Brighton Consort

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Brighton Consort

Brighton Consort specialises in a cappella renaissance music. The page for Brighton Consort

We present around six concerts a year in Brighton and the surrounding area, including Lewes, Shoream-by-Sea, and even Arundel.

08/06/2026

Join Brighton Consort for a day! We are giving a public workshop on Saturday, 4 July 2026.

Time: 1:30pm to 6:30pm
Venue: St John the Evangelist Church, Knoyle Road, Brighton, BN1 6RB

We will explore choral music inspired by - or grappling with - the promise of freedom and belonging found in the American Declaration of Independence. For 250 years, these ideas have been embraced, contested, and reclaimed by different people and for different causes. What does it mean to raise one’s voice for liberty? Who is allowed to join in? And how can we do so freely and yet together? Such questions have invited musical as well as philosophical answers and we would love to consider some of them with you this Fourth of July.

"Now I make a leaf of Voices – for I have found nothing mightier than they are."
- Walt Whitman

Info and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/raised-voices

15/05/2026

One last rehearsal in the beautiful St Mary-de-Haura Church, Shoreham-by-Sea, before our concert tonight!

Join us at 7:30pm — doors open at 7:10pm.

Info and tickets at
brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

14/05/2026

Monteverdi’s take on the perennial clash between old and new, conservative and progressive, traditional and scandalous, was unique in ambition, audacity, and influence. Monteverdi’s modern music, while indeed breaking things, ushered in a way of thinking about what music is for at a fundamental level that has never left.

Pictured is the city of Mantua, where Monteverdi worked between 1590-1613 at the beginning of his career. You can hear, attached to this post, the ending of the wonderful Adoramus Te Christe, one of the religious pieces we perform in our programme MUSICA MODERNA: Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things.

Our last concert of this series is coming up this Friday 15 May, at St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham-by-Sea!

Doors open at 7:10pm, concert starts at 7:30pm.

More info and tickets at
brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

13/05/2026

Our last performance of "MUSICA MODERNA:Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things" is coming up this Friday 15 May in Shoreham-by-Sea (St Mary-de-Haura Church)! Time for a last rehearsal...

Come have a listen! Doors open at 7:10 pm, we start at 7:30pm. Info, programme and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

We can't wait to see you!

11/05/2026

A sneaky preview of the rehearsal before our concert in Lewes last Saturday...

We're now getting ready to perform, after Lewes and Brighton, one last time in Shoreham-by-Sea this Friday 15 May! So far so good :)

08/05/2026

The music on our programme contains some of the technical experimentation at the heart of the controversy between Artusi abd Monteverdi, but all of the arrogance, ambition, and power with which Monteverdi raced into the future. Much of the sacred music he wrote throughout his life confronted, probed, examined, and almost satirised the clash between old and new that he had identified. His secular music is where his new ideas found their fullest expression. We present both of these kinds of music, using a mass setting composed late in his life entitled simply ‘a mass for four voices’ and appearing on the surface to be a conservative piece but powered by the beating heart of Baroque music, as a scaffold for a programme that contains an early madrigal (Ch’io non t’ami) and a late one (Ohime, il bel viso), some wildly contrasting sacred music (the exquisite pair of Christe, adoramus te and Adoramus te, Christe contrasts so well with the jagged and uncontrolled motets Domine, ne in furore and Laudate pueri), and a focus on the pinnacle of Monteverdi’s a ca****la madrigal output with four selections from his fourth book of madrigals (published right at the middle of the controversy with Artusi). This all leads toward a towering masterpiece, the lengthy and incredibly powerful madrigal Rimanti in pace, claimed by many to be the best he wrote.

Come listen to our next concert "MUSICA MODERNA: Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things"!

Details of Performances:

Saturday, 9 May, St Michael's Church, Lewes, 7:30pm

Sunday, 10 May, Friends Meeting House, 7:30pm (shorter concert with reduced programme, as part of )

Friday, 15 May, St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham, 7:30pm

More info, programme and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

07/05/2026

Successful and talented people in their early thirties often claim they are creating the future and destroying the past. The difference is that this time, insofar as the history of music is concerned, Monteverdi was right. He is now known by some as the ‘Father of Modern Music’ and his unabashed belief that music should fundamentally be about human psychology and things we can grasp and understand (words, stories, characters), rather than abstraction and ineffable transcendence, has shaped every kind of music that came after him. He was of course a product of his time and his contribution fit into the broader cultural movements of humanism and the Enlightenment to come but he is alone among composers as having so clearly articulated what ‘modernity’ meant for him in a way that was then so validated by the rest of history. Monteverdi was absolutely at the cutting edge, he knew it, and he was unapologetic. He moved incredibly fast and broke many things, and the result was music of extraordinary power with literally centuries of influence.

Come listen to our next concert "MUSICA MODERNA: Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things"!

Details of Performances:

Saturday, 9 May, St Michael's Church, Lewes, 7:30pm

Sunday, 10 May, Friends Meeting House, 7:30pm (shorter concert with reduced programme, as part of )

Friday, 15 May, St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham, 7:30pm

More info, programme and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

06/05/2026

Evidently a man not lacking in self confidence, Monteverdi’s primary retort to Artusi's criticism about breaking the rules of counterpoint was to briefly mention in the preface to his Fifth Book of Madrigals containing some of the very pieces Artusi had highlighted, almost by way of a throw-away comment, that he wasn’t really breaking the rules as much as throwing them out entirely and creating his own. He was, by his own assertion, creating a completely new way of writing music. Indeed, so he said, he had already ‘found’ it and it was in fact entirely dependent on the words Artusi hadn’t even bothered to include. Music was, for Monteverdi, to be ‘ruled’ by the meaning of the words, and the words were to come ‘first’.

"Ah dolente partita", the ending of which you can listen to in this post and featured in our upcoming programme, comes from the Fourth Book of Madrigals, but we can already hear how the words "E sento nel partire un vivace morire che dà vita" ("And I feel, in leaving, a lively dying that brings life") shape the music.

Come listen to our next concert "MUSICA MODERNA: Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things"!

Details of Performances:

Saturday, 9 May, St Michael's Church, Lewes, 7:30pm

Sunday, 10 May, Friends Meeting House, 7:30pm (shorter concert with reduced programme, as part of )

Friday, 15 May, St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham, 7:30pm

More info, programme and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

05/05/2026

The main charge that Artusi made against Monteverdi in his famous public debate was that the latter was breaking the ‘rules’ of counterpoint, how to set note against note in polyphonic music. These were developed over centuries by many composers to avoid dissonance and create works of transcendent beauty. Without getting technical, these rules involved some maths about frequency relationships and didn’t, as evidenced by Artusi’s failure to include them, take into account the words, neither their meaning nor their emotional impact, that a vocal piece might set. "Ohimè il bel viso", of which an excerpt is attached to this post, is a great example of Monteverdi's defiance with the rules.

Come listen to our next concert "MUSICA MODERNA: Monteverdi Moving Fast and Breaking Things"!

Details of Performances:

Saturday, 9 May, St Michael's Church, Lewes, 7:30pm

Sunday, 10 May, Friends Meeting House, 7:30pm (shorter concert with reduced programme, as part of )

Friday, 15 May, St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham, 7:30pm

More info, programme and tickets at brightonconsort.org.uk/next-concert

Address

St George's Road
Brighton
BN21ED

Website

http://www.brightonconsort.org.uk/

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