The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel hosted a concert Sunday evening, debuting a composition focused on interactions with angels found throughout the Bible.
The Vatican sometimes hosts concerts in the chapel for visiting musicians and other special occasions. But the events are always invite-only, and it is extremely rare for photojournalists to receive access.
“I have to make an awkward announcement,” Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, said before the show, then told the roughly 200 attendees, mostly native English speakers, that they couldn’t use their phones to film or photograph the premiere. Guests included Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and the UK’s former Prime Minister Theresa May.
The 70-minute oratorio, “Angels Unawares,” is comprised of 12 pieces, each representing a story drawn from the Bible. Sir James MacMillan composed it using texts by Robert Willis, the former Dean of Canterbury who passed away in late 2024, not long after completing the work.
“I wanted a big piece of music for the holy angels, which had never been written before,” financier and philanthropist John Studzinski, whose Genesis Foundation commissioned the composition, told The Associated Press. “When we started it, I think James was uncertain as to whether this was possible. But then when we saw the text that Robert Willis had created; James didn’t change one word, and he was so moved.”
“Now we have a piece of music that can live forever, that really reflects some of the most emotional, powerful aspects of angels as messengers, mentors, warriors, motivators,” he added.
A call to welcome strangers
On Sunday, British choir The Sixteen sang the lyrics as Cambridge-based chamber orchestra Britten Sinfonia played. Angels could be seen all around — some on the walls depicting Moses’ life and death, and another above, on Michelangelo’s fresco, banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Their exile is the first song in “Angels Unaware.”
“It was sort of the unification of the glory of two of the greatest artistic expressions, music and painting. It was just perfect,” Alison Clarkson, a state senator from Vermont, said afterward.
The composition’s title is drawn from a verse of scripture calling for brotherly love, and the need to welcome strangers — some of whom might be angels. Most come to the oratorio’s biblical figures as themselves, but at least one appears incognito. In “The Song of Tobias,” the protagonist repeatedly scolds himself for not recognizing the archangel Raphael.
“The dog, I felt, had known it all along,” the tenor soloist sang, then paused for a few moments before the orchestra swelled for the song’s final line. “How could I not have known?”
Wingless angels on Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” were visible only on a cloth screen, behind which restorers on scaffolding are working to remove a white film of salt that has accumulated on the massive painting over the last three decades.
From the Sistine Chapel to the English-speaking world
“The theme of angels is one instinctively understood by many people and in many different faiths,” Cardinal Nichols told the AP. “Therefore, to explore their presence and the power of angelic presence in our lives will, I think, touch many people’s hearts and souls.”
Sunday evening’s concert was recorded and will be aired on BBC radio next week, according to the Genesis Foundation.
That upcoming broadcast underscores religious songs sung in English have a different reach than those in Latin or other languages. Last year’s conclave elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, and Nichols noted that English is the most commonly spoken language in the world.
“Many, many people take to English and can grasp it,” Nichols said.
The choir appreciated the English lyrics, too.
“We’d be pretty rubbish at singing in Italian, to be perfectly honest,” Julie Cooper, a soprano, said while wearing a glittering green dress. “We’re used to singing in Latin, but it is wonderful to do these texts in English and to try and bring them alive and tell the story and communicate. To singers, that’s the most important thing.”
