St. John’s Church, Arpafeelie, 5 February 2012

I CONFESS! I broke my cardinal rule and went along to the Sunday afternoon concert at St John’s Church, Arpafeelie, without doing any preparation, other than being attracted by a somewhat vibrant and eye-crossing poster.

THIS told me that a group called “Sederunt”, with guests, would be performing vocal music from the 14th to the 20th centuries, and interval refreshments would be in aid of the Highland Hospice. My only other preparation was to remember that the pews in St John’s are exceeding hard and the thin hassocks offer scant comfort as a cushion.

Soprano soloist Liz McLardy

But I needn’t have worried, for as soon as I saw the names that make up Sederunt, reassurance flooded over me. As an ensemble the sextet of local male voices sang a capella – countertenors Tim Palmer and William Palmer, tenors John Thomson and Philip Paris with baritone Andrew Bruce and bass Tilman von Delft, all under the direction of the ubiquitous Reno Troilus. And things only got better when I noticed the familiar faces listed as guests – boy trebles Donald McDiarmid and Allan Goodwill, sopranos Julie Keen and Liz McLardy, James Ross with his baroque clarinet and the pianist Helen Standen.

The programme was well crafted to take the audience on a vocal time travel, beginning with Sederunt singing ‘Viderunt Omnes’ by Pérotin, an European composer as old as they get. He was the master of polyphony at Notre Dame in Paris around the year 1200 and is accepted as the inventor of three and four part polyphony. Doubtless our ensemble take their name from Pérotin’s other best known work, ‘Sederunt principes’. This was a fine example of early polyphony, even if the countertenors (remember that in those days women did not sing in church) were a bit overshadowed by the male voices.

Two songs by John Dowland took our journey forward by some four hundred years to the London Courts of Elizabeth and James VI. Firstly Julie Keen, accompanied by Helen Standen, used an appropriately unembellished style without vibrato for the melancholic ‘Flow Not So Fast Ye Fountains’. Then Sederunt was joined by the trebles Donald and Allan for a saucy little number called ‘Fine Knacks for Ladies’, the meaning of which is maybe best left unexplained.

Liz McLardy’s solo contribution to the afternoon was ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’, the Handel aria that regained its justified popularity after it was sung by Kiri Te Kanawa at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. With James Ross covering for the ringing trumpet of Crispian Steele-Perkins and Helen Standen simulating the English Chamber Orchestra under Sir David Willcocks, there is no doubt that the performances by Liz and Kiri were equally satisfying.

Andrew Bruce sang the first of two Mozart arias with libretti by Da Ponte, ‘Se vuol ballare’ from The Marriage of Figaro. Andrew sang the aria, but sadly he did not act it, so most of the sense of plotting and revenge was lost. Such acting was less important when he was joined by the two ladies for the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ from Cosi Fan Tutte, as concentration was on Julie and Liz as the two sisters woefully sing of their soldier lovers going off to war.

Taking the concert up to the interval was a fascinating piece of both ancient and modern six-part harmony written for the King’s Singers by the American composer Patricia Van Ness. The lower voices sing for most of the time in Latin, ‘Cor meum est templum sacrum’, while the upper voices concentrate on the more modern English version, ‘My Heart is a Holy Place’.

The second half saw one more song by Sederunt, a Spanish madrigal called ‘De Los Alamos’ and a series of solo spots from the cast, including arias by Purcell and Handel, and two of the lieder from Winterreise by Schubert, sung by Tilman von Delft.

The final composer’s name on the poster was Schönberg, and in view of the general tone of the afternoon, I was much relieved that it was not Arnold, but Claud-Michel Schönberg and we were not going to be presented with hexachordal inversional combinatoriality, but rather with two songs from Les Misérables, ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’ sung by Philip Paris and a very strong last number, ‘Stars’, from Andrew Bruce.

As Reno Troilus says in his notes, there is an abundance of both sacred and secular material for male voices that remains rarely performed. And as is so perfectly demonstrated by The King’s Singers, there is a whole lot more that is neither madrigal nor medieval. It would have been nice for the concert’s finale to have been by all six members of Sederunt singing something suitable in six-part polyphony from any period of our vocal time travel.

© James Munro, 2012