Lead, Kindly Light
Works by Morales, Vivanco, MacMillan & Briggs
The Sixteen/Harry Christophers
Coro COR16218 75 mins
The Sixteen’s Lead, Kindly Light presents the repertoire for their 2026 Choral Pilgrimage, preserved in this excellent Coro recording.
Spanish Renaissance motets share the programme with two contemporary works shaped by the writings of St John Henry Newman. The thread is spiritual intensity — how composers, centuries apart, give voice to penitence, ecstasy, doubt and resolve.
The Spanish works form a richly varied centre. Cristóbal de Morales, whose life was marked by illness, writes with a severity that often settles into minor cadences so that even rejoicing has a gloomy undertow. Lamentabatur Jacob unfolds in long, yearning phrases; Jubilate Deo omnis terra has lift and brightness, yet the underlying harmonic language lends it urgency. Emendemus in melius sustains penitential gravitas through carefully shaped lines, and Gaude et laetare Ferrariensis civitas combines ceremonial splendour with disciplined counterpoint.
Works by the lesser-known but immensely talented Sebastián de Vivanco, shaped by the mystic atmosphere of Ávila, offers colour and imagination. His eight-part Magnificat octavi toni alternates inventive plainchant with polyphony attuned to the rhythm and sense of the text. The magnificent nine-part Caritas Pater est remains lucid and buoyant, each strand clearly etched.
Newman’s spiritual struggle finds natural expression in the contemporary works. Kerensa Briggs’s premiere of Lead, kindly light, commissioned for this pilgrimage, sits comfortably within the programme, its solo lines emerging in relief from sustained choral textures.
James MacMillan’s Nothing in vain, commissioned in 2021 by the Genesis Foundation, also unleashes brilliant solo singing from within the choir, with Scottish inflections colouring the solo and double-choir polyphony. The piece gathers strength as it progresses, its affirmation carrying a glint of steel.
