James MacMillan’s Ordo Virtutum (“The Order of the Virtues”), for two eight-part choirs and percussion, was written during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns for the MDR Rundfunk Choir, who gave the first performance in Leipzig last year. This was its UK premiere by the BBC Singers and National Youth Voices under Sofi Jeannin.
A work of unwavering spiritual certainty lasting just over an hour, it derives from the allegorical morality play of the same name by Hildegard of Bingen, dating from about 1150, in which personifications of the Christian virtues (Humility, Faith, Chastity, Hope, and so on) wage war with the devil for the human Soul, which is assailed by temptation yet all the while conscious of its longing to return to the God who created it.
