Arise my love: Music for the Break of Day
Alexander Pott, Henry Morris (organ)
Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford/Mark Williams
rec. 2024, Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford
Texts and translations supplied
Coro COR16216 [62]
This is the fourth collection from Magdalen College to appear on the Coro label. Earlier issues contain hymns, music for evensong, and the enjoyable Voices of Thunder, where the college chapel’s new organ is as much the star as is the choir (review). Here we have a collection of works suited to the choir’s weekly morning service, but in compiling the programme Mark Williams decided not to limit himself to music for the beginning of the day, but to widen the scope to include ‘new life, the arrival of Spring’ and ‘celebrations of light’. The result is a satisfying and varied programme. All the sung texts and, where required, translations, are provided in the booklet, but a more detailed presentation of the works chosen would have been welcome.
The programme is bookended by works from two of the most compelling contemporary British composers, both of whom have contributed enormously to the choral music repertoire. The ravishing textures and harmonies of Gabriel Jackson’s setting of Blake make for a stunning opening, disappointing only in that it is over too soon. The music he conjures up for the passage beginning ‘O radiant morning’ is stupendous. Jonathan Dove’s Ecce beatam lucem sets a 16th-century text evoking the ‘dazzling splendour of the sun’, as well as the stars, the moon, and, by extension, ‘all creation’. Over a scintillating organ accompaniment the choral parts, so variously employed, lead us from joyous celebration to a calm and beautiful close evoking paradise. Anyone reading this who has yet to encounter the music of these two figures has a treat in store.
Britten’s Festival Te Deum, roughly contemporary with Peter Grimes, contains much unison singing whilst demonstrating the composer’s ability to choose and illustrate important points within a long and rather repetitive text. Thus, the word ‘Comforter’ is highlighted, as is the reference to ‘glory everlasting’. A relatively minor work – though the composer graced it with an opus number – it is musically more sophisticated and trickier to perform that it sounds. Walton admirers might not yet have encountered his Jubilate Deo, composed for and first performed at the English Bach Festival. The composer had little enthusiasm for the text, and his letters suggest that he didn’t think much of the finished work. What a strange composer Walton was! The greatest works are among the real masterpieces of music, and even in a minor, and inferior piece such as this one, one can find traces of genius that make them well worth reviving. Business-like and efficient at the outset, characteristically trenchant humour appears when the composer adopts waltz-like music later on. The ending is rather abrupt and perfunctory, as if he just got fed up with the whole thing.
My knowledge of James Whitbourn was very limited, and I was surprised to read about his extensive and eminent career. His setting of a short passage from the Song of Songs begins with some very attractive overlapping of parts and features a striking lead-in from the organ to the final line – ‘the time of singing has come’. This is music of real quality and stature, full of character yet without the slightest recourse to sensationalism. Charlotte Bray also sets an extract from the same source in a lovely short piece in which the last two lines achieve a real fusion between music and text. Judith Weir has never written an insignificant note, and Vertue, a homophonic setting of George Herbert, perfectly expresses the poignant beauty of the words in little more than a couple of minutes. Kenneth Leighton decided to set a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins – brave man: does any poet lend themselves less easily to musical setting? Everything by Leighton deserves our attention and this challenging short work is no exception.
The drones and long alleluias that make up As one who has slept are quintessential Tavener, compared to which the music of Stainer and Finzi arrive like old friends, comfortable and unchanging. I find Dyson’s serene Benedicite more individual than either of these, with a variety of texture that is both surprising and admirable given the ultra-repetitive text.
In spite of the programme’s overall aims this is a varied collection and the choir rises to its challenges with great skill, as successfully in the older repertoire as in the most recent. The choir’s sound is pleasingly homogeneous, the treble line better integrated into the overall texture than is the case with some other ecclesiastical choirs. The presence of female voices in the alto parts no doubt adds to the kind of timbre that I find very appealing. Organists Henry Morris and Alexander Pott provide exemplary accompaniments and the short solo passages are beautifully taken. The recorded sound by Mike Hatch and Nicholas Parker places us at a comfortable distance from the performers whilst allowing us to appreciate the acoustic of the fabulous building in which these musicians have the great fortune to work.
William Hedley
Contents
Gabriel Jackson (b. 1962)
To Morning
Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585)
O nata lux
Charlotte Bray (b. 1982)
Winter is past
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Festival Te Deum
John Tavener (1944-2013)
As one who has slept
John Stainer (1840-1901)
How beautiful upon the mountains
Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988)
God’s Grandeur
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Welcome, sweet and sacred feast
James Whitbourn (1963-2024)
Arise, my love
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
O God, thou art my God
Cheryl Frances-Hoad (b. 1980)
O come, let us sing unto the Lord
George Dyson (1883-1964)
Benedicite in F
John Amner (1579-1641)
Come, let’s rejoice
William Walton (1902-1983)
Jubilate Deo
John Sheppard (c. 1515-1558)
Haec dies
Judith Weir (b. 1954)
Vertue
Jonathan Dove (b. 1959)
Ecce beatam lucem
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