A Belgian ensemble built on one voice to a part, Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier brought Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine to Wigmore Hall.
Vox Luminis, the Belgian ensemble founded by Lionel Meunier, sang Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine at Wigmore Hall in Marylebone on Sunday 20 September 2026.
Monteverdi published the Vespers in 1610, in a print dedicated to the Pope and issued as he sought a new post. It sets the Latin office of evening prayer twice over, in the old church polyphony and in the new Italian style, with soloists, echoes and violins.
The print bundled it with a mass in the old style. Nobody is certain whether he meant the Vespers to be performed whole, and its shape has been argued over ever since.
Meunier directs the ensemble from within the singers rather than from a podium. One singer takes each part, with continuo, so nothing in the texture can hide inside a section.
Vox Luminis gives around seventy concerts a year. Its recordings of Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien and Buxtehude’s Abendmusiken each took the leading award in their category, in 2012 and 2019.
Period instrumentalists joined the voices, and the performance set the Vespers at the scale of a small ensemble in a hall built for recitals.