Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986)
Crucifixus pro Nobis: Choral Music
Benjamin Hulett (tenor)
Members of Britten Sinfonia
François Cloete & Owen Chan (organ)
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas
rec. 2024, Chapel of Merton College, Oxford, UK
Texts & English translations included
Delphian DCD34332 [58]
Since his death exactly forty years ago, the music of Edmund Rubbra has never really left the outskirts of the repertoire, but on his death very few works were available, just a few symphonies and choral works and possibly the Second Quartet and not much else. I remember how disappointed he felt at this lack of recognition, but now, a great many of his Opus numbers are on CD, as well as works which he didn’t even list. There are many choral works which still deserve an airing but at last, with this collection, including three first recordings, we have a significant work, the Cantata di Camera Crucifixus pro nobis.
Rubbra liked the more mystical poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here, we have three poems by the little-known Patrick Carey and one by Spenser. The scoring is odd: a tenor soloist, the lyrical, passionate voice of Benjamin Huett, a sixteen-voice choir, flute, violin, cello, harp and organ. The first movement ‘Christ in the Cradle’ is utterly magical in its scoring. We lead directly through Christ’s life to ‘Christ in the Garden’ and then ‘Christ in his Passion’, the emotional centre of the work. The Spenser setting ‘Most glorious Lord of life’ had been composed in 1935 as part of the ‘Five Spenser Sonnets’ Op 42 – and here we notice the stylistic clashing of gears. Whereas the first three movements are very much the Rubbra of the 1960s, the first especially sounding something like passages in his 8th Symphony 1969, this finale is very much the heavily contrapuntal Rubbra of thirty years previous – and for me this is not a satisfactory conclusion, although the mood is suitable for the message of the Resurrection. Listening to this during Holy Week, however, has been a very moving experience.
Another premiere follows, the motet The Revival. The text is by a contemporary of Carey, Henry Vaughan. Alexandra Coghian in her perceptive and details booklet essay comments that the polyphony ‘could be a Tallis Motet’. The other great seventeenth century poet is John Donne, and from Rubbra’s early Five Motets the choir have chosen the rather dark, six-part setting of A Hymn to God the Father and also the first in the set Eternitie,an austere eight-part setting of Herrick’s mystical poem. All five have been recorded by The Sixteen under Harry Christophers (Coro 16144).
The Missa in honorem Sancti Dominici for four-part choir sung in Latin has been recorded several times, not least by Richard Hickox’s St. Margaret’s Westminster Singers in 1975 (Chan 10423) a recording session attended by the composer. It is a very moving work and what I like about this Merton performance is the close attention to detail, with dynamic shadings and tempi all in line with the composer’s wishes. Though the tenors and sometimes sopranos may sound strained at points, the overall performance is comparable to others I have heard.
Rubbra often told his students never to sell their music but always to take royalties, the reason being that in 1923 he sold his Virgin’s Cradle Hymn (Dormi Jesu) to O.U.P and it soon became anthologised in the Oxford Book of Carols and much performed and purchased by choirs due to its simple and immediate appeal. Now it is little performed so this recording will remind listeners of its ethereal beauty.
Rubbra Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in Ab is very much in the cathedral repertoire although it is rather an organist’s nightmare with, in the Gloria, triplet quavers in the pedals against typically bell like rising and falling duplet scales in the hands. The effect, especially when well balanced, as here, is electrifying and exultant.
It is very impressive how Benjamin Nicholas extracts from the choir just the right character from so much of this music, especially so, bearing in mind that for most of the singers it would have all been very unfamiliar.
There three organ works are shared between François Cloete and Owen Chan. Of these, the Symphonic Prelude is a premiere recording. This consists of about fourteen bars intended by Rubbra to open a new 12th Symphony. I once tried to work on the ideas, wondering if they could be developed satisfactorily, but they represent such a personal, late Rubbra language and the fragments being so full of possibilities, that I realised that it was typical of how the composer worked. He would begin with a few ideas and then leave them, returning to them sometime later and improvising around them until he found the right way to continue. If he had lived for another year, I wonder on what journey these bits of ideas would have taken him.
Both the Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Cyril Scott, originally for piano but arranged for organ by Bernard Rose, and the brief Meditation, written for James Dalton, have been recorded before, by Robert Houssart (Naxos 8.555255) and there is really no difference between their interpretations. The latter work, being only twenty bars, is worked around a continuous pedal C. Dalton was an organ scholar at Worcester College, Oxford where Rubbra had been on the staff.
The booklet has photos of Rubbra and some happy ones of the choir and as well as the essay mentioned above. All texts are clearly printed and there are the usual biographies.
Gary Higginson
Previous review: John Quinn
Buying this recording via the link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free
Contents
Cantata di Camera: Crucifixus pro Nobis, Op 111 (1961)
The Revival, Op 58 (1944)
Eternitie (Five Motets for Unaccompanied Choir), Op 37, No 1(1934)
Prelude and Fugue (on a theme by Cyril Scott), Op 69 (1950)
(arr. for organ by Bernard Rose (1916-1996))
The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn, Op 3 (1924)
Missa in Honorem Sancti Dominici, Op 66 (1948)
Meditation, Op 79 (1953)
A Hymn to God the Father (Five Motets for Unaccompanied Choir), Op 37, No 3 (1934)
Symphonic Prelude, Op 164a (publ. 1990)
(arr. for organ by Michael Dawney (b 1942) & Robert Matthew-Walker (b 1939)
Evening Service in A flat, Op 65 (1948)
