Oliver Tarney (b. 1980)
Lux Stellarum (2019)
Andrew Dewar (organ)
Choir of Royal Holloway/Rupert Gough
rec. 2025, Keble College Chapel, Oxford, UK
Texts and translation provided
Convivium Records CR111 [29]

Lux Stellarum is a setting of the requiem mass by Oliver Tarney, written for the Choir of the American Cathedral in Paris and premiered in the UK by the Choir of Royal Holloway College in November 2024, who subsequently recorded it in Oxford. It’s comparatively short, less than half an hour of music, and its binding thread is the use of plainsong melodies, from the Missa pro defunctis and, less obviously, the Latin hymn Conditor alme siderum (‘creator of the stars of night’). Less obviously that is until one looks at the booklet and sees that alongside the words from the Roman Missal there are interpolated texts from the Bible and elsewhere concerning stars and the universe. Tarney in his programme note writes that the work ‘centres on our part in the unfathomable wonder, vastness and possibility of the cosmos, trusting that as God calls the stars by their names, he calls us by ours…’.  A concert piece then, rather than something for liturgical use, beautiful and involving, making a spiritual as well as musical impression.  

Throughout the work Tarney mixes textures and musical types. The dazzling introit is a fine example, where the plainchant melody is briefly stated by solo alto and soprano voices before an aethereal soprano line, reminiscent of the stratospheric 16^th century treble writing of John Taverner, gradually subsumes it. The entry of the organ and then the male voices about a minute in seems to take us to another dimension, more dramatic, wilder even, with glorious dissonances, before a deliberately plain polyphonic rendering of the Missal text gives way to an agile, incisive and colourful portrayal of words from the prophet Amos. It’s really heady stuff, almost exuberant in its inventiveness, playing cleverly but not disrespectfully with aspects of convention. The Kyrie is similarly ingenious running the Conditor alme siderum melody and words (in English translation) against the text of the Ordinary of the Mass, becoming briefly impassioned before dissolving into something more hushed and fragmentary. The third section of the work is a setting of Stars by the Canadian poet Marjorie Pickthall. I must admit I don’t have a high opinion of the poem, but what Tarney makes of the writing is wonderful. His music is reflective, poised and extraordinarily atmospheric and there is a lovely line to the Choir’s singing here.

The Sanctus which follows is grand and rhetorical, Tarney’s emphasis on the word ‘Hosanna’ using five notes feels inspired, giving it an appropriately burnished, almost melismic feeling. The Agnus Dei is simple and unadorned by contrast, with echoes of the plainchant from the Liber Usualis for the Ordinary, the interpolations from the psalms using straight plainsong. The In paradisum which concludes the work opens with a beautiful a cappella setting of Eric Milner-White’s adaptation of a John Donne sermon, ‘Bring us, O Lord God’, used by a number of previous composers, most famously William Henry Harris in 1959. Tarney’s version works exquisitely in his chosen context, and I applaud his restoration of Donne’s words ‘no foes nor friends, but one equal…identity’; pivotal to Donne’s message, White’s excision of them puzzling. After its subdued beginnings, Tarney unleashes writing of real grandeur and power in the message of eternal rest given both in the Missal text and by Donne. The triumphant blazing repetition of ‘eternity’ is underlined by the equally resplendent ‘Amen’ which follows and then a virtuosic organ solo concludes, magnificently played here by Andrew Dewar.

I’ve very much enjoyed this inspired and unconventional Requiem. The Choir of Royal Holloway under Rupert Gough are typically exemplary in every detail, with some outstanding solo singing when required, all very well captured by the Convivium team (including Tarney himself) in the rewarding acoustic of Keble College Chapel.         

Dominic Hartley