“The Transfiguration,” 1520, by Raphael, in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. CC BY-SA 4.0
Easter is one of those times of year when even the most irregular churchgoers can feel impelled to don their Sunday best and attend a service. This joyful highpoint of the Christian calendar—and the darker-toned days of the Passion that precede it—may not nowadays have quite the same all-pervading presence in the secular consciousness as Christmas. But this time of year has captured the imagination of composers through the ages, not least because the Church was one of the few steady employment options available for composers for centuries. The result has been some of the best-loved, most enduring, and most ethereally transcendent pieces in the choral repertoire.