Secrets

The CONVENTional Project are joined by Sheffield's own Steel City Choristers for an evening of secrets and hidden music from the Renaissance and Baroque era, featuring Byrd, Cozzolani, Assandra and Aleotti. Because of the religious persecution of Catholics in England at the time, Byrd's masses would have been sang in secret, and you could have been arrested if you were found in possession of the scores. The part books for each mass contained no date and no title page so that they were easier to conceal. Chiara Margarita Cozzolani's brilliantly vibrant and virtuosic Mass for Four Voices was composed while she lived in the Santa Radegonda convent in Milan. Cozzolani and her contemporaries lived and worked through the rules of ‘Clausura’, meaning hidden - the nuns had to be hidden from view, living a cloistered life, and continuing to compose music despite heavy restrictions placed on them. Conducted by Olivia Shotton, the ensemble of singers and historical instruments brings ferocious Baroque rhythms and soaring polyphony.