Love Divine – Review by RSCM (Church Music Quarterly)

"The luminatus vocal ensemble sings with excellent balance and warmth, whether with gentle restraint or incisive power in this wide-ranging programme."

11th June 2025

Love Divine – Review by RSCM (Church Music Quarterly)

Listen or buy this album:

Love Divine – Review by RSCM (Church Music Quarterly)

"The luminatus vocal ensemble sings with excellent balance and warmth, whether with gentle restraint or incisive power in this wide-ranging programme."

11th June 2025

Listen or buy this album:

The main work here is the Missa ‘Ad te levavi oculos meos’ by Philippe de Monte (1521-1603), a ‘parody Mass’ based on a motet by Cipriano de Rore that opens the CD. The two works together form a strong and musically satisfying sequence of movements, with the music from the de Rore motet recognizable at various times in de Monte’s Mass setting. We stay in the Renaissance for five further antiphons and motets, two (including a Salve Regina) by Ippolito Baccusi, about whom virtually nothing appears to be known, and three by Tiburtio Massaino – marginally less unknown! They have not been recorded before.

The programme then skips forward over 400 years to conclude with five new motets by three female composers. Canadian Eleanor Daley and Cornish Becky McGlade are better known to English-speaking choirs than Swedish Agneta Sköld, but Sköld’s two pieces are in English and deserve to be in the church choir repertoire. Her short setting of the Corpus Christi Carol, with its rocking ‘Lully, lullay’ refrain, is particularly beautiful. Becky McGlade provides the title track with Love divine, but more impressive for me is her approach to I saw a new heaven with a glorious arrival in A major for the new Jerusalem.

The luminatus vocal ensemble sings with excellent balance and warmth, whether with gentle restraint or incisive power in this wide-ranging programme, while David Bray provides a sense of movement and direction in tempo, dynamic and emotion.

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Other reviews by this author:

The main work here is the Missa ‘Ad te levavi oculos meos’ by Philippe de Monte (1521-1603), a ‘parody Mass’ based on a motet by Cipriano de Rore that opens the CD. The two works together form a strong and musically satisfying sequence of movements, with the music from the de Rore motet recognizable at various times in de Monte’s Mass setting. We stay in the Renaissance for five further antiphons and motets, two (including a Salve Regina) by Ippolito Baccusi, about whom virtually nothing appears to be known, and three by Tiburtio Massaino – marginally less unknown! They have not been recorded before.

The programme then skips forward over 400 years to conclude with five new motets by three female composers. Canadian Eleanor Daley and Cornish Becky McGlade are better known to English-speaking choirs than Swedish Agneta Sköld, but Sköld’s two pieces are in English and deserve to be in the church choir repertoire. Her short setting of the Corpus Christi Carol, with its rocking ‘Lully, lullay’ refrain, is particularly beautiful. Becky McGlade provides the title track with Love divine, but more impressive for me is her approach to I saw a new heaven with a glorious arrival in A major for the new Jerusalem.

The luminatus vocal ensemble sings with excellent balance and warmth, whether with gentle restraint or incisive power in this wide-ranging programme, while David Bray provides a sense of movement and direction in tempo, dynamic and emotion.

Review written by:

Review published in:

Other reviews by this author:

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