Music / “Regina coeli: The Queen of Heaven”, Polifemy. At Wesley Uniting Church,  December 4. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

IF there was one great benefit of living in Renaissance Europe, it would have to have been the music sung in the great cathedrals.

Of course, the downsides were things such as the plague, wars and the lack of espresso machines, but the polyphonic sacred music by the great composers of the period still has the power to captivate and uplift.

Robyn Mellor has been a constant part of early music performance in Canberra for more than 30 years, with female vocal ensemble Polifemy focusing on renaissance music written and performed by women, who were mostly nuns. For this concert, the ensemble expanded to include four male singers (two tenors and two bass) for a program of music in honour of Mary, the Virgin Mother.

The first half of the concert opened with a simple plainchant from four sopranos, before being joined by three more sopranos and three altos for a series of Marian hymns by composers such as Guillaume Dufay, Josquin des Prez, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Heinrich Isaac and Orlando de Lassus. The music simply floated over the audience, the high notes from the sopranos shimmering above the rest. At least two of these woman singers have quite stunningly pure voices which are a pleasure to listen to.

For the last two hymns, those by Isaac and de Lassus, the women were joined by the male singers, adding extra depth to the sound, then launching into the second half of the concert, a Mass by Flemish composer Jacob Obrecht “Missa Sub tuum praesidium”. This wonderfully complex music with different voices singing differing texts at the same time. It was simply a matter of allowing the music to simply wash and engulf over the listener in a most satisfying way. A most delightful concert.