Mirrored Voices
Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir with additional works for divided choir by Gabrieli, Bach and others.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 3:00pm
St. Philip Neri Catholic Church
Adult/Senior – $22 in advance / $30 day-of and at the door
Student – $5 in advance and at the door
Pay what you can – This ticket option is designed to make CAE concerts accessible to those who find our standard ticket pricing might prevent them from attending our concerts.
Frank Martin’s stunning Mass for Double Choir is the centerpiece of these concerts, performed in the dazzling acoustic confines of St. Philip Neri. We will also explore the heritage of music written for multiple choirs – including Giovanni Gabrieli’s brilliant antiphonal music written for the magnificent space and acoustics of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. His music came to define the “polychoral” style in the late Renaissance era and influenced countless composers over the intervening centuries… still thrilling audiences to this day. Additional works for multiple choirs by Bach, Marenzio, Croce and others will make this a choral surround sound experience you will not want to miss!
You are also warmly invited to the audience appreciation reception and silent auction fundraiser which will immediately follow the Saturday, April 26 concert. Light snacks, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages will be served. The Silent Auction Fundraiser will feature a huge selection of items generously donated by local businesses. The items include vacation rentals, hand-made jewelry and crafts, wine, and a wide variety of gift certificates (e.g., restaurants, movies, shows, amusements, retail, golf, dancing, and craft supplies).
program notes
The roots of polychoral music, with two or more choirs having distinct but complementary roles, may stretch back to the Psalms, since many of them use a form of call and response. Not coincidentally, the Psalms often provide the texts for compositions that feature “mirrored voices,” whether they answer each other antiphonally, imitate each other’s lines in sequence, or seem to approach the same musical questions from completely different angles. The complexity of additional vocal lines poses many challenges, technical as well as aesthetic. So, it should come as no surprise that the Italian Renaissance, with its experimental mindset, saw the first great age of polychoral music or cori spezzati (broken or split choirs). The tradition continued through the Baroque period and well into the twentieth century.