Josquin: In te Domine Speravi, Lassus: Ave Maria, Carissimi: Plorate filii Israel from Jephté, Rachmaninov: Vespers ‘Bogoroditse’, Sarah McDonald: Crux Fidelis.

Really, these could all be called Spiritual transformations – as we sing of the Angel’s salutation to the Virgin Mary in both Latin and Russian and the heart rending laments, one at the close of ‘Jephté’ and the other as Christ hung on the cross.

Our earliest piece is the marvellous and joyous, In te Domine Speravi – Josquin des Pres. ‘In you, Lord, I have hoped’ from Psalm 31, it is a frottola (a popular
secular song) and sometimes it is told that it is actually a cynical reminder to the Cardinal of a retarded payment for Josquin’s services.

Lassus – Ave Maria is one of his settings of this text – this sublime setting is for 5 voices.

Carissimi’s oratorio Jephté is a version of the biblical story. Jephté makes a rash promise to God that he will sacrifice the first living creature he meets if he is
victorious in his battle with the Ammonites, inevitably he meets his daughter first. The oratorio concludes with this most moving of choruses.

Rachmaninov’s wonderful Vespers includes the Bogoroditse Devo which means Ave Maria.

Sarah McDonald’s deeply expressive Crux fidelis – Faithful Cross combines the Latin words, which are a stanza from the hymn Pange Lingua, with English words by Emily Dickinson and Emilia Lanier. (In 1611 Lanier published a book of women’s religious poetry – a radical, ground-breaking tour de force, a searing vindication of the rights of women—and of herself as a woman writer.)