115booklet 30/11/07 10:01 Page 1 ALSO on signumclassics The Hymns Album Sir Michael Tippett: Choral Images Man I Sing Huddersfield Choral Society / Joseph Cullen The BBC Singers / Stephen Cleobury Choral Music by Bob Chilcott SIGCD079 SIGCD092 The BBC Singers / Bob Chilcott SIGCD100 Choral Arrangements by Clytus Gottwald Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 The Rodolfus Choir / Ralph Allwood The Rodolfus Choir & Southern Sinfonia / SIGCD102 Ralph Allwood SIGCD109 Available through most record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 115booklet 30/11/07 10:02 Page 3 HEAR my words Hear my words 1. Hear my words, ye people Hubert Parry [15.03] This disc, featuring some of the best-loved After the justified success of Blest Pair of Sirens in 2. Teach me, O Lord William Byrd [3.23] anthems in the church repertoire, is loosely woven 1887, Parry could reasonably be regarded as the 3. Magnificat in G Charles Villiers Stanford [3.57] around two strands in particular. The first is the leading choral composer in England. Hear my 4. Benedictus from Missa Brevis Sancti treble, or boy soprano, voice. The English choral words, ye people was written for the Diocesan Joannis de Deo Hob XXII/7 tradition, at least as old (for example) as the late Choral Festival in Salisbury Cathedral in 1894, in (Little Organ Mass) Joseph Haydn [4.24] mediaeval Eton Choirbook, depends integrally on which choirs were drawn together from across the 5. Thou, O God, art praised in Sion Malcolm Boyle [6.04] the nurturing of treble singing in schools. Eton diocese, with the Cathedral Choir serving as the 6. Lord, let me know mine end Maurice Greene [5.34] College, which maintained a choir school until smaller semi-chorus who feature to fine 1968 and subsequently replaced this with its antiphonal effect in the latter stages of the piece. 7. A Prayer of King Henry VI Henry Ley [1.53] flourishing music scholarship system, is now From the opening pages, it shows Parry’s gift not 8. Laudate Dominum from unusual in providing the entire top line of its choir only for organising large-scale structures Vesperae solennes de Confessore KV339 W.A. Mozart [4.02] from boys already at the school, aged from 13 to thematically, but also, more particularly, for vocal 9. Out of the deep Thomas Tomkins [4.06] 15, and therefore in relying neither on sixth-form declamation at the smaller level, with phrase 10. A Song of wisdom Charles Villiers Stanford [5.27] girls nor an arrangement with a choir or prep balancing phrase. Somewhat after the manner of school. In the year this disc was made the choir a cantata by Parry’s beloved Bach, substantial 11. Panis Angelicus from Messe Solennelle César Franck [3.58] enjoyed a unusually abundant crop of these choral sections are interleaved with two arias, one 12. Hear my Prayer and O for the wings of a dove Felix Mendelssohn [11.19] voices, including the eight soloists on this disc. for baritone and one for trebles, which in their 13. The Lord is my Shepherd Lennox Berkeley [4.28] The second strand is that of music with an different ways are shaped with impressive 14. I was glad Hubert Parry [5.19] Etonian connection. Thus it is entirely appropriate command. The conclusion of the work, ‘O praise ye that we begin and end with the music of Parry, the Lord’ has entered the liturgical repertoire as a Total Timings [79.00] Eton’s favourite musical son, whose quiet hymn, complete with elaborate organ pedal part. overhauling of Eton music while a boy here ETON COLLEGE CHAPEL CHOIR undoubtedly proved a fertile training-ground for As the English anthem gradually developed after RALPH ALLWOOD DIRECTOR the wider work he subsequently did for English the various stages of the Reformation in England, DAVID GOODE ORGAN music in general. a form that emerged gradually was the ‘verse’ www.signumrecords.com anthem. Interspersing solo and tutti sections, this - 3 - 115booklet 30/11/07 10:02 Page 5 genre flourished in the Elizabethan era as well as some point in the 1770s. In contrast to the highly the mid-eighteenth century) are all the more Thomas Tomkins was Organist of Worcester in Restoration times; its later descendants were compressed nature of the rest of the Mass (it has remarkable. The walking bass that persists Cathedral from 1596, in the midst of the glory the large-scale anthems of S. S. Wesley and been suggested that it was perhaps considered throughout the piece can be taken as an evocative days of Elizabethan music, to the 1640s, well into indeed Parry. Byrd’s Teach me O Lord is an desirable to get through the longer portions as depiction of life’s journey; over it, Greene crafts a the culturally and religiously lean times of the example of charming simplicity, wholly appropriate quickly as possible) the Benedictus, traditionally series of thoughtful imitative points with, at the Commonwealth. Out of the deep was included to its text and a gentle counterpart to the grandeur the moment in the Mass when the Host was centre, a treble duet of some beauty. in Musica Deo Sacra, a substantial posthumous of Hear my words. venerated, is treated with elaborate, even publication probably compiled by his son, Nathaniel, operatic, artifice. The treble solo duets throughout Eton was founded by King Henry VI in 1440; and in 1668; but this is Tomkins’ original version, in An important contemporary of Parry was an with an organ part that is decidedly Rococo in its the prayer written by him, known as the Founder’s five parts. It is a highly atmospheric verse anthem Irishman, Charles Villiers Stanford, Professor of gestures and its ornamentation. Prayer, has often been considered a model of which is, as it were, pulled steadily out of the Music at Cambridge and of composition at the devotion. It was set by Henry Ley, Precentor and depths by the solo line, drawing in other soloists Royal Academy of Music at the turn of the twentieth Malcolm Boyle was a chorister at the Eton Choir Director of Music at Eton from 1926-1945, to as it progresses. Tomkins’ quotation of Gibbons’ century. Amidst his large output of nearly 200 School, before pursuing a career in church music music of comparably moving simplicity which famous madrigal ‘The silver swan’ (using the works, Stanford is probably best known today for in St. George’s, Windsor Castle and Chester makes its timeless effect partly through Ley’s use passage of music which sets the words ‘more geese his Anglican service settings, which continue to Cathedral. His setting of Psalm 65, Thou, O God, art of the Dorian mode, hovering between D minor and than swans now live, more fools than wise’) perhaps form the backbone of the cathedral repertoire. The praised in Sion, opens in extrovert manner with an C major, and partly through rhetorical handling of suggests dismay at the state of the nation. Magnificat in G is both unusual in its scoring for organ solo not unlike that of Parry’s Hear my words; phrase lengths. treble solo and chorus - a depiction, it is said, of the middle section (‘Thou wilt keep him’) is a long- We return to later periods, and Stanford. Despite the Virgin Mary at her spinning wheel (this breathed and memorable melody for full trebles, To balance Haydn’s Benedictus, Mozart’s Laudate the fame of his service settings, The Grove perhaps an appropriation of Schubert’s Gretchen?) before the grandiose style returns for the close. Dominum, a sweetly beautiful Rococo confection, Dictionary of Music and Musicians asserts, not - and highly effective in the right performance, with words from the diminutive Psalm 117. This without substance, that ‘in the writing of a song with an attractive freshness lacking in much of The early eighteenth century was generally a forms part of the Solemn Vespers of 1780, one of [he] attained more easily and frequently than in the Anglican music of the period, and with only the rather fallow period in English church music, in the last pieces he wrote while employed by the any other branch of creation the absolute fusion of merest suggestion of operatic sentimentality in which the fashion for German and Italian music, Archbishop of Salzburg. Einstein describes it in thought and feeling sought by composers.’ His set the interaction with the choral group. particularly opera, had diluted the native product. his Mozart as ‘a piece completely unconcerned of 6 Bible Songs Op. 113 (from 1909, thus rather Thus the technical strength and expressive power with anything churchly, and so enchanting and late in his career) were possibly inspired by the Completing this trio of solos is the Benedictus of Lord, let me know mine end, a setting of verses poetic in its expression that it is difficult to find Biblical Songs of Dvorák.v The last and most from Haydn’s Missa Brevis St. Johannis de Deo, from Psalm 39 by Maurice Greene (Organist of St. its counterpart.’ ambitious of the set, A Song of wisdom, takes its also known as the Little Organ Mass, written at Paul’s Cathedral and Master of the King’s Music in text from the Apocrypha. Sung here by a solo - 4 - - 5 - 115booklet 30/11/07 10:02 Page 7 treble, this matches Parry’s declamatory skill in its the near-operatic drama of the central scena, sweep and grandeur that one associates with The Lord’s seat is in heaven, clouds and darkness atmosphere, rhetoric and building of climaxes; resolved in the pastoral serenity of the final part.