Baby Jesus... arrives in a lovingly melismatic haze. O Little Town is presented with chiming organ and has the memorably quiet touch of the Mike Sammes Singers - nothing wrong with a caramel moment. Other tracks offer am agreeable ‘wrong note’ aural disorientation and strangeness - like a vision of carols from some alternative universe. Pitts defiantly refuses to be thrall to tradition but bends it to his will.....This collection will suit anyone wanting a variant spin on their seasonal musical fare......predominantly this is an anthology for those jaded by convention.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

TONUS PEREGRINUS is a fine ensemble, exhibiting spotless intonation, and a clear sense of the rhythmic ebb and flow of the text. The Evangelist quartet singing is excellent, with careful attention to detail, and spot-on choices in dynamics, articulation and phrasing.....Sound quality is excellent. Naxos’s engineers capture the warm and lengthy reverberation of the church of St Peter and St Paul beautifully. There are now three commercial recordings of this fine work in circulation, and this one is certainly world class. Naxos have gone out of their way to present this recording in fine packaging with a simple yet profound sleeve cover, and the notes by the conductor are superb...” musicweb.uk.net “Musically speaking, this could be one of Naxos’s most important releases to date. Passio is music that takes us far beyond everyday mundanities, to the true meaning of life (and death).....You ought to hear it and Antony Pitts has provided you with the perfect opportunity.” classicstoday.com “You won’t really go wrong with this excellently performed Passio (even more attractive at its budget price).

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

For this inspiring new album, the composer Antony Pitts has made arrangements that refresh the tunes of well-known carols and puts them into four narrative sequences to tell the complete Christmas story. The carols, one chosen for each day in Advent, range from some of our most famous tunes to less familiar mediaeval items, as well as brand new music that includes a delightful setting of O little town of Bethlehem by John Pitts. Naxos and Faber Music have made the sheet music for these new carols available for download through a special website ( www.naxoscarols.com ) and the scores of all 24 carols will be available in printed form from Faber Music. The excellent TONUS PEREGRINUS ensemble was founded by Antony Pitts while studying at New College, Oxford, and the group had a huge success with its début disc of Arvo Pärt’s Passio..

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (CD of the Month)

this recording by the ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS and Antony Pitts captures a thrilling performance of a modern masterpiece.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

Recorded in the resonant acoustics of an English church, the dramatic work is beautifully performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS, an ensemble of eight voices and five instruments under the direction of Antony Pitts. Bass Robert MacDonald sings Jesus’ words with sepulchral tone. Tenor Mark Anderson brings vocal fire to the role of Pilate. Grade A.” -

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

Such a recommendable super-budget version as this is very welcome.....Antony Pitts draws from his [...] choir TONUS PEREGRINUS, as well as the soloists taking the roles of Christ and Pilate, a magnetic performance, atmospherically recorded in bright, clear sound...” (Edward Greenfield)

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (****)

reduced forces lend a clarity to the tutti sections that the Hilliard Ensemble’s 1988 ECM recording notably lacks, while Robert Macdonald’s tarred Jesus is simply stunning

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

Students of early music will relish the eerie beauties of these two anonymous works, performed with crystal clarity by the ever reliable (and pioneering) TONUS PEREGRINUS.....a rare collector’s item of hauntingly spare charm.” HMV CHOICE on recording of the Mass of Tournai: “...TONUS PEREGRINUS, an eight-strong vocal ensemble from Oxford, blow the dust from this archaic music and invoke images of cloistered courts and candlelit processions, ideal for meditation and relaxation.” AnchorCROSS RHYTHMS May/June 2003 on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio: “...Pitts is the founder and director of the Oxford ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS who do full justice to what is a difficult score. Robert Macdonald, the bass who sings the part of Jesus, is especially good. A brief review cannot do this work justice. Thanks to Naxos you can investigate this for yourself for less than £5.00. Please do so.” CHOIR & ORGAN May/June 2003 on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio: “...outstanding work by TONUS PEREGRINUS and Antony Pitts, whose combined talent for divinely pure sound seems rather wasted here

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (CD of the Week)

Exquisitely sung by the Oxford-bred group TONUS PEREGRINUS, with spare accompaniment under Antony Pitts.....this is your true ticket to rare oases of spiritual calm

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

The performance achieves utter luminosity.....This is a real winner in Naxos’s increasingly surprising, budget-priced catalogue.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

British ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS imbue their performance with delicacy and mystery

on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols

If you really must insist on hearing those old, traditional carols such as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and While Shepherds Watched, then I can do no better than refer you to yet another Naxos bargain, sung by the group TONUS PEREGRINUS, which gives a new and enticing slant to such pieces.” on recording of The Naxos Book of Carols (*** outstanding): “ The Christmas-carol season can signal weeks of musical tedium: the same old tunes, the same unvaried settings. For this unusual Christmas disc, Antony Pitts has tackled the problem head-on. All 24 carols are either his own arrangements or, in two cases, his own compositions. Pitts’s variants are original, sometimes even playful: it’s hard to resist the obsessive downward scales in Good King Wenceslas, for instance. And I suspect they’re eminently singable by good amateur choirs, though TONUS PEREGRINUS - just eight singers - perform everything with polish as well as affection.

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

Two firsts here

on recording of the Mass of Tournai

This enterprising disc brings together the earliest known cycle of polyphonic Mass movements, written for the cathedral at Tournai in Belgium in the early 14th Century, together with the first surviving Passion setting to include composed music as well as plainchant.....TONUS PEREGRINUS sing with a freshness and enthusiasm that bring this very early music to life so engagingly as to captivate even those coming to it for the first time. Their performance of the early-15th-century English St Luke Passion is equally persuasive. Despite its apparent simplicity, there is a moving and dramatic combination of beautifully paced plainchant, sung by Benjamin Rayfield as the Evangelist and Francis Brett as Jesus, and subtly characterised polyphonic settings of the words of other individuals and the crowd. Congratulations to Naxos for making this very fine music available at an irresistably affordable price.

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio

Mark Anderson’s more expressive tenor takes care of Pilate.....the Naxos disc should reward many buyers

preview of highlights for 2003, including the new release from Naxos of Arvo Pärt’s immense Passio performed by: “...that up-and-coming choir TONUS PEREGRINUS

onrecording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (CD of the Week): “...exquisitely sung

on recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio (published by Universal Edition)

The young members of TONUS PEREGRINUS have supplied us with a viable alternative to the Hilliard’s interpretation.....Like the Hilliards, TONUS PEREGRINUS are also well-versed in the music of the Middle Ages, and to my ears, their use of a slightly nasal-sounding vocal quality is perfect for Pärt’s sound-world...” “TONUS PEREGRINUS give us a fantastic, pure sound – almost raw at times – but wonderfully emotive.....all in all this is a recording of which both the performers and Naxos can be proud. Stylish and authentic

Review of the Year 2002: “Kick yourself if you missed: Antony Pitts’ extraordinary sound collage, A Parisian in Paradise, on Radio 3, in which Messiaen’s Vision de l’Amen was played around, over, and in between readings from The Magician’s Nephew, Le Petit Prince, extracts from wartime newsreels and the film A Matter of Life and Death. Mind-blowing.

on A Parisian in Paradise broadcast by BBC Radio 3

it was rather extraordinary.....I sat either slack-jawed in astonishment or emotion.....The whole programme left me quite entranced.....’it was brilliant’......And it worked.....it worked in terms of gluing me to my seat and, more remarkably, not sending my wife screaming out of the room.....it worked.” WINDS MAGAZINE Winter 2001 on A Partridge in A Pear-Tree in a CD-Player published by Faber Music in the Unbeaten Tracks collection for trumpet: “...result of Antony Pitts’ fascination with the rhythmical accents that are possible in a simple tune such as the well-known Christmas carol A Partridge in a Pear-Tree and also the odd jumping effects of a scratched CD!.....timely collection of very accessible, well-written contemporary solo pieces for trumpet

on Unfinished Symphony devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

Without any shadow of doubt the best company for New Year’s Eve

on Late Junction launched & frequently produced by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

a consistently intelligent and absorbing programme.....aural satisfaction.....extraordinarily eclectic mix.....blessed with a producer who has excellent taste,.....Radio Programme of the Year.

on Je, Guillaume broadcast by BBC Radio 3

Guillaume de Machaut still speaks to us today with extraordinary force.....with Antony Pitts’s Je, Guillaume last week.....a whole evening of musical, critical and impressionistically biographical material

on Unfinished Symphony devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

and congratulate the producer, Antony Pitts, on his heroic achievement.

on Cook’s Tour of The Unfinished Symphony devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

it wasn’t so much interesting, it was transfixing.....treating us as people who don’t actually think their brains are full yet..

on Je, Guillaume devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

There was not a boring moment in the two-and-three-quarter-hour programme

on Unfinished Symphony devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

truly special...For bare-faced cheek no one can touch him and if now he says he’ll give us Roget’s Thesaurus on a bus ticket I’ll believe him...this was serious radio.

on Unfinished Symphony devised by Antony Pitts for BBC Radio 3

There was, however, only one item that had the full measure of the occasion...which on New Year’s Eve chronicled 2,000 years of western music...an Everest

on Wigmore Hall compositional debut

Antony Pitts’s Credo had a voice reciting the Creed in English alongside a colourfully clustered setting in Latin

on music of Antony Pitts

Several very worthwhile items have recently been published by Faber...the harmonic progression of the first few bars is immediately arresting...what a rewarding experience a performance of this short work would be.

on radio piece by Antony Pitts

a concatenation of bells, voices, snippets of Beethoven, Brahms and Stravinsky, resounding from far and near

on radio production by Antony Pitts

entertainment of rare sophistication

on music of Antony Pitts

Pitts is able to shed new interpretative light on texts we often think we know well

interview with Antony Pitts

on Antony Pitts as composer & producer

dizzying textural pile-ups and naughty harmonic contradictions.....some of the most intricate and evocative in recent radio

on radio production by Antony Pitts

telling editorial juxtaposition...” THE SINGER June/July 1998 on the music of Antony Pitts: “...an idiom that combines elements from the English choral tradition with more recent sources

radio review: “...the creative Antony Pitts

on Gould, Tobacco, Bach by Antony Pitts and Matt Thompson broadcast by BBC Radio 3

Gould was, himself, a pioneer in making “experimental” radio programmes, and this one was worthy of his inspiration - brilliant both in multi-layered conception and technical execution: an obvious candidate for the Prix Italia.

on TONUS PEREGRINUS

the choir’s quality of intonation, balance, vivid tone colour, and enchanting, unforced top line.....invigorating singing of a high order.” on the music of Antony Pitts: “...a unique, strong, and, above all, spiritual voice seems to speak through.” GRAMOPHONE/EXPLORATIONS Summer 1997 article on new music & spirituality by Antony Pitts: “...the joys and trials of combining many melodic currents into a single musical stream

on challenge of digital broadcasting

Radio 3 has already broadcast Antony Pitts’s prize-winning programme Facing the Radio, which enabled listeners to contribute to the making of music on the radio via the Internet. For composers, digital technology and the Internet are new resources of great latent power...” OPUS Christmas 1996/New Year 1997 on Virtual Strangers: “...a rather surreal programme of music and poetry

on Composer of the Week: Guillaume de Machaut broadcast by BBC Radio 3

This astounding and, to modern ears, radical 14th-century master was brought to life by Antony Pitts and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson in a way that avoided elitism without becoming chatty, a definite plus at a time when Radio 3’s tone is under attack in some quarters. His love life and what we know of biographical facts leapt across the seven intervening centuries to touching effect

on Facing the Radio broadcast by BBC Radio 3

Musical listeners armed with the right technology will be able to contribute sound and Midi files via the Internet...Producer Antony Pitts wants listeners to contribute to a musical work by using their telephones to trigger samples in the studio ‘touch-tone jazz’, he calls it...The more serious purpose, he says, is to ‘challenge and question the future of radio broadcasting: how the listener is involved, what choice there is.’

on TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of music by Antony Pitts

the standout tracks for me....Antony Pitts’ setting of Psalm 139....where lyricism survives chromatic dislocation....This immensely enjoyable issue of Unknown Public is the most rewarding to date.” ANNUNCIATION Michaelmas 1990 on TONUS PEREGRINUS: “...a stunning performance.....overall effect was remarkable.....mind-blowing

on TONUS PEREGRINUS

devoted and, indeed, devotional performance...” DAILY INFORMATION 1990 on the music of Antony Pitts performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS: “...moments of poignancy and exhilaration.....I think it is likely that many people...would respond to the handling of some excellent melodic ideas.

on Alpha & Omega (Hyperion CDA67668) album guise

Antony Pitts and Tonus Peregrinus are probably best known for their series of excellent early music recordings for Naxos, showcasing such seminal figures as Léonin, Perotin, Adam de la Halle and Dunstaple; but with Hyperion they have embarked on a programme of recording works by Pitts himself, and Alpha and Omega is a companion album to Seven Letters (2005). Embracing both large public works (the a cappella coda for an oratorio, Jerusalem-Yerushalayim commissioned for a concert hall in Israel) and intimate occasions (the Sanctus and Benedictus were written for the silver wedding of Pitts’s parents), all the pieces here confirm the composer’s command of the entire history of choral music. The eight voices of Tonus Peregrinus take the range of harmonic environments, sinuous melodies and complex textures in their stride. The beauty of the choir’s sound is as impressive as its technical accomplishment, doing full justice to their director’s fascinating, inventive compositions.

on The Song Company’s Ordo Virtutum (Hildegard von Bingen) - supporting research context for Reflections on Hildegard, not a review of A6 itself

A committed and personal vision for the Middle Ages’ most celebrated visionary. ... The material ... is sung as an alternation between free ‘recitative’ style performance ... and the more metricalised performance of the Virtutes on the basis of what Pitts sees as the emergence of the modal style of rhythmic organisation.