Ex Cathedra at Birmingham Oratory

Mar 16 2009 By Christopher Morley

Whether it was pragmatic resourcefulness or a magical making of virtue out of necessity, Saturday’s concert from Ex Cathedra was among the most brilliant in this expert choir’s near 40-year history.

Director Jeffrey Skidmore has the enviable gift of concocting a witches’ brew of fascination in his programming, and it would be interesting to know whether the chicken or the egg came first here.

He has long had a fascination for Monteverdi’s 1610 publication of sacred music, with the derivation of much of its content from secular sources. Put alongside this the reluctance of the Oratory Fathers to permit secular performance within their beautiful church (as a fully paid-up Catholic I allow myself to question their stance), and Skidmore found a wonderful solution.

For the first time in my knowledge, the Upper Room in the Oratory cloisters was used for performances of Monteverdi madrigals, one-to-a-part, and showing what a fabulous acoustic the room possesses. And down in the Oratory proper we heard full choral Latinisations of these works, made by Monteverdi’s contemporary, the priest Aquilino Coppini.

These “madrigals made spiritual” punctuated the movements of Monteverdi’s Mass In Illo Tempore from 1610, ending with the Magnificat from that year.

An enriching educational experience.