The Triumphs of Oriana is a 1601 madrigal collection compiled by Thomas Morley in honour of Elizabeth I. For the Golden Jubilee of the second Elizabeth, the King's Singers and the BBC commissioned The Oriana Collection: a sequence of seven madrigals, each a collaboration between a leading poet and composer. This Prom was the premiere of the new set, interspersed with a selection from the 17th-century original.
There is an expressive consistency about the older pieces. Each number sets a fawning text in praise of Oriana (then a nickname for Elizabeth I), casting her as a benevolent heroine and creating an idealised, pastoral vision of England. Much of the music is exuberantly celebratory, but some of the pieces transcend their genuflectory function. Ellis Gibbons's Long Live Fair Oriana was full of dramatic contrast, while Thomas Weelkes's contribution was crowned by an exuberant coda. The six voices of the Kings' Singers achieved an impressive intimacy.
The easy, unquestioning belief in queen and country has now disappeared, and the new poems and madrigals were reflections on language and identity rather than sycophantic dedications to Her Majesty. The fragile tintinnabulations of Joby Talbot's The Wishing Tree, setting a text by Kathleen Jamie, revealed a darker side to a pastoral reverie. John McCabe's music for verses of Jo Shapcott's Cartography was similarly ambivalent. Modernist textures were interrupted by passages of archaic plainchant, reflecting the "leaks [of] history" in the poem. The delicate, elegiac pieces by Joe Duddell and Howard Goodall were the furthest removed from celebratory indulgence. Duddell set Grace Nichols's Ode to English with artful simplicity, and Goodall's music transformed UA Fanthorpe's All the Queen's Horses into a nostalgic lament.
Yet there was room for irreverence as well. Jocelyn Pook made musical use of Nokia's most annoying ringtone in her setting of Andrew Motion's Mobile, and John Harle's Royal Ring Road set Iain Sinclair's text as an ironic tribute to the M25.
However, it was the last piece, Dominic Muldowney's Leaves on the Line, that made the greatest impression. The music created a compelling drama from Simon Armitage's elegant poem, and the King's Singers' sympathetic performance expressed the desperation of stalled commuters.
