© Luca Concas
The best of English choirs
I saw eternity – Bach&MacMillan
Tenebrae Choir
Nigel Short conductor
music Johann Sebastian Bach and James MacMillan
In 2021, the British choir Tenebrae, renowned for the passionate intensity of its a-cappella performances of sacred vocal music– indeed, ‘passion and precision’ is the choir’s motto– commissioned Scottish composer James MacMillan to write a work to be performed alongside some of Bach’s difficult but moving motets. The result is I Saw Eternity, set to verses from Henry Vaughan’s 1650 poem The World. Three of Bach’s motets, including the monumental Jesu, meine Freudeand the joyous Singet dem Herrn, will be performed alongside MacMillan’s setting of the Welsh poet’s words, as well as his Miserere and other responsories for the Tenebrae services of Holy Week: pages that made the composer famous.
