*Worth hearing
**Recommended
***Essential listening
CHORAL CDs
***
LOVE DIVINE
luminatus / David Bray ♦ Convivium CR102
The main work here is the Missa ‘Ad te levavi oculos meos’ by Philippe de Monte (1521–1603), a ‘parody Mass’ based on a motet by Cipriano de Rore that opens the CD. The two works together form a strong and musically satisfying sequence of movements, with the music from the de Rore motet recognizable at various times in de Monte’s Mass setting. We stay in the Renaissance for five further antiphons and motets, two (including a Salve Regina) by Ippolito Baccusi, about whom virtually nothing appears to be known, and three by Tiburtio Massaino – marginally less unknown! They have not been recorded before.
The programme then skips forward over 400 years to conclude with five new motets by three female composers. Canadian Eleanor Daley and Cornish Becky McGlade are better known to English-speaking choirs than Swedish Agneta Sköld, but Sköld’s two pieces are in English and deserve to be in the church choir repertoire. Her short setting of the Corpus Christi Carol, with its rocking ‘Lully, lullay’ refrain, is particularly beautiful. Becky McGlade provides the title track with Love divine, but more impressive for me is her approach to I saw a new heaven with a glorious arrival in A major for the new Jerusalem.
The luminatus vocal ensemble sings with excellent balance and warmth, whether with gentle restraint or incisive power in this wide-ranging programme, while David Bray provides a sense of movement and direction in tempo, dynamic and emotion.
***
JOHN RUTTER: MISSA BREVIS
Choir of York Minster / Benjamin Morris (organ) / Richard Sharpe ♦
Regent REGCD576
The title of this CD needs quoting in full to show what a wealth of material it contains: ‘John Rutter: Missa Brevis and other new choral works by Andrew, Briggs, Coxhead, MacDonald, MacMillan, McDowall, McGlade, Moore, Rooney, Walker, Weir’. The major work is John Rutter’s Missa Brevis, written for Robert Sharpe and the Minster choir, in memory of Richard Shephard, former Chamberlain of York Minster. The CD concludes with an extrovert organ Celebration (Ite, missa est) by Rutter, also in memory of Richard Shephard and intended to partner the Missa Brevis. It also shows off the rebuilt Minster organ, including its Tuba Mirabilis!
The ‘other new choral works’ include well-established names such as Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Cecilia McDowall and Philip Moore as well as newer voices, many of the pieces having been written specially for the Minster choir and most receiving their first commercial recording. Becky McGlade contributes three pieces, including The Lamb with the same William Blake poem as John Tavener’s famous setting, but with very different effect as the gentle harmonies of the questioning first verse intensify until they are answered in the second. Lucy Walker sets for unaccompanied voices the last four lines of Ozioma Ogbaji’s poem ‘Today’ with its message of hope and empowerment: ‘I will not cling to yesterday’. The choir features boy trebles on some tracks and girl trebles on others, although not together. They display the highest musicianship and also crystal-clear diction captured on a recording that also manages to evoke the acoustic of the Minster.
**
CLIVE OSGOOD: STABAT MATER
Choir of Royal Holloway / Grace Davidson (soprano), Mark Wilde (tenor) / Julian Empett (baritone) / Jack Liebeck (violin) / London Mozart Players / Rupert Gough ♦ Convivium CR104
Osgood combines 19 verses of the 13th-century Latin hymn into 10 movements of varied length and contrast. There is an overall arch shape, and material from movement 2 is found in movement 9 and from the opening movement in the final one.
The performers are excellent. Jack Liebeck contributes a violin solo to ‘O quam tristis’ (‘O how sad’), which indeed it is in a ravishingly beautiful way. This is one of the movements featuring Grace Davidson, who is outstanding among the three vocal soloists. The composer himself plays piano, adding to a richly scored, string orchestra texture. Rupert Gough ensures that the performance overall is restrained and powerfully moving.
Judith Markwith
ORGAN CDs
**
L’ORGUE SPIRITUEL: ORGAN MUSIC BY CÉSAR FRANCK AND CHARLES TOURNEMIRE
Peter Stevens plays the grand organ of Westminster Cathedral ♦
Ad Fontes AF013
César Franck (1822–90) and Charles Tournemire (1870–1939), at one time teacher and pupil, and successively organists of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris, ‘stand at the spiritual heart of the French organ tradition’, as Peter Stevens expresses it in his CD booklet notes. Franck’s Trois Chorals receive performances that follow closely the composer’s detailed registrations, capturing their colour and harmony, and with an exciting virtuosity in the final Choral.
Tournemire’s L’Orgue Mystique develops Franck’s legacy with the incorporation of Gregorian chant, complex counterpoint, freedom of metre and a chromaticism that together serve as a link between Franck and Messiaen. Peter Stevens plays three substantial pieces from this set of 51 liturgical suites. He is assistant master of music at Westminster Cathedral and is well placed to demonstrate how its grand organ and acoustic can draw us into this profoundly spiritual music. As expected from Ad Fontes, recording and presentation are admirable, with many photographs as well as the organ’s full specification after a perceptive introductory essay.
***
SUR LE NOM D’ALAIN: ORGAN MUSIC BY JEHAN ALAIN AND MAURICE DURUFLÉ
Matthew Martin plays the Ruffatti organ of Buckfast Abbey ♦
Ad Fontes AF010
This disc combines the conservative Maurice Duruflé (1902–86) with the forward looking Jehan Alain (1911–40), the two composers united in Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain that Duruflé wrote as a tribute after Alain’s death in the World War II Battle of Saumur. Matthew Martin studied with Alain’s sister, Marie-Claire; he plays an alternative ending to Alain’s ‘Choral’ that concludes the three-movement Suite, copied by Marie-Claire from an earlier Jehan draft. Her teaching is vividly described in an extended transcript of a conversation between Matthew Martin and Matthew Searles that is a feature of the CD package.
Duruflé’s own three-movement Suite (Op. 5) is followed by a series of pieces by Alain including the Aria, his final composition for organ. Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain leads to the work for which Alain is best known: the incessant, pleading repetitions of his Litanies of 1937. Matthew Martin’s virtuosity, combined with his colourful registrations on Buckfast Abbey’s Ruffatti organ and his profound understanding of the music, make for an outstanding recording.
Julian Elloway
BOOKS
SING TO THE LORD!: 30 HYMN MEDITATIONS
Gordon Giles
RSCM Publications 136pp.
PB 978-0-85402-354-7 £19.99
The Revd Canon Gordon Giles, Canon Chancellor of Rochester Cathedral, writes: ‘A hymn is like a friend. We have friends with whom we have grown up since childhood, those we make on the journey of life, and hopefully we also like to make new friends. So it is natural to want to know something of a hymn’s story: who wrote it, and why; who the composer is and what prompted them to write the tune, and for whom and what for.’
Many of the short chapters are based on the ‘Hymn Meditation’ articles that have appeared in each CMQ for over 20 years, where they normally start with consideration of the words and their author and conclude with a meditative prayer. These elements are still here in this book, but the 30 short chapters often start with discussion of the tune or tunes and the contribution of the music to the interpretation of the words. Where there are alternative tunes, we are given insights into the different emphases that the choice of tune can give: it is certainly not a question of just choosing the tune that the organist likes most. ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’ is a case in point, where the author suggests how different tunes bring out different aspects of the words. ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’ mentions six tunes, and prints the music for Aberystwyth and for John Wilson’s Little Heath in full, introducing the latter to many readers.
The wide selection ranges from the 16th century (Old Hundredth) to Kendrick and Townend/Getty. It will encourage church musicians to consider and question assumptions that they make when coupling words and music. More than that, with complete music and words printed at a large size, each given a full page, it is easy to play or sing from the book. This suggests a practical use as a hymnal with 30 items (and a hymn companion built in) that could be useful for hymn festivals of one sort or another, whether Songs of Praise, ‘Big Sing’ or a summer ‘Hymns with Pimm’s’ event.
ON VOICE: SPEECH, SONG, SILENCE, HUMAN AND DIVINE
Victoria Johnson
Darton, Longman and Todd 192pp.
PB 978-1-913657-96-7 £14.99
‘It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song.’ These words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer preface a central chapter of Victoria Johnson’s wide-ranging meditation on the significance of the voice. The singing of church choirs and football crowds, of 16th-century castrati and 21st-century AI-directed synthetic voices, birdsong, protest song and silence all make their contribution to a cultural and theological journey that is enlightened by the author’s personal experiences.
It is the personal reflections that give a particular authenticity that distinguishes this from more abstract books on theology and music. For example, we read of the author’s first experience of football crowds with ‘the romance of massed voices, the novelty of which distracted me from the actual words being sung, which were often neither virtuous nor kind’. This segues into a discussion of the Community Singing Movement of the 1920s, of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002 and ‘Land of hope and glory’ (‘I felt uneasy singing of a God who made a nation “mighty” and who would makes us “mightier yet”’), singing something you don’t fully believe in (‘a cognitive and embodied dissonance, I somehow feel discordant within myself’), the Last Night of the Proms, ‘culture wars’ and then the effect, soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, of singing for the first time the words ’God save the King’.
Formerly Precentor of York Minster and now Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, The Revd Canon Victoria Johnson brings a wealth of experience to her analysis of vocal communication and the interaction between the horizontal (person to person) and vertical (divine to human and vice versa). It is a book that is happy to follow mental paths whose unpredictability leads to fresh challenges but also delights with each turn of page.
Julian Elloway
CHORAL WORKS
E Easy
M Medium
D Difficult
A SEASON TO SING: A CHORAL RE-IMAGINING OF VIVALDI’S THE FOUR SEASONS [M]
Joanna Forbes L’Estrange
SATB or SA and organ (or strings)
RSCM Publications
paperback 978-0-85402-351-6 £15.00
full-Canadian wire-o binding 978-0-85402-359-2 £22.50
Vivaldi’s set of violin concertos, The Four Seasons, is itself programmatic, with each concerto equipped with a specially written sonnet and with detailed depictions in the music, whether a barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, inebriated dancers and so on. The music seems to call for accompanying words and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange has supplied these with imagination and ingenuity for this ‘choral re-imagining’ that marks the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi’s original. The texts are secular and sacred, drawn from poems, hymns and the Bible, beginning and ending with Ecclesiastes ‘To every thing there is a season’, and retaining the overall themes of spring, summer, autumn and winter.
The choral lines are cleverly written to be suitable for SATB or upper voices only, with occasional divided sopranos and, at one point, an SA semichorus. Although it is not difficult, the choir needs an adventurous spirit, with (from at least some singers) whistling birdsong, humming the drone of bagpipes, snapping fingers and other ‘body percussion’ for raindrops and the build-up into a storm. A wordless movement imitates the scat singing of the original Swingle Singers.
Choirs would have a huge amount of fun in rehearsal, either of the whole 40-minute work or of a single three-movement ‘season’. Choir directors will appreciate some of the detailed performance advice at the end of the score. The vocal score itself is available with conventional binding and also in wire-o binding that will lie flat on a music desk or stand.
Julian Elloway
UPPER VOICES
OF ANGEL’S SONG [D]
Philip Wilby
SA with divisions and organ
Banks Music Publications GCL050 £1.95
It was for the Salisbury Cathedral choristers that Philip Wilby made this upper-voice arrangement of his original SATB anthem with a text by the 14th-century English Augustinian mystic Walter Hilton. The words are extracted from Hilton’s treatise on the experience of hearing the song of an angel. The organ part provides rich harmonies underpinning the voices. Three times a different solo voice starts, then is joined by unison voices that split and eventually land on more complex chords, firstly for ‘God and Ghostly things’ (with an effective pedal point), then for ‘Angels and holy souls’, and finally for an ecstatic, quiet repetition of the word ‘Jesus’ over the final 26 bars. It is a beautiful piece.
Julian Elloway
ASCENSION AND PENTECOST
ASCENSION HYMN [E]
Charles Wood
SATB and organ
Church Music Society RS159 £2.50
A WHITSUN CAROL [M]
Charlotte Baskerville
SATB
Encore Publications 020802 £2.25
The Church Music Society already publishes a four-part Ascension anthem by Charles Wood (1866–1926), the lively O Rex gloriae that dramatically depicts Christ’s triumphant ascent to heaven, followed by a plea to send the spirit of truth. Ascension Hymn, written 14 years later, is very different, and not only as a result of being easier. Four verses from a poem by Alfred Graves (best remembered as the father of the poet Robert Graves) are repeated to a maestoso tune, sung SATB, TB alone, SATB with tune in the tenor, and finally all voices unison. The continuous organ part has more variety and builds to a strong climax.
John Henry Newman’s ‘Come, Holy Ghost, who ever One’ (a translation of St Ambrose) last appeared as an office hymn for terce in Ancient & Modern Revised. Charlotte Baskerville has rescued the words from neglect with this Pentecost anthem in which the power of the Spirit can be felt, latent in the first verse, bursting out in the second and finally with restrained passion in the doxology that concludes ‘Come, Holy Ghost’. Different voices kick off each verse; the expressive vocal lines and flexible bar lengths allow the words to speak with gentle but intense feeling.
MUSIC FOR THE SPIRIT [mostly E/M]
ed. Stephen Harrap
Mostly SATB, with and without accompaniment
Breitkopf ChB5384 €26.90
This wide-ranging anthology of 46 pieces spans five centuries and much of western Europe. The subtitle describes the selection as suitable ‘for Pentecost and other occasions’; purchasers will acquire a well-edited anthology of music suitable for Pentecost, Trinity and many subsequent summer Sundays. The 13th-century Alta Trinità beata that opens the volume, Walford Davies’s God be in my head, Wood’s O thou the central orb, Parry’s My soul there is a country, Bruckner’s Os justi and Bairstow’s Let all mortal flesh keep silence are among those that one might expect to hear on occasions other than Pentecost.
There are other surprising inclusions for an anthology centred around Pentecost, such as ‘Abide with me’, presented as a hymn with Monk’s Eventide, as well as the more predictable ‘Come down, O love divine’ to Down Ampney, both hymns with new last-verse descants by the editor. Original languages are used throughout: English, Latin and German without translation and Ibsen’s Norwegian text for Grieg’s Pinsesalme (‘Pentecost Song’ from Peer Gynt) with a German singing translation. The two pieces by Hugo Distler (1908–42) are probably well known to German church musicians but may not be familiar to English speakers. I never knew that Reger had written 20 English-language Responsories for the American Lutheran church, but here we have his Pentecost Responsory And there appeared unto the Apostles. I had also not come across God, who at this time by the non-conformist Canterbury shoemaker Thomas Clark (1775–1859). Purchasers will need to do their own research, as no information is given about the composers or the music beyond the title information at the head of each piece.
I have concentrated on unusual or lesser-known pieces. There are also the expected contributions from Tallis, Attwood, Boyce, Gibbons, Philips, Tye and many others. I was pleased to see Mozart’s Veni Sancte Spiritus KV 47. Even if only a small number of English-speaking choirs will purchase complete sets of copies, it is a volume that any choir director will benefit by acquiring, as it will suggest new ideas to refresh their repertoire.
James L. Montgomery
SATB ANTHEMS
PRO DOLOROSA EIUS PASSIONE [M]
Dawn Walters
SATB
Banks Music Publications KCS017 £1.95
AVE MARIA [E]
Dawn Walters
SATB and organ
Banks Music Publications KCS023 £2.25
Pro dolorosa eius passione, a short prayer asking for God’s mercy, starts with a feeling of plainsong. Static harmonies give way to more expressive chords on the word ‘passione’, followed by a louder repetition of ‘miserere nobis’ and a reflective and repetitive ending. The repetitions and slow-moving harmonies at start and finish turn this into a contemplative and musically satisfying prayer.
When I opened the same composer’s Ave Maria, I thought ‘Oh, no’, as I saw the words made to fit the opening theme of Brahms’s first Cello Sonata, one of my favourite pieces of chamber music. But it works. If we can enjoy choral versions of Bach/Gounod and Schubert settings of Ave Maria, we should be able to enjoy this arrangement derived from Brahms. Altos will especially enjoy it, as they have the lion’s share of the tune.
Julian Elloway
PARTA QUIES [M]
Esther Kay
SATB with divisions and organ
Acuta Music 978-1-873690-19-2 £1.60
Here is a useful piece for funerals and memorial services, and especially where the congregation comes from a variety of different faith backgrounds (or none at all). The short text, from the opening of the poem Parta Quies by the non-religious A.E. Housman, does not mention God, but different listeners will interpret in their own way the ‘imperishable peace’ for the person to whom the anthem is addressed. Against an organ semiquaver pattern marked ‘hypnotic’, the choir’s early moments of astringency resolve through powerful crescendos onto A major and then a final, bright E major cadence.
James L. Montgomery
EVENSONG AND COMPLINE
COMPLINE: AN ORDER FOR NIGHT PRAYER [E]
Lucy Walker
SATB
RSCM Publications 978-0-85402-356-1 £6.50
Lucy Walker is composer in residence at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and has set for SATB (with occasional divisions) all the sung parts of night prayer: responses, office hymn, psalm, an extended setting of ‘Keep me as the apple of an eye’, Nunc Dimittis, Lord’s Prayer and collects. In the publication, each new composition is followed by the traditional plainchant, so that choirs can combine some new material and some familiar plainchant if they wish – although this means that various pages need to be omitted throughout the service, depending on which version is sung. Copies will need to be carefully prepared to avoid confusion. The music is attractive – the word ‘ethereal’ comes to mind – and supports the words well. The musical phrases are structured by a carefully controlled use of dissonance, with vocal lines that seem naturally shaped for singing.
Stephen Patterson
PRECES, RESPONSES & THE LORD’S PRAYER (SET 2) [E/M]
June Nixon
SATB
Encore Publications 020791 £2.25
PRECES, RESPONSES & THE LORD’S PRAYER [E]
Gail Randall
SATB
Encore Publications 020797 £2.75
PRECES, RESPONSES & THE LORD’S PRAYER [E/M]
Joy Williams
SATB
Encore Publications 020792 £2.75
Of several sets of Preces and Responses recently published by Encore Publications, these three stand out as written by composers with something distinctive to add to the genre. June Nixon, ever reliable, contributes a set that feels lively, not necessarily by being fast (no tempo mark is given) but by having an energy in much of the writing, with the melody line characterized by an upward fourth leading onto important chords. Gail Randall’s set is particularly distinguished by a setting of the Lord’s Prayer that is, in effect, a mini motet, with the opening words reappearing to introduce each new sentence of the prayer. Joy Williams shapes each response and uses the lower parts to make the music flow through them. There are PDF previews of these three and many other recent sets of Preces and Responses on the Encore Publications website.
Julian Elloway
ORGAN MUSIC
E Easy
M Medium
D Difficult
VOLUNTARIES
TWO RHAPSODIES OP. 29 [D]
Charles Quef ed. David Patrick
Fitzjohn Music Publications FMP229 £7.00
I reviewed David Patrick’s first collection of five reflective pieces by Charles Quef (1873–1931) in CMQ, December 2022. Here are rather more flamboyant pieces, although there remains what I described then as ‘a sort of wistful yearning’, especially in the second of the two. Quef was titulaire at La Trinité in Paris in succession to Alexandre Guilmant, and highly popular in Britain as a result of his many recital tours. However, his musical heart was in his native Brittany and the full title of each piece is Rhapsodie sur des Thèmes Bretons. Both pieces contain what sound like contrasting folk tunes, giving a distinctive colour to the music. One doesn’t need to recognize the tunes to enjoy these attractive compositions.
18 PIECES FOR ORGAN [E–M]
Alexandre Guilmant ed. Kurt Lueders
Dr J. Butz 3078 €22.00
Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) assembled his own collection of 18 Pièces nouvelles Op. 90 in 1904, collecting various pieces that had not made it into his previously published collections. This new collection by Guilmant expert Kurt Lueders collects a further 18 pieces that either remain unpublished or had only been published in what the editor considered to be ‘marginal printings’. Organists purchasing this volume are likely to find few, if any, duplications of pieces that they already have. Many of the pieces only cover one or two pages. The longest and most difficult is an eight-page Fughetta de Concert, originally published just as a Fughetta for harmonium (Op. 29), but here included in a three-stave organ version that Guilmant made shortly before his death. Most of the pieces are easier and would be useful as short voluntaries before or after services.
Duncan Watkins
RECITAL PIECES
SONATA NO. 3 IN B FLAT [D]
Percy Buck ed. David Patrick
Fitzjohn Music Publications FMP228 £15.00
David Patrick has completed his re-publication of the three sonatas by Percy Buck (1871–1947) with this final one that Buck dedicated to Basil Harwood; the first two were reviewed in CMQ in December 2022 and June 2023 respectively. As with the first two sonatas, the opening movement of the third is a ‘Fantasie’, here with a forceful Maestoso start and finish surrounding a more flexible and wide-ranging central section. The second movement is a funeral march, sombre and plaintive. The final, multi-sectioned Toccata is more like a fantasy, where some of the sections have the character of a toccata. One such section builds to a ferocious climax with a wild pedal solo. The conclusion is a solid ‘Molto maestoso’.
PASSACAGLIA AND FUGUE IN C MINOR [M/D]
Henry Hackett ed. David Cook
Fitzjohn Music Publications FMP231 £8.00
Henry Hackett (1872–1940) was an organist working in a series of Midlands churches, before and after a 13-year appointment to Bideford. Many of his organ compositions were published, several by Novello, but not this Passacaglia and Fugue which receives its first publication. The editorial notes are not able to tell us anything about the circumstances of its composition in 1932, nor where the manuscript has been since then.
The subtitle is ‘Homage to J.S.B.’ and clearly the reference is to Bach’s BWV582 with the same title and key. However, to enjoy Henry Hackett’s homage one should not compare it in stature with that great work but simply appreciate Hackett’s own inventiveness. There are, however, many references from one to the other, not least in the passacaglia bass itself, and also in baroque figuration and textures. Yet it is not pastiche: more a case of a twentieth-century composer enjoying playing with a similar sort of material in his own different way – an enjoyment that players and listeners can share.
Duncan Watkins