Two major choral works will be heard perhaps for the first time in more than 200 years this weekend in Chingford.

The pieces, A Gloria and A Miserere, are by Antonio Lotti, a Venetian contemporary of the better known Vivaldi.

And it could have been a much longer wait to hear them being performed were it not for the chance discovery of a manuscript containing them. Musical director Tom Cowhig, who lives in Loughton, discovered them a few years ago in the Guildhall library, and he has prepared new performing editions especially for this concert, which he will conduct with The Chingford Singers and Chingford Sinfonia Ensemble.

“I was working on something else, a PhD in mathematics, and I was looking for somewhere to sit before going to see my supervisor,” says Tom.

While he was there, he picked up a leaflet that said the library were keepers of the Gresham music catalogue, and as he was looking for something for the choir to perform, he asked to see the catalogue.

When he found the Lotti manuscript within the collection, far from being a dusty and musty collection of old papers, it was in a smartly bound book.

“In one or two places there’s a little pencil mark, so somebody else has looked at it,“ he says. “I don’t know who or when, or if there was a performance. There’s no way you can tell if anybody else has done it, but as far as I can tell, from researching it, nobody has.

“I found out there was one other person who was researching for a PhD on Lotti. He hadn’t transcribed this one but he had done other works by Lotti.“ Tom was unable to take the manuscript away from the library, due to security arrangements there, so he had to photograph it.

The pieces will now be performed by the Chingford Singers, the adult choir of Chingford Parish Church. Among its notable performances, the choir recently spent a weekend singing services in St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh.

This weekend, in addition to Lotti’s work, they will also perform a programme that includes Monteverdi’s Beatus Vir, Handel’s organ concerto The Cuckoo And The Nightingale (played by soloist Michael Emerson) and other baroque pieces by Purcell (My Beloved Spake and Chacony in G minor) and Bach (Jesu Joy and Flocks in Pastures).

Composer Lotti (1667-1740) was a musician at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and he rose to become its head of music, the maestro di capella (chapel master). When the existing maestro died the remaining musicians would choose which of their number would take over, so when Antonio Biffi passed away, Lotti was elected to the post.

His compositions included choral music and more than 20 operas, some of which he wrote when he travelled to Dresden.

Tom adds: “In church music circles, Lotti is well-known for just one piece, Crucifixus, and so far as I can discover, though one can never be certain, these two have never been published or recorded, so this may be the first performance in modern times. Both pieces contain lots of good music and are well worth resurrecting.“

The concert takes place on Saturday, May 22, at 7.30pm at Chingford Parish Church, The Green, Chingford. Details: 020 8529 6092.