The Voices of our ancestors: Musica Sacra announce their 2026/27 season
Robbie Guthrie
New York City based choir Musica Sacra recently announced their 2026/27 season including a performance of Musgrave’s The Voices of Our Ancestors on April 20, 2027 at the Cathedral of St John the Divine.
The Voices of Our Ancestors is a 2014 work for narrator, chorus, brass, and organ that sets the creation hymn from the Rigveda, an ancient Sanskrit verse dating in its written form from 1500-1200 B.C., and eleven other poems translated into English from almost as many languages.
Poet and author David Mills will narrate the work, and his poetry will be featured in the course of the program. Mills's first book, Boneyarn, about New York's African Burial Ground, won the 2022 North American Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of Virginia.
The program begins with selections of medieval polyphony and works by Josquin des Prez and Adrian Willaert from the Medici Codex of 1518. (Within view of the audience is a tapestry created with artwork commissioned by Pope Leo X, who commissioned the Medici Codex as a wedding gift to his nephew.)