Charpentier Messe de Minuit and McEnery Nine Angels

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Salisbury Chamber Chorus
Charpentier 'Messe de Minuit' and McEnery' Nine Angels'

This December, Salisbury Chamber Chorus is presenting a proper Christmas concert - a mass setting including French carol melodies by the Baroque composer Charpentier, and a new collection of international carols on the theme of angels by Simon McEnery.

Simon McEnery says 'Nine Angels' is 'definitely a nod to my more cabaret and jazz leanings than other things I have written. I was inspired by an arrangement I wrote of the famous Basque carol The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came some years back. I married it up with the 1960s 'French movie score style of Michel Legrand, and it turned into one of the most popular things I've done. So it's now one of this collection of carols along with Catalan and Swedish folk, a Parisian waltz, even a bit of light 70s/80s funk, thrown into the mix.

The Messe de Minuit ('Midnight Mass', from around 1690) is the perfect companion piece because it incorporates the melodies of eleven French Christmas folksongs into its fabric. Charpentier loved these carols, which were generally played on the organ in French churches at the time, and wanted to enable them to be sung during the mass, hence this joyful and thoroughly engaging piece.