by Paul Matheson

The Gesualdo Six is an award-winning British vocal ensemble. Formed in 2014, the ensemble has toured widely and internationally, making a BBC Proms debut in 2023. They have produced numerous CDs (this is their ninth), all of which have received excellent reviews. They perform regularly in Scotland. Last year’s Lammermuir Festival hosted their immersive theatrical performance of William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. They will be performing again at this year’s Lammermuir Festival on 14 September at Our Lady of Loretto Church, Musselburgh, and on 15 September at Aberlady Parish Church.

Listening to their new release, I was struck by the depth and breadth of the Gesualdo Six repertoire; their scholarly investigation of centuries-old music; and the empathetic emotional intelligence that informs their performance of the compositions they find in ancient manuscripts. During its running time of 66 minutes, Queen of Hearts explores music by (mostly) French/Flemish composers in honour of the Queen of Heaven (the Virgin Mary) and sixteenth-century queens of Europe such as Anne of Brittany and Margaret of Austria.

Music of Marian devotion

Recorded in St George’s  Church, Chesterton, Cambridge, the album opens with a numinous Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the French composer Antoine Brumel (c1460-1513). The Gesualdo Six’s delicate and warm delivery of Brumel’s exquisite composition places an achingly tender and sweetly supplicant musical phrasing upon the words ‘Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sancta Dei genitrix’ (‘To your protection we fly holy mother of God’). The notes linger upon and caress the words ‘sancta Dei genetrix’ (‘holy mother of God’), and then inject a plaintive, yearning intensity into the words ‘deprecationes ne despicias’ (‘spurn not our prayers’). It all conjures a palpable, prayerful sense of holiness.

‘Praeter rerum seriem’ is a Marian devotional song composed in antiphonal style by the Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez (c1450-1521). Josquin puts deeply sonorous, portentous music of mystic intensity to the words ‘Praeter rerum seriem parit Deum hominem virgo mater’ (‘Beyond the order of this world, the virgin mother bore God in human form’). The piece builds to wave after wave of solemn exultation with the words ‘Dei providentia, quae disponit omnia tam suave: tua puerperia transfer in mysteria. Mater, ave!’ (‘God’s providence, which has ordered everything to such perfection: guide your children into the mysteries. Mother, hail!’).

Paul Matheson is a diversity officer with the police