Britain's
Monteverdi Choir had roots in the early development of the historical-performance movement in Britain, but has broadened its repertory and become recognized as one of the world's premier choral groups. The choir has continued to emphasize Baroque music, however, mounting and recording an epochal Bach Cantata Pilgrimage that has made up a large proportion of its catalog after the year 2000.
The
Monteverdi Choir is a group of unusually long standing within the early music movement. It was founded in 1964 by
John Eliot Gardiner, who at the time was a Cambridge University undergraduate. He brought the choir together for a performance of
Claudio Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Cambridge, hoping to infuse the score with something of its original warmth and to avoid the rather academic performances that were the norm in British early music circles at the time. The choir was immediately successful and continued to use the name
Monteverdi Choir even though that composer constituted only a small part of its repertory. The
Monteverdi Choir made its London debut under
Gardiner in 1966, at Wigmore Hall, and it remained integral to
Gardiner's work as he founded new instrumental ensembles: the
English Baroque Soloists and later the
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which applied historical-performance principles to music after the Baroque period. The choir soon became known beyond Britain and began to tour with
Gardiner, reprising the
Monteverdi Vespers in 1989 at St. Mark's in Venice, replicating the original performance environment of the work. The choir traveled to New York in 1996 for the inaugural Lincoln Center Festival, where it performed
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, and Missa Solemnis, Op. 123, with the
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The choir explored 19th century music with that group, notably the mostly neglected choral music of
Schumann.
In the 1990s, the
Monteverdi Choir recorded both of
Haydn's oratorios. But its main focus was
Bach, who makes up a substantial proportion of the group's dozens of recordings on the Philips label and later on
Gardiner's own label SDG, referring to the small "Soli Deo Gloria" (Only to God's Glory) image
Bach affixed to many of his compositions. In 2000,
Gardiner and the
Monteverdi Choir undertook a
Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, a monumental undertaking in which almost all of
Bach's cantatas were performed over the course of the year, in some churches associated with
Bach's career. Most of the cantatas were recorded, and have been released over the 2000s and 2010s in sumptuously illustrated editions featuring
Gardiner's reflections on the meanings of the individual works. The
Monteverdi Choir has also performed and recorded music of many other composers, including
Schütz,
Handel,
Mozart, and
Schubert, and a 50th anniversary concert at Cambridge in 2014 repeated the choir's original
Monteverdi program there. The choir began as an unusually progressive ensemble, but by that time its sound was somewhat conservative;
Gardiner has avoided the very small choral groupings that characterize many modern Baroque performances. The
Monteverdi Choir has remained extremely popular, however, especially in Britain.
Notable recordings of the 2010s have included one of
Bach's Mass in B minor, BWV 232 (
2015),
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52 ("Lobgesang"), with the
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Gardiner, and
Love is Come Again (2019), featuring music for an Easter play mounted at
Gardiner's family home. That was a recording of a type the
Monteverdi Choir had rarely essayed before, and it spoke to the venerable choir's continuing vitality.