Tag: the numinous voice

Toronto Consort/The Numinous Voice

Helen Polishuk Leave a comment

Spring, which we’ve been waiting for so long this year, has finally arrived.
Temperatures jumped from 10°C to 30°C. What’s next?
Nature isn’t waiting; it stood patiently by while the temperatures were low, frosts, and snow were falling, and now everything is slowly starting to turn green and bloom.

This season coincided with the traditional spring cycle of musical gatherings in Toronto Consort.

Now is the month of Maying.

Yes,”Now is the month of Maying” is a famous 1595 English Renaissance madrigal by Thomas Morley,

celebrating spring and traditional May Day festivities and everyone sitting in the Toronto Consort’s hall on May 16, 2026, witnessed this.

“The Numinous Voice” is a thematic tagline and conceptual framework used by the Toronto Consort to highlight the deep, spiritually moving, and transformative power of early vocal music.
This guiding theme is heavily reflected in their recent programming, connecting historical works directly to emotional and sacred listener experiences:

The concept anchored their recent spring season finale concert, Now is the month of Maying. Held on May 16 at Jeanne Lamon Hall, it featured world-renowned British tenor Charles Daniels and celebrated the 400th anniversary of English Renaissance composer John Dowland.In this excerpt from the concert, he performs the lead role.

“The Numinous Voice” emphasizes the raw, ethereal qualities of late Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque repertoire. The ensemble pairs these haunting vocal textures with period-accurate instruments—such as lutes, recorders, and viols—to recreate acoustic environments that feel sacred or transcendent to modern ears.

In early music performance and programming—particularly within the ethos of the Toronto Consort—the concept of “cycles” operates on three distinct, interconnected levels. These

structures bridge historical context, musical composition, and the “Numinous Voice” theme.

Historically, early music was not performed as an abstract concert commodity; it was written to mark specific times of the year. The Toronto Consort models its programming around these traditional, natural loops.

The Dark/Winter Cycle: This focuses on introspection, sacred architecture, and lighting candles to get through cold months. Examples include their A Spotless Rose – 1200 Years of Carols for New Year’s concert or Gesualdo Passione, which align with the winter solstice, Advent, or Lent.
The Spring/Renewal Cycle: This celebrates the return of light and fertility. Their season finale, Now is the month of Maying, acts as a joyous, celebratory secular ritual that signals rebirth. It captures the historical shift away from winter’s heavy “melancholia” toward Renaissance courtly festivities.

Thematic and Compositional Cycles
Musically, a “cycle” refers to a group of songs or instrumental pieces designed by a composer to be performed together as a unified whole, often expanding on a singular emotional motif.

The concert honoring John Dowland heavily utilizes this. Dowland famously composed pavanes and lute songs in tightly linked thematic loops—such as his iconic Lachrimae (Seven Tears), which explores seven different facets of passionate grief and melancholia.

Under General and Artistic Director Daniel Taylor, the ensemble uses these cycles to create a sense of transcendence and ritual.Early music notation often grants performance freedom. By cycling through raw vocal textures and period instruments, the ensemble triggers a state of psychological “flow”. The cyclical nature of the music acts like a secular rite, allowing modern audiences to escape the linear passage of time and tap into a shared, timeless human emotion.

The Toronto Consort utilizes a rare working collection of more than 100 accurate historical replicas of medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque instruments. Many of these instruments are hand-crafted by the ensemble members themselves to capture the precise textures needed for their “Numinous Voice” programming.
Their specific instrumentation spans several distinct historical families:
Plucked Strings and Basso Continuo
These instruments provide the rhythmic framework and harmonic foundation for Renaissance courtly music and Dowland’s intimate compositions:

Lute: The foundational, pear-shaped string instrument central to Renaissance music and John Dowland’s solo works.

Theorbo: An elongated, large bass lute with extended bass strings, used extensively to conduct and anchor the bassline (basso continuo).

Cittern & Bandora: Wire-strung instruments common in English consort music that add a bright, ringing texture.

Harpsichord & Organetto: Period keyboards used to flesh out the harmonic architecture in sacred and chamber settings.

Bowed Strings

Rather than using modern violins, the ensemble relies heavily on families of strings that feature a warmer, more resonant sound with less string tension:

  • Viols (Viola da Gamba): Fretted, bowed instruments held between the legs, ranging from treble to bass sizes to form a complete “viol consort”.
  • Vielle & Rebec: Early medieval ancestors of the violin, producing an earthy, rustic tone.

Early Woodwinds and Winds

To mirror the outdoor festival energies of pieces like Now is the month of Maying, the wind section features highly specific, buzzy, or breathy period instruments:

  • Recorders & Flutes: Played in varied sizes (soprano down to bass) to achieve pure, vibrato-free wind harmonies.
  • Shawm & Dulcian: Double-reed ancestors of the oboe and bassoon, known for their powerful, reedy projection.
  • Crumhorn & Rauschpfeife: Capped-reed instruments that produce a distinctively buzzy, historic outdoor festival sound

Early Brass

For grander German Baroque or Venetian-style arrangements, the ensemble integrates distinctively dark and malleable brass:

  • Sackbut: The direct Renaissance predecessor to the modern trombone, featuring thinner walls that allow for a mellower, blendable tone.
  • Cornetto: A curved wood instrument wrapped in leather with a finger-hole system and a small brass mouthpiece, celebrated for its unique ability to perfectly mimic the human voice

The final chords have faded and the spring season has come to an end. We eagerly await the upcoming series of Christmas concerts……..


……I stepped outside and breathed in the freshness of the coming spring.
How seamlessly this year the end of the hymn-making combined with the vibrant arrival of a vibrant spring and warmth.
Coincidence?

A Spotless Rose

Helen Polishuk

How do you imagine the winter solstice 1,200 years ago? Let’s think about it together and imagine it. No electricity, little heat, only large semi-stone houses heated by fireplaces. No television, radio, or the information media that fill our world today.
There are candles, there is a calendar fixed by priests, and there is faith. Yes, there is faith and the teaching of the cyclical nature of the year. There is faith that after the winter solstice, which hid the sun in darkness, the sun will come, the light will come, and a new year will be born. The days will begin to grow longer, there will be more light every day, and the world around us will begin to fight and resist darkness and fervor, death and destruction, in order to come to life. As in ancient times, so now, at this time they begin to sing carols – sacred songs reminiscent of the singing of birds, the sound of a stream, the rustling of trees and, most importantly, accompanied by a special ritual proclaiming the beginning of a new year and the arrival of light, spring and warmth.

Now imagine today, 1,200 years later, with the stage of Jeanne Lamon Hall at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre (427 Bloor St W) illuminated by candlelight, and the Toronto Consortium Choir once again collaborating with outstanding students from the Schola Cantorum of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music on “The Flawless Rose: 1,200 Years of Christmas Carols,” an inspiring series of Christmas carols.

An action that takes us back 1200 years or vice versa, an action that revives for us Christmas, the birth of a new light from darkness, preserved and reverently restored carols that announce the most terrible and dark day and call for light and sun that will conquer the darkness.

As a consistent admirer of everything the Toronto Consort does, I would like to commend this evening as a wonderfully orchestrated collaboration between two talented conductors.Les Arts Florissants’ co-director of music, Paul Agnew, has joined Daniel Taylor as conductor of ensemble.

It was a play of darkness and light, a choir in the dark and a choir in the light. Two wonderful conductors. It was wonderful, as the wonderful singing of carols by the wonderful soloists was complemented by the stage interpretation of the action. And it was so beautiful, dynamic, subtle, and refined. This is that love of culture, that tradition of passing on ancient heritage. There were many young people in the audience, many students from the University of Toronto.
Vichel Praetorius,Orlando Gibbons,Nicolas Gombert,Gustav Holst,Benjamin Britten,Herbert Howells music was playing.

A time of night’s dominance, when the day seems shrouded in shadows. The sun recedes to its furthest distance and seems to freeze in the silence of death: in these difficult times, it is difficult to understand that this is Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun. A candlelit carol ceremony. A reflection on birth and rebirth, the importance of these concepts for transmission to the next generation.

….Perfection is achieved,not when there isnothing more to add,but when there is nothing left to take away….

( Antoine se Saint-Exupery)

I look forward to the next meeting with Toronto Consort.