Bach & Macmillan: Motets and Sacred Songs (Live)

Album review

Bach & MacMillan: Motets and Sacred Songs was recorded live at a concert in London during Holy Week, April 2023. Despite the eponymous group performing the famed ensemble Tenebrae, it is not a recording of a Tenebrae service, which is a part of Holy Week observances. The works on the program, however, do pertain to that particular liturgy.

Motets and Sacred Songs comprises performances, superb ones in gorgeous Hi-Res sound, of three motets by J S Bach, combined with Tenebrae responsories (commentaries in Latin on the Psalm readings which preceded them in the Tenebrae liturgy) in settings composed by the renowned Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan. The concert closes with MacMillan's setting of the poem, I Saw Eternity by the 18th century Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan.

The reader may be forgiven if the above described appears to be a hodge-podge: 18th century works in German by the Lutheran Bach juxtaposed with 21st century works in Latin and English by the Catholic Macmillan. Does it all work? Unfortunately, no.

While the individual pieces of Motets and Sacred Songs are lovely indeed, there is no discernible nexus between the two composers’ works. They stand awkwardly next to each other without a sense of a synthesis creating a single, unified whole.

Though an audacious suggestion, dividing the program into two parts—first Bach, then MacMillan—might have better presented the two composers' music.  For even though their works in Motets and Sacred Songs hardly fit like a glove, with their shared deep spirituality they certainly complement one another. © Anthony Fountain/Qobuz