Collegium Vocale Gent and Saint Barbara

©Michel Garnier

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

This quotation by the British novelist Aldous Huxley was placed on the first page of the programme accompanying a concert of Renaissance vocal music that I heard this week. More apt words would be hard to find.

It was the first time I had heard Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent, not least because whenever I’ve tried in the past to hear the ensemble they have either been touring or their concerts sold out. This week’s setting was the Eglise des Minimes in Brussels, the theme ‘Musica per Santa Barbara,’ the music a sheer joy to listen to.

Saint Barbara was the patron saint of Mantua, and in the 16^th century the Italian city’s duke had a basilica built in her honour. The Basilica di Santa Barbara attracted many composers including the Italian Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the Fleming Giaches de Wert. It was their compositions along with those of Claudio Monteverdi (a pupil of Wert) that made up the evening’s one-hour programme of 16^th and 17^th century motets and mass excerpts.

The voices of the 14 unaccompanied singers, directed by Herreweghe himself, filled the church, no matter whether it was a quiet, mournful sound to accompany words of sorrow and misery or a rich, powerful tone as the joys of life were celebrated. The singing was pure, precise and simply beautiful.

My favourite piece was probably Wert’s motet “Vox in Rama audita est” (A voice was heard in Ramah), which opened with a wonderful bass voice that made my stomach feel tight such was the intensity, the tension building up further as the tenors, altos and sopranos joined in one by one. At times, the notes were so close together that the pain and anguish being sung about were almost palpable.

This was music that did indeed come very close to expressing the inexpressible.

The same programme will be sung in their Belgium home town of Ghent on Feb. 11 and then in Rouen, France on Feb. 12. A full calendar is available here.