TOCC0307DIGIBKLT.Pdf

BERNARD ROSE Music for Choir and Organ 1 Feast Song for Saint Cecilia (1975) 4:54 Three Addison Anthems (1978) 11:44 2 No. 1 When all thy mercies 3:54 3 No. 2 The Lord my pasture shall prepare 4:04 4 No. 3 The Spacious Firmament on High 3:46 Evening Canticles in C minor (1968) 6:06 5 I Magnifcat 3:51 6 II Nunc Dimittis 2:15 Evening Canticles: The Chichester Service (1994)* 6:14 7 I Magnifcat 4:03 8 II Nunc Dimittis 2:11 9 Chimes (1974) 2:22 10 Upon Westminster Bridge (1990)* 3:53 11 If I could tell you (1993)* 3:38 12 Slow, slow, fresh fount (1939)* 2:41 13 Lines for the Magdalen Choir (1981)* 2:27 2 Two Carols 14 A Christmas Carol: The Christ Child (1984)* 3:08 15 Our Blessed Lady’s Lullaby (1968)* 3:06 16 Behold, I Make All Things New (1997)* 3:18 17 The Lord’s Prayer (1957) 1:32 18 Lilia agricolae (1980)* 4:26 19 Lord, I have loved (1957) 2:06 20 O God, who didst give the law to Moses (1987)* 2:35 21 Praise ye the Lord (1949) 2:49 TT 66:59 Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir Soloists: Annika Lõhmus, soprano 1 5 7 8 15 18 Karoliina Kriis, soprano 7 8 Marianne Pärna, contralto 7 8 Raul Mikson, tenor 7 8 10 16 Rainer Vilu, baritone 7 8 15 Ene Salumäe, organ 5 6 9 16 18 Gregory Rose, conductor *FIRST RECORDINGS 3 BERNARD ROSE AND HIS CHORAL MUSIC by Gregory Rose My father, Bernard Rose, was one of the fnest choral trainers of his generation. His work as a multi-faceted musician echoed the lives of many of the forebears he admired: Byrd and Tallis of the Renaissance, Buxtehude and Bach of the Baroque and the Classical Haydn and Mozart through to musicians of the generation before him, such as Walter Alcock at Salisbury Cathedral and Boris Ord at Kings College, Cambridge, Reginald Jacques and Professor E. J. Dent. His time as a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, from 1925 to 1931, was an important aspect in his learning development. He studied the organ with Alcock at Salisbury, and his organ- playing whilst still a chorister was of sufcient standing that he was ofen asked to play the voluntary at the end of services on the magnifcent Henry Willis organ, afer he had sung a solo in a canticle or anthem chosen for the day. At Salisbury he learnt music of a wide period, with daily practices and services throughout the academic period. At the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge, where he was Organ Scholar at St Catharine’s College, his skills at choral training were developed, along with playing the horn, conducting concerts, arranging and skat-singing. His conducting techniques were further developed when, during the holidays, he attended conducting courses held at Sir Adrian Boult’s house, and it was here that he mixed with conductors and composers such as Vaughan Williams, whose premiere of An Oxford Elegy my father was to conduct in June 1952 at an Eglesfeld Society concert at Te Queen’s College, Oxford. He was born in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, on 9 May 1916; his family moved to Salisbury in the 1920s. Following his studies at the RCM and Cambridge, he was appointed Organist and Lecturer in Music at Te Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1939, but when war was declared on Germany, he enlisted in a tank division. His last mission was part of the D-Day landings in Normandy, and he was captured by the Germans six days afer D-Day. He spent nearly a year as a prisoner of war in ‘Ofag 4 79’ in Bavaria, where he continued to use his skills in composing and arranging scores for the camp orchestra. Afer his release he returned to Te Queen’s College, and many of his pupils were only just younger than he was. Tey included the composers Joseph Horovitz, Kenneth Leighton, Geofrey Bush and Michael Hurd, and, later, Gordon Crosse and Patrick Gowers. Leopold Stokowski had attended Te Queen’s College, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903, but he ofen returned to Queen’s and he became a close friend of my father’s, ofen staying in our home during visits to Britain afer his move to the USA. My father became friends also with Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi and Egon Wellesz, and was a regular visitor to the Tree Choirs Festival. In 1957 he moved to Magdalen College, taking up the post of ‘Organist and Informator Choristarum’, and he remained there until his retirement in 1981. Here he was to develop his skills as a choir-trainer, with daily services during the university term. Tere were full-time choristers, and he had obtained agreement from the college before his appointment to replace the paid ‘lay clerks’ of the choir with ‘Academical Clerks’ (choral scholars). Within a short period of time the choir was gaining a reputation for the crisp, bright tone that became his hallmark as a choir-trainer. His workload from the 1960s to the 1980s was truly remarkable. In addition to his daily duties with the choir, he taught harmony and counterpoint, in particular fugue, and lectured on a wide range of topics, including a series of talks covering the complete Haydn string quartets. He composed many works, mainly sacred, both for the Magdalen College Choir and with commissions from diverse other choirs, both in the UK and overseas, and edited the complete sacred works of Tomas Tomkins for the ‘Early English Choral Music’ series published by Stainer & Bell. Tis monumental undertaking came out in nine volumes and took him over forty years to complete. He also edited a new edition of Handel’s Susanna for the Internationale Händelgesellschaf in Halle. He was constantly encouraging composers to compose works for the Magdalen College Choir, while also researching Renaissance pieces, making new editions for performance with the choir. Tis research included an interest in his predecessors at Magdalen, including Richard Davy, John Mason and John Sheppard. Alongside his pupil and later colleague, David Wulstan, he was responsible for raising the profle of the almost forgotten 5 Sheppard. He continued to play the organ and sang solos for concerts conducted by his colleagues, and formed a part-time string orchestra of local professionals. In addition to his constant research into choral repertoire and composing works himself, he was awarded a Doctorate of Music in 1947. For this he composed his Symphony in A minor, and he was particularly proud of the fact that his was the last Doctor of Music degree awarded by examination. Te Symphony is in the conventional four movements, with a moderately slow introduction to the frst movement before an Allegro main movement, then a fast triplet-metre second movement, a Lento misterioso and an Allegro moderato. He formed a close friendship with the brilliant teacher and conductor Frances Kitching, who had created the Handel opera series in Abingdon with her husband Alan in the 1950s and ’60s. He was also close friends with David Lumsden and later Edward Higginbotham at New College and Sidney Watson at Christ Church. Many composers and conductors came through the Rose stable. His frst Organ Scholar at Magdalen was Dudley Moore, and they maintained contact right through to the end. It was particularly touching that Dudley, sufering from terrible ill-health, few over to Oxford to be at my father’s memorial service in Magdalen in 1996 – he had died, at Bampton, to the west of Oxford, on 21 November that year. It was to be Dudley’s last visit to Britain before his own death, just over fve years later. Other notable, later Rose pupils included Rob Keeley, David James, Harry Christophers, Jefrey Skidmore, Duncan Fraser and me. His own compositions have a common thread, which can be traced from the earliest piece on this recording, the madrigal Slow, slow, fresh fount of 1939 12 to Te Chichester Service of 1994 7 8 . His style owes much to a mainly tonal language developed by English composers afer World War II, and shares common roots with Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi. Some of his pieces, by contrast, particularly the secular works, branch out to explore a wider range of tonalities. Te more polyphonic settings also owe a debt to composers of earlier times, particularly Tomkins. My father had a pragmatic approach to composition, in terms of the duration and the style of pieces that would blend with worship in the Anglican liturgy. His setting of the Versicles and Responses of 1957 were amongst the frst ‘new’ settings since the Renaissance, apart from those by 6 Richard Ayleward in the 1660s. My father’s settings are sung somewhere in the English- speaking world every night of the year. Some of the earliest pieces represented on this recording are unknown treasures that deserve a wider audience. Te two settings of the Evening Canticles 5 – 8 on this recording, though simple in style, have a directness that represents his own deep-felt faith and speaks from the heart. His music was published by a number of prestigious frms, among them Novello, Oxford University Press, Boosey & Hawkes, Roberton, Minster Music and Cathedral Music. 1 Feast Song for Saint Cecilia (1975) For many years the annual Festival of St Cecilia was held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, London, known as ‘Te Musicians’ Church’, with the combined choirs of St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral.

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