Rautavaara began work on an unaccompanied mass, the Missa a cappella, in March 2009, its first performance taking place on 25 November 2011 at Jacobikerk, Utrecht, by the Netherlands Radio Choir under Celso Antunes. Our Joyful’st Feast came into being only a few years earlier when the Helsinki Chamber Choir and Nils Schweckendiek commissioned a choral work to be performed at the European Broadcasting Union Christmas concert. Rautavaara decided to set texts by two English Renaissance poets: two extracts from Shakespeare and a section from an extensive Christmas poem by George Wither, a contemporary of the Bard.

Word play, the compositional potential inherent in the different meanings of words, sounds made possible by their respective vowels and consonants, their rhythm, context and content, are all afforded fresh examination in Ommel by the Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970). Born in Helsinki, Wennäkoski studied composition at the Sibelius Academy and the Hague Royal Conservatory.

An entirely different mood resonates throughout Lamenti by the Italian composer Paola Livorsi (b. 1967). The title refers to the lamenting, ever-falling musical lines of the ‘lamento’, which in the madrigals and arias of the Renaissance and Baroque expresses an often-uncontrolled mourning over the passing of a loved one.