Everyone in the group feels strongly it: Harry Christophers introduces The Sixteen’s 25th Choral Pilgrimage, Angel of Peace

Harry Christophers & The Sixteen in rehearsal – 2024 (Photo: Johnny Millar)

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen embark on their 25th Choral Pilgrimage, Angel of Peace, this month. Starting in Croydon Minster on Monday 17 March 2025, this sees them touring 21 venues across England, Scotland and Ireland including Dublin and Belfast, performing a programme that includes music by Hildegard of Bingen, John Taverner, Arvo Pärt, Will Todd and Anna Clyne. The tour takes its title from words by Cardinal Newman, set to music by Will Todd, ‘Let me be an angel of peace’.

Harry Christophers (Photo: Johnny Millar)

The Pilgrimage remains very much a Sixteen thing, the ensemble’s own concerts across the breadth of the country, and when I chat to Harry Christophers about this year’s tour he comments that everyone in the group feels strongly it. After all, if they miss places off then some parts of the country lose out. But there is no doubt that it is getting economically harder; there is no problem with audiences, and they keep ticket prices low, but the other expenses such as hotels and travel have been increasing. And of course, the venues are UK cathedrals and churches, buildings that are often struggling economically and having to put up their prices. 

He describes the Choral Pilgrimage as a burden the group has taken on, but it is a good burden, and the Pilgrimage remains important to audiences all over. The tour is launched in Croydon Minster, which is a prime example of what the tour is about, a gorgeous venue yet in an area of London that deserves more arts coverage. This year they are visiting Edinburgh, Dublin and Belfast, but some venues have been lost due to sheer economics, but there is hope to reintroduce them in the future. But Harry emphasises that no-one is to blame, simply costs have risen, it is the state of the arts in general. He comments that whilst there has been a tendency to judge arts organisations on how they dealt with the pandemic, but it is the last few years that the group has found difficult. They are, however, lucky to have wonderful patrons though he then adds, with a smile, that like most arts organisations, they could do with more.

This year’s programme began with John Taverner’s two large-scale Antiphons, Gaude plurimum and O splendor gloriae. Back in the days of LPs, Harry and the group recorded the Taverner, though at that time they followed the fashion of performing the music up a minor third. Now they are, as Harry describes it, grown up and plan to perform them at the correct pitch. Harry calls the two antiphons stonking pieces, each ten to fifteen minutes long, so he needed some very different music for contrast. Some years ago, they did a programme that mixed the music of Arvo Pärt with Renaissance music, which worked well so this year they are doing Arvo Pärt’s Tribute to Caesar, Da pacem Domine and Magnificat, recognising his 90th birthday.

The Genesis Foundation commissioned Will Todd to write a setting of a meditation by Cardinal Newman, I shall be an angel of peace. Harry comments that some commissions get an outing and are then put to bed, but Will Todd’s is a terrific piece, and he wanted to give it more outings. It was Harry who suggested to Will Todd that he use a solo violin alongside the choir, something that in the 2025 programme provides more sonic variety. To complement Will Todd’s piece, they commissioned a new work from Anna Clyne for the same forces.

Her Orbits was a real collaboration between Harry and the composer, thinking long about the piece and the text. Anna Clyne has set Rilke in translation, and her writing for the violin in the piece is fantastic. In need of something to link these strands, Harry turned to Hildegard of Bingen. With settings of two strong writers in Cardinal Newman and Rilke, Hildegard exemplifies both poet and composer.

For Harry, a Choral Pilgrimage programme needs have variety, along with a theme that is vague enough to not constrict the programme. This means that there will be some things that members of the audience adore and some which may challenge them (but in a good way), but Harry likes to think that people come to listen because of The Sixteen’s reputation. He sees the concerts as introducing a wide variety of music to people and persuading them to listen. As Harry sees it, Renaissance music is the group’s speciality, but the many modern composers they perform are influenced by the Renaissance composers. And, of course, for each Choral Pilgrimage there is a specially recorded disc, meaning audiences have a way of exploring further, for this year’s disc, Angel of Peace see The Sixteen’s website.

Looking ahead, the group is in Oslo on 30 March for the close of the 2025 Oslo International Church Music Festival with a programme in Oslo Cathedral of music by Hildegard of Bingen, John Tavener, Palestrina, Arvo Pärt and James MacMillan. Celebrating Palestrina’s 500th anniversary there are performances at St James’s Spanish Place (as part of the Wigmore Hall‘s season). The first two concerts are on 14 May, 18 June with the themes In praise of Women, and The Breaking of Bread. Each concert is on a particular theme, mixing masses, motets and music from Palestrina’s motet cycle Canticum Canticorum from 1584, which is based on texts from Song of Songs in the Old Testament; Palestrina’s largest collection of sacred motets.

Palestrina wrote something over 100 masses and Harry has recorded a series of discs with the group, but there is still a wealth of great music in the composer’s output. Choirs tended to do the same music each time, but there is so much more, and Harry mentions the Magnificats and a complete set of Offices for the Church’s year.

Harry Christophers & The Sixteen (Photo: Ami Creates)

Harry is currently working on the programme for the 2028 Choral Pilgrimage! Sometimes people suggest that he repeat programmes from other years, saying such and such a year was a great programme, but he wants to keep the repertoire active. The only drawback is that they need a bigger library to store it, but he thinks that it is marvellous that there is so much music.

A discussion between John Studzinski (philanthropist and founder of the Genesis Foundation) and the late Robert Willis (poet, cleric and Dean of Canterbury Cathedral until 2022) led to a commission for Willis to write a series of poems about Angels as messengers, ministers, warriors and worshippers. Willis had previously adapted a text by Newman for James MacMillan in 2020 as Nothing in Vain ;recorded by The Sixteen on their disc A Meditation which includes Will Todd’s piece too. [see my review of the premiere of both the James MacMillan and Will Todd pieces]

For the Voice of Angels project, the Genesis Foundation commissioned three young composers to set Robert Willis’ poems. The composers are Lucy Walker, Millicent B James and Ninfea Crutwell-Reade, and their new pieces were workshopped by Genesis Sixteen with James MacMillan in Dumfries last year. The Sixteen will be giving the premieres of these three very different works, something Harry finds exciting, at St James’s Piccadilly on 22 May and at St John’s Church, Cumnock on 24 May.

In June last year, they announced the 14th cohort of Genesis Sixteen, the group’s free young artists’ programme for 18 to 23-year-olds. Genesis Sixteen recently took part in a session at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff (coinciding with music training in Cardiff being in the news for all the wrong reasons). They had a fantastic weekend, and RWCMD has a very active vocal department, and the soloists were in their final year at RWCMD, three being former members of Genesis Sixteen. The scheme has now seen over 300 singers pass through the programme which is a real bonus.

The Sixteen’s Learning and Participation programme has link ups with the London Youth Choirs, Leeds Roman Catholic Cathedral’s Youth Programme, Barnsley Youth Choir and more recently, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir and other youth choirs, and these feed into Genesis Sixteen to great benefit. Harry feels that for singers in their teenage years, there are a lot of positive things going on in choral music and that because of this, the future of choral music is very positive, there is a lot of interest from young people. All we have to do is ensure that philanthropy and corporate support gets behind this.