Hampstead Collective – Third Concert – Sacred Songs – Monday 14th September at 7.00 pm
‘Le Tombeau de Couperin et de Sainte-Colombe’ transports the listener and observer on a spiritual and meditative exploration of the French aesthetic across genre and period. At its heart, the programme presents a series of sacred songs from the mid-baroque, from the jaunty and resplendent Hymn des Anges by Clerambault, to the pleading supplication of Couperin’s Usquequo Domine: ‘How long, O Lord? Wilt Thou forget me forever?’
Tenor Aidan Coburn performs with organist Mark Shepherd – on an exquisite Klop chamber instrument, boasting vertical eight-foot principal pipes – and Jacob Garside playing the viola da gamba. A member of the viol family, the gamba heard in this concert uses seven strings, a number typically associated with the French baroque and with Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe in particular. It is interesting, perhaps, that neither of the eponymous tombeaux of this programme involve the singer; ‘Le Tombeau de Sainte-Colombe’ is an homage by Marais to his great master, and ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ sees an inventive arrangement of a Menuet by Ravel.
The sacred music is punctuated with moments of secular musings, inviting the observer to reflect on the shadow of the world as we currently experience it. A series of poems from Victor Hugo’s Les Chants du crepuscule (‘Songs of the Half Light’) will be heard against a backdrop of a selection of works by Claude Monet.
If you want to listen to the concert live in church you can book a ticket through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.com/o/the-hampstead-collective-30975107523. Or you can watch on Facebook live via The Hampstead Collective Facebook page