Blue Heron at St. Ignatius of Antioch Blue Heron Kateri Chambers and the bass Cameron Beauchamp performing in a concert of Renaissance pieces based on the "Song of Songs" at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church. The ancient Hebrew love poem called the "Song of Songs" has long been interpreted as a religious allegory and incorporated by Jews and Christians into scripture. In the program notes that accompanied Blue Heron's concert on Sunday afternoon, Scott Metcalfe, the music director of this excellent Renaissance choral ensemble based in Boston, writes that for those who read the poem from a secular viewpoint, it is clearly about an amorous young couple. The erotic language of the Hebrew original has sometimes been muted by translators over the centuries, he adds, with the frank sensuality of the "Song of Songs" making its religious interpreters uncomfortable. For its program at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church on the Upper West Side, Blue Heron included settings of the text drawn from the liturgies for various feasts of the Virgin Mary by three 16th-century Spanish composers - Francisco Guerrero, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Sebastián de Vivanco - as well as Nicolas Gombert, a Franco-Flemish composer who traveled in Spain. The sensuality of the motets matched the decadent language of the "Song of Songs." The ensemble sang Guerrero's "Tota pulchra es, Maria" ("You Are All Beautiful, Mary") with passionate expression and dramatic attention to text, its immaculately blended voices swelling in gorgeous waves. Gombert's harmonically striking setting of the same text reflected his dissonant aesthetic. Blue Heron transposed the music down to emulate the sound of the typical Renaissance ensemble of male falsettists or boys, tenors and basses. The resulting palette, darkly alluring, was complemented by the bajón, a Baroque bassoon often used in 16th-century Spanish choirs and played here by Marilyn Boenau. A beautifully low, sustained note concluded Victoria's "Vadam et circuibo civitatem" ("I Will Rise and Go About the City"), rendered with nuanced dynamic shadings and emotive conviction. Interspersed with the sacred polyphony were Spanish love songs performed by members of the ensemble, like the anonymous, mournful "Desdeñado soy de amor" ("I Am Scorned by Love"), sung by a male trio, and the boisterous "Pues que no puedo olvidarte" ("Since I Cannot Forget You"), sung by two men and a woman. Woven throughout were readings of excerpts from the "Song of Songs" by Kateri Chambers, who also recited poems (in English) by the Spanish Renaissance writers Lope de Vega and Francisco de la Torre. Ms. Chambers opened the program by running down the aisle and reciting a "Song of Songs" excerpt, "Kiss me, make me drunk with your kisses!" Ms. Chambers delivered the texts with flair, though it might have been more effective to have a male actor speak the verses written from a male perspective. Over all, the readings added a colorful twist to an alluringly rendered program.