GMCD 7222 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Choral Music/Various Choirs Reviews ***Sound Clips***	Christ Rising Choir of the Queens College Oxford Directed by: Owen Rees and Edward Whiting Organ

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DDD Total Time = 61.37 / Recorded: The Queen’s College Chapel, Oxford 17, 18 & 19 April 2001

This recording takes as its theme Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, as marked during the climactic point of the Church’s year: the final days of Holy Week (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day). We trace these events, from the Last Supper to Easter morning, in music of the Renaissance and twentieth centuries, interspersed with appropriate organ chorales from J.S. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. The Renaissance composers represented are the three near-contemporaries regarded—together with Palestrina—as the greatest of their period: William Byrd, Orlande de Lassus, and Tomás Luis de Victoria. We also include music by Byrd’s teacher Thomas Tallis and his eminent pupil Thomas Morley. The twentieth-century works are by the English composers Britten, Walton, and Leighton (who was associated with The Queen’s College), together with settings of Holy-Week responsories by Francis Poulenc.

Our narrative begins on the evening of Maundy Thursday, with the Last Supper. Although the text of Tallis’s Verily, verily, I say unto you is taken from an earlier stage in St John’s account of Christ’s ministry, these words reflect the new emphasis—in the Protestant church which arose in mid sixteenth-century England—on congregational taking of the Communion which Christ instituted at the Last Supper, as a memorial of His Passion. Tallis presents the text with a simple directness reflecting the ideals of the Protestant reformers, but with a sensitivity to the text’s structure and meaning (for example, the sudden climax at ‘hath eternal life’) which results in a powerful ‘sermon in music’.

Following the Last Supper, according to the Gospel account, Jesus went with the disciples to Gethsamene. His words to Peter, James, and John expressing his heaviness of heart and forseeing his imminent betrayal appear in the second Responsory for Matins (Tenebræ) of Maundy Thursday, Tristis est anima mea. Poulenc’s setting of this Responsory was written second (completed in November 1938) but published as the fourth of his Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence. The text is illustrated by Poulenc with a mixture of serenity and aggression, and his trademark subito dynamic markings. ‘I shall go to be sacrified for you’ is set with considerable vehemence early in the piece, but by the time the words are repeated (in accordance with liturgical practice) there is a sense of Jesus’s acceptance of his fate, and the très calme marking of the opening is employed once more for the rich but peaceful eight-part ending.

Another of Poulenc’s Quatre motets—Vinea mea electa (completed in December 1938)—takes us to Good Friday: Jesus’s trial and condemnation, and the freeing of the murderer Barabbas. The text is that of the third Responsory for Tenebræ of Good Friday. Poulenc again responds to the variety of moods within the text with a characteristically wide range of dynamics and textures. The tender opening in six-part homophony is interrupted by despair (‘how have you been transformed into bitterness?’), astringent dissonance for ‘that you should crucify me’, and a furious choral shout for ‘and free Barabbas’. Kenneth Leighton studied Classics (1947–1950) and composition with Bernard Rose (1950–1951) at The Queen’s College, and here developed his distinctive compositional style, with its emphasis on highly lyrical melody. Edward Taylor's poem What love is this of thine provides ample scope for Leighton to employ his most expressive style, both in the calm opening and close of the work, and at moments of high drama.

Sacred and Profane was Britten’s last work for unaccompanied voices, written in 1974–1975 for a madrigal group which Peter Pears had founded. The texts of Yif ic of luve can and Ye that pasen by are both vivid contemplations of Christ on the Cross; Britten’s setting of the first is dominated by short phrases and reflective pauses. The chorus presents the scene (the first seven lines of text) twice, the second time overlaid by a solo part, melodically more adventurous than the chorus, singing the last three lines of text in which the response of the observer is set out: ‘Well ought I to weep, and sins to abandon, if I know of love’ (the last phrase being persistently repeated). The mixture of allusions to major and minor tonalities adds greatly to the haunting quality of the work. In the text of Ye that pasen by the crucified Christ is the speaker. Britten marked his setting ‘Slow and dragging’, to give weight to the chains of thirds and overlapping scales, creating a blurred and desolate effect. It is more aggressive than Ye ic of luve can, but both combine chromatic adventure with harmonic resolution.

The text of the chorale used in Bach’s Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund draws upon the Seven Last Words from the Cross, and was sung on Good Friday, while that of Christe, du Lamm Gottes—likewise drawn from the Passiontide section of the Orgelbüchein—is a translation of the Agnus Dei. Bach in this latter case presents the chorale melody in canon at the fifth, in the tenor and topmost parts, and there is another two-part canon (between the top two parts) in the Passiontide chorale setting Hilf, Gott, daß mir’s gelinge, contrasted here with running triplet figuration in the tenor. The text of this chorale tells the story of the Crucifixion.

It became common for composers working within Catholic countries in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to write cycles of Holy-Week Responsories. On this recording we include two Responsories from the set by Orlande de Lassus. The text of the first—Tenebræ factæ sunt (the fifth Responsory for Tenebræ of Good Friday)—tells of the darkness that fell over the land following Jesus’s Crucifixion from the sixth to the ninth hour, followed by Christ’s last words from the Cross (according to St Luke’s account) and death. The text of Victoria’s motet Vere languores is appropriate to the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, to which it is assigned in one of the two printed collections—of 1585—in which the composer included the piece. William Walton's A Litany was written in 1917 when he was fourteen, and a pupil at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford. At sixteen he became an undergraduate, but left Oxford without a degree. His setting of Fletcher’s famous words is a mature and haunting work.

Following Jesus’s burial on Good Friday, St Matthew’s account tells that on the Saturday the chief priests went to Pilate to ask that the tomb be sealed and guarded, to prevent the disciples stealing the body and claiming Christ’s resurrection. This account forms the basis for Sepulto Domino, the last of Lassus’s cycle of Holy-Week Responsory settings (ninth Responsory for Tenebræ of Holy Saturday); as in Tenebræ factæ sunt, Lassus contrasts an often homophonic treatment of the opening section with a contrapuntal verse for just two voices.

According to St John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on the morning of Easter Sunday, while it was still dark, and found the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. She ran to Peter and another disciple and spoke the words paraphrased in the text Thomas Morley’s motet Eheu, sustulerunt Dominum meum. The recording ends with a group of works celebrating Christ’s Resurrection: two very different examples of Byrd’s music for Easter Day, together with Victoria’s triumphant six-voice motet Surrexit pastor bonus (a work which deserves to be better known), and a final organ chorale by Bach. Christ lag in Todesbanden is one of Luther’s hymns for Easter, based upon the Latin sequence Victimæ paschali laudes sung at Mass on that day. Bach’s majestic setting presents the melody at the top of the texture. Towards the end of his career, in 1605 and 1607, Byrd published two collections of music—entitled Gradualia—for the celebration of Mass on various feasts. The items set are ‘proper’ to the feast: Introit, Gradual and Alleluia, Offertory, and Communion. The remarkable rhythmic energy which is characteristic of these works is perfectly fitted to the setting of the joyful text of the Easter Introit Resurrexi, and the dramatic portrayal of the earthquake at the opening of the Offertory Terra tremuit. The Easter Day liturgy is most clearly characterised by the recurring word ‘Alleluia’, which punctuates Byrd’s propers and ends Victoria’s motet.

While Byrd remained a faithful Catholic throughout his life (as the Gradulia, for example, bear witness), he nevertheless worked within the Anglican church, providing music for its reformed liturgies. The service of Matins on Easter Day included the Easter Anthem Christ rising, and we have settings by Tallis and Tye as well as Byrd. Byrd’s treatment is a remarkable exploitation of the ‘verse’ idiom—in which soloists alternate with the choir—to dramatic effect. His opening (referring to the ‘Christus resurgens’ chant according to the Use of Salisbury) builds to a powerful climax as the two soloists outdo each other in reaching ever higher climactic notes. The alternation between choir and soloists is used tellingly, as when the choir’s ‘but living unto God’ is answered without break by a soloist, suddenly ‘revealed’, naming the Redeemer: ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord’.

Notes by Owen Rees & Edward Whiting

Page revised 26.06.03