On 2 June The Carice Singers and George Parris performed Jonathan Harvey’s Plainsongs for Peace and Light at Kings Place. Harvey’s final choral work, it appears as part of a programme with Riot Ensemble honouring the music of Kaija Saariaho, who passed away on the same date in 2023.
Plainsongs for Peace and Light sets Latin texts from across the liturgical calendar, drawing on excerpts from Psalms 118 and 97 – Easter, Graduale II ad Missam in die; the Gradual for the Third Mass of the Nativity, Alleluia II ad Missam in die; and the Polyphonic Alleluia for the Third Sunday after the Nativity.
The 8-minute work sees Harvey re-examining the very fundamentals of his craft, superimposing lines of plainsong, relishing the simple clash of note against note, and creating rich, otherworldly sonorities through an elaborate use of canon. Lines often begin in unison, before drifting apart to create a shimmering sonic halo; elsewhere Harvey coaxes gentle homophonic textures from the sixteen parts. These complex patterns of imitation and divergence are reconciled in the work’s final gesture.
In 2023 The Carice Singers performed the work at St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the Cheltenham Music Festival. It was recorded in 2021 by Les Métaboles and Léo Warynski as part of their Harvey project The Angels, which also featured I Love the Lord, Come, Holy Ghost, Remember, O Lord, The Annunciation, and The Angels. Commissioned by Tenso Network Europe and Sinfonia 21, it premiered with Kaspars Putniņš and the Latvian Radio Choir in Riga in 2013, who also presented it at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Festivales les Musiques, Marseilles. Putniņš also conducted the work with the Swedish Radio Choir, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the NDR Vokalensemble.
Plainsongs for Peace and Light (2012), a late work by this modern mystic, develops a plainchant that flowers into polyphony: the 16 soloists surmount the hard tests with panache, evoking the sprouting, climbing tendrils of a liana.
Diapason (Benoît Fauchet), April 2021