Holy Week for church musicians is an exhausting experience, but a hugely rewarding one. The services of the Triduum track the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ, and his acceptance of the burden of our sin, while the ancient offices of Tenebrae that surrounds them emphasises the degree to which we are fallen people in need of salvation, mourns Christ’s fate, and recounts the prophecies which are to be fulfilled by him. (Tenebrae = ‘Darkness’, a special version of the offices of Matins and Lauds for these days. During the liturgy, candles on a triangular hearse are gradually extinguished with each psalm, said to symbolise the waning faith of the Apostles.)

On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, when Jesus institutes the Eucharist and washes his disciples’ feet. After Mass, the altars are stripped, and the Blessed Sacrament is moved in procession to the altar of repose, where vigil is kept, recalling Jesus praying in Gethsemane before his arrest. On Good Friday, the stark liturgy begins with prayers, scripture, and the Passion according to St John. The crucifix, veiled for weeks, is then uncovered and venerated by the faithful.

It’s impossible not to be moved by the drama of these events, and the texts prescribed to be sung with each provide ample opportunity for vivid musical expression. This intense week has inspired some of the greatest compositions in the Western canon, making it a challenge to choose pieces for recording. We’ve selected some that hold special family significance—favourites sung during Passiontide in various places the Bevans have gathered over the years—and some music new to us all. We’re thrilled to include premiere recordings of several lesser-known works.

Our programme follows the liturgy from the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday to the darkness of Holy Saturday (before the jubilance of the Resurrection, which could easily fill its own record). For each day of Tenebrae, we’ve included a setting of a Lamentation. These texts, thought to be written by the Prophet Jeremiah, tend to be among composers’ most expressive works. Each consists of Hebrew letters sung to long, plaintive melismata, followed by reflections on the destruction of Jerusalem, human sinfulness, and pleas for mercy, ending with 'Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum' ('Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God').

Paired with these are three contrasting settings of Christus factus est, a central Holy Week text from St Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It is traditionally sung as an antiphon at the end of Tenebrae before the strepitus (a loud noise symbolising the earthquake after Christ’s death).

For several years, I sang for the Triduum at Downside Abbey with Auntie Rachel, Hugh, and Benny, where Colin Mawby’s Reproaches were always sung during Good Friday’s veneration of the cross. On paper, his music is simple and accessible, but in the Abbey’s vast acoustic it becomes overwhelming; the grating bitonality and dynamic climaxes capture God’s anger and the desperation of people begging forgiveness. Colin, who directed the choir at Westminster Cathedral when my father and uncles were choristers, was a great friend of the family, and I was lucky enough to get to know him as his publisher in his final years.

We also spent many Holy Weeks with Uncle David at Holy Redeemer, where his strikingly dissonant fauxbordon settings were perfectly matched to the Passion’s drama. We include his Psalm 21 setting for Palm Sunday, marking Jesus’s joyous entry into Jerusalem before his betrayal. David’s friend, the esteemed organist Neil Wright, visited frequently, often conducting his own compositions. We’re delighted to include his Ave regina caelorum, an excellent example of his trademark harmonic style woven around the Marian antiphon’s chant tune. Both of these works are first recordings, though more of their excellent Passiontide music can be heard on Triduum (Priory PRCD 1004, 2007).

I later sang with Dominic and his siblings at St Augustine’s Shrine in Ramsgate, where I experienced my first full Tenebrae and Dom’s chanting which is, I think, unmatched. He performs a Good Friday Lamentation here, set to a melody from the Passionarium Toletanium (particularly beautiful Mozarabic melodies from Toledo) in a collection edited by Hugh Henry which has become a constant feature of our Tenebrae music lists.

Since 2016, Dom, Sophie, Daisy, and I have sung the complete liturgy at St Birinus in Dorchester on Thames, and I’ve been working hard to find and transcribe new renaissance music each year, particularly sets of Lamentations and Responsories to provide an alternative to the ever popular settings by Tallis and Victoria respectively. The growing collection of my performing editions of these findings can be freely downloaded from PolyphonyDatabase.com.

Among the other treasures I’ve found in this time is the stunning Caro mea by Girolamo Giacobbi, recorded here with low voices to highlight its rich harmony. A Bolognan composer from the early Baroque era, Giacobbi was among the first to write operas (most of which are lost) but also published sacred works; this piece is from Motecta multiplici vocum (1601). Many Italian composers of his time are justifiably dismissed as bland, making it all the more satisfying to discover music of this quality.

Andrea Rota’s Emendemus in melius, a responsory for Ash Wednesday, is another such discovery, and was part of our first concert as The Bevan Family Consort at Holy Redeemer over a decade ago. I was also determined to get a version of Christus factus est recorded and correctly attributed to Baldassare Sartori. This popular piece has been recorded countless times, but seemingly always attributed to Felice Anerio owing to an error made by Pietro Alfieri, the first editor to publish an edition and repeated in all subsequent publications. (One of the sources, I-Rli Musica P 25, includes a light-hearted comment that it is written in the style of Anerio.)

The Polyphony Database began as a way to make available the works of Spanish composer Alonso Lobo, and while researching his music, I was pointed towards an incomplete Lamentation for eight voices in the archives at Toledo Cathedral. The first choir is complete and unmistakably the work of the genius. Lobo paraphrases the Toledo chant melody throughout which gave me a good starting point for piecing together the second choir. Even so, reconstructing a single part of a contrapuntal work is difficult enough, and four is near impossible—we were still ironing out several parallel octaves while recording, and some that I had missed have made it to the final cut! Given the voices we had on hand, we decided to record the piece a fourth lower than written. My hope is that our performance will persuade others to suggest improvements to my edition, make further recordings, and begin to include the piece in the standard repertoire.

2023 marked 400 years since the death of William Byrd, considered by many to be England’s finest composer. His two books of motets from 1589 and 1591 contain, in my view, his best works, and Tribulatio proxima est from the latter is a personal favourite. In these collections, Byrd weaves scripture with lines of his own, reflecting his anguish over Catholic persecution. While most of these motets have no specific liturgical association, their penitential themes and yearning counterpoint make them perfect fare for Lent and Advent.

We’re especially excited to present the first recording of the six-voice Lamentations by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder. A court favourite of Elizabeth I, Ferrabosco’s European travels and diplomatic connections have given rise to theories that he may have been a spy. His sacred music like almost all of his English contemporaries’ survives only in manuscript and the extant sources for this piece in particular were quite challenging to collate—I’m very glad I persevered!

His three five voice Lamentations are relatively popular, but little else is known beyond academic circles. His obvious grasp of compositional technique demonstrates his rigorous European training, but there are many markers in his harmony and counterpoint which are reminiscent of the English style and which clearly foreshadow Byrd. The two men would have been about the same age and must have known each other well—one wonders how they got on and influenced each other. Highlights of this Lamentation include the finely worked cascade at ‘Daleth’ and the angular modulations in the following section, particularly at 'contristatus est venter meus' ('my bowels are troubled').

Our programme also includes familiar works by 20th-century French composers: Mel Bonis’s Tantum ergo, Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi caritas, and Francis Poulenc’s scintillating Vinea mea electa, and a few seasonal stalwarts for double choir: Mendelssohn’s Am Karfreitag, Lotti’s Crucifixus a 8, and Purcell’s Hear my prayer, the latter performed here by a solo octet.

Finally we include Bruckner’s Christus factus est to mark his 200th birthday. Bruckner’s use of dynamic contrast is a feature of all of his composition, with sudden changes often likened to him switching manuals on the organ at St Florian’s Priory. His devout Catholicism is evident in his sacred choral music which I think his most inspired output, the five beats of silence at the climax of this piece being a prime example—like falling into the abyss and looking up into the face of God.

Francis Bevan © 2025

It was quite a feat bringing together the Bevan Family Consort for a third album. After numerous Whatsapp polls we finally settled on a location and a few days in May when we could all be together—most of us, anyway. Some could only join for a day or two, owing to professional engagements, hence the variety in voice-scorings on this album. The sense of focus, because of time and vocal constraints, seemed particularly fitting for the penitential music we were singing. Recording an album with the family is always moving, but this one was especially so because of the theme of the music. There were a lot fewer young children with us this time, for one reason or another, and perhaps this too contributed to an atmosphere of greater recollection.

We were delighted to have some new members in the choir, namely my younger sisters and Dan, who, feeling left out of the fun, decided to brush up on their sight-singing skills so that they could join us for this mini-break in Dorset. The house was fantastic, complete with grand piano, large grounds, hot tub and pool table, the perfect antidote to long hours of intense rehearsal and recording.

Like previous albums, this one contains well-worn family favourites beside newly-discovered or un-recorded rarities, thanks to our in-house editor and arch-polyphony enthusiast, Francis. Deciding on music for an album is always a messy business but brings to light the divergence of tastes within a family. The final offering represents a rigorously sought balance between liturgical relevance, feel-good motets, family significance and the latest renaissance scholarship! We hope you enjoy our selection and that it can be a prayerful accompaniment to the Lenten season.

Michael Bevan © 2025