Masters of Imitation

The Sixteen & Harry Christophers

Released on 3/1/24 by CORO
Main artists: The Sixteen Harry Christophers
Genre: Classical

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The remarkable durability of The Sixteen, coming up fast on its 50th anniversary when this album appeared in 2024, is due to a variety of factors, but one is certainly the skill of director Harry Christophers in devising programs that illuminate Renaissance and other repertory for general listeners. There are more precise choirs across the English landscape, but few have been so consistently fresh in their album concepts. Masters of Imitation offers an excellent example. The concept of imitation was central to the Renaissance repertory, but it has rarely been globally explored as Christophers and The Sixteen do here. One type of imitation was the so-called parody mass, where a mass is based on a preexisting work, often a motet but just as often a madrigal or a scrap of popular song (as in the large group of masses based on the melody L'homme armé). There are instances here by Orlande de Lassus, the composer whose work, in a way, summed up the whole 16th century, but there are other kinds of imitation as well. There is also an example of the rarer "si placet" technique, where composers would simply add parts to the preexisting work; hear the unusual and rather splashy treatment of Josquin's Benedicta es caelorum Regina by composer Jean Guyot de Châtelet. The imitation idea is even taken more broadly. There are two Italian madrigals by the recently rediscovered Maddalena da Casula, where the imitation involved seems to be simply that she was influenced by Lassus, who is known to have admired her. Christophers also commissions a new example of the parody technique from contemporary composer Bob Chilcott, who was given the Lassus motet Lauda Jerusalem Dominum and given free rein to use as much or as little of it as he wished. Study of this work makes a fine conclusion to a program that immerses listeners not only in the sound of Renaissance music but in the ideas behind it. The Coro label's sound from All Hallows' Church, Gospel Oak, London, is idiomatic and clear.

© James Manheim /TiVo

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Masters of Imitation

The Sixteen

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Lauda Jerusalem Dominum