CHANDOS COLLECT A Choral Festival CHAN 6603 including How lovely is Th y dwelling-place Brother James’ Air O Lord, our Governor Choirs of Westminster Abbey and Ely Cathedral A Choral Festival Johannes Brahms (1833 –1897) Thomas Attwood (1765–1838) 1 How lovely is Thy dwelling-place* 6:40 6 Turn Thy face from my sins* 3:58 from A German Requiem, Op. 45 Arthur Wills (b. 1926) James Bain (dates unknown) 7 The Carol of King Canute* 1:59 2 Brother James’ Air* 3:35 Arranged by Ian Humphris Sir Walter Parratt (1841–1924) 8 Confortare 1:04 Georges Bizet (1838 –1875) 3 Agnus Dei* 4:33 Sir Walter Galpin Alcock (1861–1947) Arranged by Ian Humphris 9 Sanctus 2:22 (1852 –1924) Sir Charles Villiers Stanford Sir George Dyson (1883 –1964) 4 Te Deum in B fl at* 5:54 10 O Praise God 2:03 from Morning, Communion and Evening Services in B fl at, Op. 10 5 * Jubilate 3:53 Sir Edward C. Bairstow (1874 –1946) from Morning, Communion and Evening Services in B fl at, Op. 10 11 Let my prayer come up into Thy presence 2:03 2 3 CCHANHAN 66603603 BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 22-3-3 228/11/068/11/06 009:49:539:49:53 A Choral Festival Sir Charles Villiers Stanford In the latter part of the nineteenth century, The cathedral tradition has a long history 12 Gloria in excelsis 5:14 reforms in church and cathedral resulted of ‘lollipops’ (to use Sir Thomas Beecham’s from Festal Communion Service in B fl at, Op. 128 in a marked increase in the repertoire of phrase) and The Lord Is My Shepherd, the recently composed music by such composers 23rd Psalm, has long been sung to the tune as Stainer, Sullivan, Parry and Lloyd, and in of Brother James’ Air, composed in the Healey Willan (1880 –1968) the last decade of the century a considerable nineteenth century by James Bain. 13 O Lord, our Governor 3:02 library of new church anthems was published, Another such popular piece is the Agnus particularly by Novello. Extracts from well- Dei by Georges Bizet, the composer of Carmen. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 –1958) known cantatas and oratorios, including A cantata submitted by the fi fteen-year-old for 14 Sanctus 2:25 Handel’s Messiah, were also widely sung, and the Prix de Rome in 1856 won only second among these there would certainly have been prize, but the following year he succeeded, with from Mass in G minor the chorus recorded here, translated into Clovis et Clotilde. At the Villa Medici he started 15 Festival Te Deum 7:22 English, from Brahms’s then new Requiem. much but completed comparatively little, TT 57:22 In London A German Requiem was fi rst including an extended Te Deum. However, the heard privately in 1871. Given a fi rst public popular short movement recorded here is, in Choir of Ely Cathedral* performance in 1872, it did not make a fact, a choral arrangement of an interlude from Gerald Gifford organ strong impression until it was taken up by the familiar music to L’Arlésienne, dating from Choir of Westminster Abbey the Bach Choir. One only has to compare the early 1870s. this favourite movement, How lovely is Thomas Attwood is perhaps most Timothy Farrell organ * Thy dwelling-place (Wie lieblich sind Deine celebrated for having been Mozart’s pupil. Arthur Wills Wohnungen), to the choral writing of Parry After gaining a considerable reputation as a Douglas Guest and his contemporaries, however, to realise theatre composer he served as organist at the work’s infl uence in the last quarter of St Paul’s Cathedral from 1798 until his death. the nineteenth century. Parry heard the work He achieved recognition as having a feeling early on, indeed he may well have sung it as for the anthem, new in its day, which made a member of the Bach Choir. Stanford, too, a virtue of a soft and sensitive approach to was impressed, conducting it in Cambridge words, one that seventy years later would on 23 May 1876. have been regarded as sentimental. The 4 5 CCHANHAN 66603603 BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 44-5-5 228/11/068/11/06 009:49:539:49:53 anthem Turn Thy face from my sins was The coronation of King Edward VII Music, Alcock represented the extension In that latter year music was required written in the last year of Attwood’s life and launched a new age. It had been so long of the infl uence and professionalism of from a new generation of composers, which with its treble solo and tuneful freshness since Queen Victoria’s coronation that the Parratt. He composed a number of large- included Sir George Dyson, the newly even has pre-echoes of Mendelssohn’s choral ceremony had to be virtually invented anew. scale anthems, recognisably in the Stanford appointed Director of the Royal College of works on a similar scale. However, the liturgical pattern had been tradition, including one for the 1902 Music, whose beefy setting of Psalm 150, Dating from a century and a half later, established for centuries, and in fact, at coronation. He was present again in 1911 O Praise God, was the coronation anthem, Arthur Wills’s The Carol of King Canute is the coronations between that of William when his specially composed Sanctus was then given with orchestral accompaniment. an example of the way in which the popular and Mary and that of Victoria, the amount heard in the service: after a quiet opening it It reminds us of the glorious setting of the tradition continued, particularly in Christmas of music used appears to have been large, builds impressively to a fervent climax, then Benedicite (‘O all ye works of the Lord, services. The words are by Charles Stubbs, even if the administrative arrangements recedes into silence. bless ye the Lord’) in Dyson’s cantata an early twentieth-century Dean of Ely showed themselves increasingly incompetent Stanford revolutionised English cathedral Nebuchadnezzar which had been heard at Cathedral, after an Anglo-Saxon poem, and in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth music almost single-handedly, and the impact Worcester in 1935. Dyson’s masterpiece it was set by Wills for the Cathedral’s annual centuries. In 1902 the occasion had the of his Services in B fl at, Op. 10 when it fi rst remains the cantata The Canterbury Pilgrims carol service in 1967 and repeated every character of a musical celebration, with the appeared in 1879 – Stanford was twenty- of 1930. year until 1989. The music reappeared later main composers of the day strongly involved. seven – must have been considerable. The The Introit at the coronation in 1937 was in Wills’s suite The Fenlands, for brass band Sir Walter Parratt, Master of the Musick from service consisted of the Te Deum, Jubilate and Sir Edward Bairstow’s anthem Let my prayer and organ, in which it became the second 1893 to 1924, wrote the short invocation Benedictus, the Offi ce for the Holy Communion come up into Thy presence. Bairstow had subject of the fi rst movement, ‘The Vikings’. to strength Confortare (‘Be strong and play and the Magnifi cat and Nunc Dimittis, thus been Organist and Master of the Choristers We are told that Queen Victoria’s coronation the man’) with brass accompaniment – here providing music for the morning, communion at York Minster from 1914 to 1936 but is was something of a shambles. The ceremony heard with organ –, its ringing opening and evening services. The Te Deum established perhaps best remembered as the teacher of completely unrehearsed, the clergy lost their and close designed to attract attention a new idiom and, in a version with orchestra, Gerald Finzi. Bairstow composed much organ places and the choir proved inadequate. in the wide spaces of the Cathedral, for it was a noted feature of the coronation in music and choral music, of which probably Only in the fi nal decade of the century did was the music for the crowning. Parratt 1902. It is followed here by the Jubilate (‘O be the most well known are the anthems Blessed Britain become confi dent at ceremonial, the was Stanford’s exact contemporary at the joyful in the Lord all ye Lands’) from the same city, heavenly Salem (1914) and Let all mortal consequence of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Royal College of Music, where he served as service. Later Stanford would write four more fl esh keep silence (1925), while his Five Musically this proved particularly important as professor of the organ from its founding in services: in A (1880, published 1895), in F Poems of the Spirit for baritone, chorus and every royal occasion now became a festival of 1883 until 1923. (1889), in G (1902, 1904) and in C (1909). He orchestra, with their sixteen-minute duration, contemporary British music. Thus any account At the organ in Westminster Abbey in also provided the Festal Communion Service showed that his imagination could work on a of our cathedral music is signposted by works 1902 was Sir Walter Galpin Alcock, assistant in B fl at, Op. 128 for the coronation of King wider canvas, given the opportunity. written for the four coronation services in the organist at the Abbey from 1896 to 1916 George V in 1911, from which comes the Also specially written for the 1937 twentieth century. Such works are strongly (then moving to Salisbury for thirty years). Gloria in excelsis in this programme. It would ceremony was Vaughan Williams’s Festival Te represented in our programme.