GRAMOPHONE: (EDITOR'S CHOICE CD, OCTOBER 2009)
This is billed as a soundtrack: not to a film, but to Sacred Hearts , a novel by Sarah Dunant. The book – which I haven't read – is set in a Benedictine convent in Ferrara in 1570. The music, which is a mixture of plainchant and polyphony, follows the span of the novel from Christmas to Easter.

The question of who sang the tenor and bass parts of the music that Vivaldi composed for the girls of the Ospedale della Pietà has been aired recently in Vivaldi's Women , a television documentary that deserves a wider circulation on DVD. The programme showed that it was possible for women to sing the lower parts at pitch. In their booklet-note, Laurie Stras and Deborah Roberts propose different solutions: first, to transpose those parts up an octave where necessary, with continuo instruments preserving the written bass. This works well in the Palestrina Mass, but the octave doublings in Rore's Magnificat sound strange and unconvincing to my ears. Much better is the second solution, followed in Surge illuminare and the Lamentations: here the bass is taken only by the continuo. Stras and Roberts also advocate the ornamentation of solo lines. They apply this to the Mass, where it sounds both natural and beautiful; indeed the whole piece is an aural feast.

The plainchant is sung by permutations of the Sacred Hearts Schola – essentially Musica Secreta without the instruments – and the Celestial Sirens, a fine amateur choir. The last item is Rore's Regina caeli laetare , Frances Kelly's harp weaving round the soprano line. Magical.
Richard Lawrence
{Editors comment: "A sense of scholarship as well as intense musicality runs through the whole: fascinating and lovely" - James Inverne}

OZ ARTS REVIEW:
If you've come home after a terrible day at the office or, if you've spent hours in the kitchen getting the cake mix just right only to have it come from the oven a charred ruin, then don't turn to Valium or take it out on the cat. There's a much better option available.

It needs to be said at once, though, that the alternative offered could also be habit forming – but it's an addiction that is entirely beneficial and can be thoroughly recommended. Toss the pills into the bin and give the cat his dinner - then put this CD on, sit back and let it work its soothing magic. An added bonus is that you don't have to be musically literate – although that, of course, helps - to derive great listening pleasure from it.

Not the least of the many fine features of this recording are first rate liner notes which throw fascinating light on the lives and work of nuns in 16 th and 17 th century European convents where music, in inextricable association with prayer, was a constant companion in up to eight prayer services per 24 hours.

In the popular imagination, the notion of nuns regularly singing complex polyphony barely exists. So, this recording is timely if only for that reason.

Of course, the lion's share of sacred vocal music was written specifically for male voices. A fair amount of this, though, was – and is - also sung by women. And if the range was too low, then it was not particularly unusual for the music to be transposed upwards to accommodate the available voices. This presentation goes some way to redressing these widespread misapprehensions.

As well, there is also a view that composers of the time wrote little vocal music specifically for women. But think of Vivaldi who spent much of his working life in an orphanage for girls for whom the Red Priest wrote innumerable works, instrumental as well as vocal.

The contents of Sacred Hearts and Secret Music are sung with an unpretentious artistry that allows the music to make maximum impact on the listener. It deserves to be heard by the widest possible audience; it is a most notable addition to the recorded canon of sacred music.
Neville Cohn

NEW CLASSICS:
Musica Secreta were formed nearly twenty years ago to explore the music sung by courtly women and courtesans of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Over time, they have expanded this to include music that might have been performed by Renaissance nuns - and indeed in monasteries too - and are at the forefront of performance practice research in this repertoire. Sarah Dunant is the author of a recently published novel, Sacred Hearts, set entirely within a Benedictine convent in 16th Century Ferrara. She became enthralled by the music that would have been a crucial part of life in such a convent, eight services a day, seven days a week, praising God through chanting, psalms and song. The author saw Musica Secreta perform and it was decided to create a ‘soundtrack album' for Sacred Hearts, with each track marking a particular moment in the unfolding of the drama of the novel. The repertoire of music by Palestrina and de Rore featured might wel have been performed by a convent choir in the 1570's in the Ferrara area. Both composers were celebrated in their lifetimes in Italy and both were strongly connected to the d'Este family, rulers of Ferrara at that time. Musica Secreta are joined by Celestial Sirens, a select, non-professional female choir committed to the performance of choral works in the style of Renaissance and early modern convents. The CD comes with a booklet containing full tests, extensive notes and a foreword by Sarah Dunant. This is ethereally beautiful, haunting music, performed with grace and sincerity.
John Pitt

FANFARE:
The Palestrina Mass was recorded twice under George Guest, both versions still available, so this arrangement for women's voices may be superfluous. While little is spelled out in the notes, we are told that the bass voice is transposed up an octave, the harmony being completed by the continuo's playing at the original pitch. The effect is light, lovely, beautifully rendered by six women on the four vocal parts, but the full sonority of the polyphonic texture is missing. The notes indicate that this manner of performance was normal in convents of the 16th century, the locale recreated here.

The Mass is only part of this program, 22 minutes of a very full disc. The rest consists of chant and polyphonic motets selected to fit the events in a novel, Sacred Hearts, by Sarah Dunant. It is set in a convent in Ferrara in 1570, beginning with the feast of St. Agnes (January 21) and ending with Holy Week and Easter. Palestrina's Mass fits the plot perfectly, for it is based on his own motet, which, in turn, is a parody of the seventh-mode antiphon for the Common of Virgins (there is also an eighth-mode chant antiphon on the same text). The motets of Palestrina and Rore were included because both composers had connections with the court of Ferrara. (We think of Palestrina in Rome, but in the 1560s he directed concerts at Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's famous villa in Tivoli, near Rome.) The Lamentations for Holy Saturday are the set superbly recorded by Simon Ravens (25:6). The most interesting chant is the sequence for St. Agnes. Altogether, this is an offbeat program of considerable interest, not exactly comparable to competitive versions of the music.
J F Weber

THE OBSERVER:
Inspired by Sarah Dunant's new novel, Sacred Hearts, about a young nun in Renaissance Italy, this disc concentrates on music probably sung by convent choirs in the 1570s. This includes chant sequences of the kind written centuries earlier by Hildegard of Bingen, Palestrina's "Missa Veni Sponsa Christi" and "Lamentations for Holy Saturday", and motets by Rore. The excellent ensemble Musica Secreta specialises in music written for female voices and is joined by the Sussex choir Celestial Sirens. Performed without vibrato or unnecessary gesture, the CD wins out through pure sound, fervour and refreshing simplicity.
Fiona Maddocks

THE CONSORT:
Musica Secreta's previous CD of motets by Alessandro Grandi (dda 25062) was reviewed in The Consort vol. 65, Musica Secreta is a group of women performers, directed by Deborah Roberts and Laurie Stras, while Celestial Sirens is a larger vocal group, directed by Roberts. This new recording includes monodic chants for the feast of St. Agnes, and settings of Palestrina from the Mass Veni Sponsa Christi and the Lamentations of Jeremiah . A performance of Cipriano de Rore's Magnificat Sexti Toni completes the selection. The music forms the sound track for Sarah Dunant's novel entitled Sacred Hearts, which is set in a Benedictine convent in the city of Ferrara on the eve of the Tridentine reform of 1570.

Musica Secreta's very accomplished performances on both CDs address the question of what music 16 th century nuns might have sung, since no polyphonic music composed by or for them survives until almost 1600. Musica Secreta offers a variety of answers to this question, taking existing 4-part compositions and transposing the music upwards, or using instruments for the lower parts, or sometimes transposing he lower parts up an octave, while also playing them at the lower pitch on an instrument. Older nuns had lower voices, which could hold tenor, or sometimes even bass, lines and Musica Secreta includes some older women too.

It is lovely to hear so many monodic settings for the feast of St. Agnes, who serves as an inspiration for nuns. The texts for her feast, 21 January, are ancient and beautiful; their chants vary from simple plainsong to more elaborate settings, closer to those which Hildegard of Bingen composed for her sisters in the 12 th century.

Musica Secreta's performance of Palestrina's Mass Veni Sponsa Christi (Come, bride of Christ , the Mass for Virgins) is equally beautiful, but it is perhaps more doubtful that this would have been sung in 4-part polyphony by nuns. Having spent four years myself as an enclosed Benedictine nun, I am aware that a normal women's monastery follows St Benedict's directive by chanting the 150 psalms weekly. Together with other sung prayers including antiphons, the Benedictus and Magnificat and chants for the Mass, this adds up to some five hours of chants daily. Most nuns have little spare voice, or time, to practise polyphony as well. Choir practices are generally to enable the less musically gifted to negotiate the trickier passages of plainchant or newly-composed monody to the coming week. For monks and nuns, chanting is work, Opus Dei , ‘the work of God'. Palestrina is therefore more likely to have been heard in princes' chapels and bishops' cathedrals. Nevertheless, the Palestrina settings on this CD are very effective, and Musica Secreta amply demonstrates that this music can be performed by women alone.
Elizabeth Rees

CLASSIC FM MAGAZINE:
Author Sarah Dunant and her novel Sacred Hearts supplied direct inspiration for this compelling album of music that might have been performed by a convent of Ferrarese nuns in the 1570s. She recalls in her liner notes how discovering the work of Musica Secreta did much the same for the book's development. The cross-fertilised fruits of their collaboration prove irresistible and, thanks to the honest-to-goodness sound of the recording and unaffected music-making, mercifully free from artificial additives. Highlights include a heartfelt performance of Palestrina's Mass ‘Veni sponsa Christi' and a sensuous reading of his Lamentations . Strongly recommended.
AS

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW:
Best-selling novelist Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts is set in 1570 in Santa Caterina, a convent in Ferrara filled with noble women ‘married to Christ because they cannot find husbands on the outside'. When 16-year-old Serafina threatens to shatter the tranquility of the nuns' lives, she is placed in the care of the scholarly Suora Zuana, but as they start to bond, two mysterious figures are watching…

In 2007 Dunant contacted Musica Secreta, which she had heard previously, with the idea of recording a ‘soundtrack' for the book. The result was a project that members Laurie Stras and Deborah Roberts in their extensive booklet notes say was ‘more about investigating possibilities than it was about looking for definitive performances'.

Musica Secreta was formed by Tallis Scholars' member Deborah Roberts in 1990 in order to explore the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century music written for female singers. It comprises four solo voices and a harp/organ/bass viol continuo; its previous releases include two recordings of music written for the famous concerto di donne of Ferrara, as well as by Barbara Strozzi and the nun composers Lucrezia Vizzana and Margarita Cozzolani.

Joining Musica Secreta for this disc is Celestial Sirens, an amateur and semi-professional womens' voice choir based on the South Coast of England, also founded by Roberts. One of its purposes is to help Musica Secreta explore convent music. The idea in this instance was to avoid a preponderance of young women brought through the choral tradition who might have preconceptions about how the music should sound and instead form a mix of voices, both young and mature and with different levels of training, ‘but all competent and confident, imagining the sort of blend of skill and experience that one might find in a moderately prosperous convent'.

All this makes for an interesting and textured journey through Palestrina's Missa Veni Sponsa Christi and Lamentations for Holy Saturday , Cipriano de Rore's Magnificat and motets by the same composers, as well as chant for the feast of St Agnes. The density of the vocal forces varies; the solo voices in the Palestrina Mass ornament their lines; the bass parts are transposed up an octave while being played in their original pitches by a continuo instrument.

The performances are sensitively imagined and vividly realized interpretations; by no means perfect but all the more authentic for it. I especially enjoyed the contrasts between the delicate Alma Redemptoris Mater of Palestrina, in which the superb mezzo Clare Wilkinson is accompanied by organ and harp, and the following Lamentations , which feature the combined forces of Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens together with continuo – still remarkably delicate but with a kind of muscular dignity that is extremely moving.

Moving also is the fact that this would have been founder member Tessa Bonner's seventh disc with Musica Secreta. Apparently she enjoyed Dunant's novels and was very excited about this project, She passed away in December 2008 and this recording is dedicated to her memory.
Robert Levett

EARLY MUSIC TODAY:
An interesting recital:: Sacred Hearts and Sacred Music, by all-female ensembles Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens explores renaissance music that might have been performed by nuns (Divine Art dda25077). The music, with bass parts occasionally transposed, is interesting, beautifully sung and well recommended.
Unnamed reviewer

MUSICWEB:
This recording will appeal to different people for one or more of a variety of reasons: as an anthology of music mainly by Palestrina, with the Missa Veni sponsa Christi at its heart, to those who have heard or own earlier recordings by the group Musica Secreta, as a sample of polyphonic music as it would have been performed by the most accomplished convent choirs of the day, or as a tie-in to Sarah Dunnant's novel, Sacred Hearts .

I'm sorry to say that I haven't read the novel, so, for my own part, the first two reasons are the most cogent. Musica Secreta have wisely chosen to perform a Palestrina Mass for which there is little competition: as far as I am aware, only St John's College, Cambridge, Choir under George Guest, who also offer the motet Veni sponsa Christi , with the ubiquitous Allegri Miserere and Lassus's Missa bell'Amfitrit'altera on Classics for Pleasure 5755602. There are better versions of the Allegri and Lassus, so the only advantage of the CFP recording would be the inclusion of the motet; I could happily have dispensed with some of the plainsong on the new recording in exchange for the motet, which forms the cantus firmus of the Mass, to be included.

I had previously encountered Musica Secreta on a recording of female composer Lucrezia Vizzana's (1592-1662) Componimenti Musicali (1623) on Linn CKD071 - the kind of ‘secret music' by female composers or for female choirs which the group were founded in 1990 to perform. I very much enjoyed that earlier recording and intend to include a review of it in my next Download Roundup. I also recommended their Dialogues with Heaven , the music of another female composer, Chiara Cozzolani (Linn CDK113) in my May, 2009, Download Roundup; I haven't yet heard their third Linn recording, Dangerous Graces , music by de Rore and his contemporaries (Linn CKD169), but I intend to rectify that omission.

When Amon Ra reissued their 1994 recording of music by Barbara Strozzi, Gary Higginson described it as “All in all a fascinating release of music that is well worth studying and taking seriously”. More recently, they and the Celestial Sirens have recorded the music of Alessandro Grandi; Johan van Veen thought the singing technically excellent but a little bland and unimpassioned (Divine Art DDA25062 )

Music Secreta are also joined by the Celstial Sirens, another all-female group founded by Deborah Roberts in 2003, on the new recording.

The new CD opens with a short chant, Cantabant sancti canticum novum - the saints were singing a new song - a responsory for the feast of the Holy Innocents; here and on tracks 3 and 4, Beata Agnes in medio flammarum - Blessed Agnes, in the midst of the flames, prayed with outstretched arms - and Amo Christum , a text adapting the language of the Song of Songs to the love of Christ, where a somewhat cool manner of singing is, of course, not inappropriate. Between these, on track 2, we are offered Palestrina's setting of Surge Illuminare , words familiar in English guise from Handel's Messiah as “Arise, shine, for thy light is come”. Here I did feel some sympathy with JV's comment on the Grandi recording; for all the beauty of the singing, I could have wished for slightly more affective engagement with the words and the potential emotion of Palestrina's setting.

On track 5 the Celestial Sirens sing the Hymn Agnes, beatæ virginis natalis est , the Office Hymn at Lauds on the feast of St Agnes. Again, the manner is rather cool and, again, this is not inappropriate - indeed the purity of the singing here approaches that of Gothic Voices in their classic Hyperion recording of the music of Hildegard of Bingen (CDA66039, or CDS44251/3).

On the central tracks, nos. 6-10, we are given a performance of Palestrina's Missa Veni sponsa Christi . As with the music of Grandi on the earlier Divine Art recording, a good deal of transposition and rearrangement has been necessary to perform this and the other polyphonic works. In Surge illuminare (tr.2), the bassus is ‘played on continuo at pitch' - harp, organ and bass viol - and, although this continuo is not audibly prominent on the recording, it is enough to ensure that the ear doesn't crave the missing lower vocal parts.

In the Mass the continuo is even less in evidence and my ear really did miss the lower parts. More seriously, though the work is scored for four voices, the death of Tessa Bonner just before the recording was made resulted in the decision to perform it with just three solo voices. While I fully understand this decision to dedicate the recording to her memory, the general listener is not likely to “hear her voice in every bar” as Laurie Stras and Deborah Roberts state in the notes.

As on track 2, the singing is rather cool; a little more exuberance in the Sanctus (tr.9) would not have come amiss. The ideal version of the Missa Veni sponsa Christi still awaits us, then. If, however, you put aside Beckmesser's critical slate for the moment and are prepared just to sit back and listen to some beautiful singing, these central tracks certainly make the recording very worthwhile.

On track 11 the Celestial Sirens perform a Sequence for St Agnes's Day; most of these interpolations between the Epistle and Gospel at Mass were swept away by the Tridentine reforms of the sixteenth century, with Dies iræ at Requiem masses and Victimæ paschali laudes for Easter Sunday the best known of the few survivors. It's attractive enough in its way and it makes a refreshing break between the polyphony which precedes and follows.

De Rore's Magnificat which follows on track 12 offers music worthy to be heard in the same programme as the Palestrina Mass. It, too, receives an attractive performance, with tenor and bass transcribed and the lower parts doubled at pitch instrumentally. If this seriatim work - with alternate verses in chant and polyphony, a common practice - leads listeners to other recordings of de Rore's music, such as the two very fine accounts of the Missa præter rerum seriem by The Tallis Scholars (CDGIM029) and the Huelgas Ensemble (HMC90 1760) I shall be pleased. (See September, 2009, Download Roundup for details of these two recordings and, for the de Rore Mass in a Christmas context, Paul McCreesh's A Venetian Christmas , DG Archiv 471 3332, which I reviewed in 2007).

The brief antiphon to the Magnificat for Second Vespers of St Agnes follows on track 13, immediately succeeded by Palestrina's beautiful setting of Alma Redemptoris Mater . The little choir boy in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale sang this antiphon beautifully:-

This litel child, as he cam to and fro,
Ful murily than wolde he synge and crie
O alma redemptoris everemo.
The swetnesse hath his herte perced so
Of cristes mooder that, to hire to preye,
He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye.

but his rendition is unlikely to have excelled that of Clare Wilkinson here. I trust that she avoids his fate.

The beautiful performances of the Holy Saturday Lamentations on tracks 15-17 - the bass part consigned to the continuo - yield only to the complete performances by Musica Contexta of all Palestrina's settings of the Lamentations complete with their Responsories, together with other music for Holy Week, on Chandos. (CHAN0617, 1065 and 0679 - see April, 2009, Download Roundup). This is life-enhancing music, designed to lift the soul, even though the texts express the abject misery of the desolate inhabitants of Jerusalem. There is a wonderful new Brabant Ensemble/Hyperion recording of the music of Dominique Phinot (CDA67696) which I strongly recommend in my September, 2009, Download Roundup, but I have to admit that Phinot's 8-part setting of the final Lamentation there yields to Palestrina's ethereal setting of the same words on track 17 here.

We return to Cipriano de Rore for the second of the Marian antiphons and the final work here, his setting of Regina cœli , in a performance designed, if not to silence my criticisms, at least to put them in perspective - here, at last, the continuo is as audible as I could have wished it to be elsewhere.

The recording is very good, with great clarity the order of the day throughout; the downside of this clarity concerns the comparative anonymity of the continuo. The presentation is attractive and mostly user-friendly. The packaging is of the gatefold variety, now familiar from many companies, especially where the booklet is too large to fit into a conventional plastic case. (In the current instance, this wouldn't have been a problem.) It's the usual width, though a little taller than most CD cases and, therefore, impossible to fit into compartmentalised CD drawers.

The notes are informative and fully acknowledge the extent to which the polyphony has had to be edited for female voices. All the texts and translations are provided, except for the five sections of the Mass. Why not? - not everyone will have these texts etched in their memories as fully as those of us who still remember the Tridentine liturgy. JV complained of notes printed in a form difficult to read and, while most of the pages in the current booklet are in legible dark green on pale cream, others are less legible in cream on green. The spelling of Sabato sancto , without the double b , looks like a typo, though Divine Art repeat it on their web page. 

Bearing in mind that I partly share JV's reservations, though I'm a little more willing to set them aside, this new recording is a worthy addition to Musica Secreta's discography and to the catalogue in general. Yet we still require a recommendable ‘straight' version of Palestrina's Missa Veni sponsa Christi , preceded by the motet which inspired it.
Brian Wilson 

CHOIR AND ORGAN:
The world of musicology has long been aware that there were nuns who sang sacred polyphony written for men in ingenious re-arrangements. Barely explored on disc, it was time someone gave it a serious go, and there is surely no ensemble better equipped intellectually to unlock this cloistered performance practice that Musica Secreta. Their versions of Palestrina et al are convincing, even if the chant sung by their schola, Celestial Sirens, has a clunkiness now assuaged by the claustrophobic acoustic – fascinating from the historical point of view, and a curiosity for the collector.
Rebecca Tavener

LIVERPOOL DAILY POST:
Sarah Dunant's novel Sacred Hearts, about the nuns of Ferrera, has recently been serialised on Radio 4. She was inspired to write it after hearing the singing of the Sussex-based group Musica Secreta, who have researched the music of the nunnery, and its many parallels with the monastery.

The music which introduced the serialisation was sung by the group led by Deborah Roberts, and made quite an impact on listeners. It has now appeared on compact disc on the Divine Art label, and contains plain chants, and a Mass and Lamentations by Palestrina. Where other female textures may sound a little light, a tactful organ has been added, and this is an immensely relaxing experience from a highly professional group.
Peter Spaull