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Contents:
DDD 63.22 Exeter College, Oxford 3-5 July 01 Lincoln Windows This recording, which contains a selection of my choral and organ music, represents the fruit of a warm working relationship between Lincoln college, its choir, and myself as composer. Our association began in 1998 with the composition of A Peace Prayer for the choir’s Italian tour, and its premiere performance in St Mark’s Venice (included on the CD War and Peace). Since then we have collaborated on a number of recordings, including the Radio 3 broadcast of my Passion for our Times and culminating in the present project. The recording contains two larger works, Lincoln Windows and Evening Liturgy and a number of smaller occasional compositions. Lincoln Windows. Six Alpha and Omega Motets. Lincoln Windows was commissioned by Nigel Lindsey-Renton on behalf of the choir, which takes as its inspiration the large scale painted window in Lincoln Chapel, and the textual references it contains. This ingenious idea came initially from the current college chaplain, Andrew Gregory, who has preached a series of recently published sermons on the content of these historic windows. Our challenge was to recreate, in musical, dramatic, and poetical terms, a musical equivalent to his theological discourse. As befits so grand a subject, the music is extended and dramatic, making full use of the interplay between choir and organ, as well as that between speech and song. The climax of the piece, musically and theologically, occurs at the intersection of the Crucifixion and Resurrection windows. Here there is a fracture of the musical fabric, and the organ overwhelms the choir in a musical portrayal of the darkness which followed Christ’s death. John Donne’s wonderful words ‘ The dead hear not thunder, nor feel they an earthquake’, treated here in an awesome manner, suggest a. mysterious resurrection, stimulating faith but beyond the logic of our limited understanding. The whole scheme has been worked into textual form by my long term collaborator Tony Scull. ********************************************** As Herbert Howells observed, selections of smaller church pieces tend to be influenced by people and places, and the middle items of this recording reflect both the acoustical properties of their first performances and the nature of the individuals who commissioned them. Thus Caedmon’s Dream and the Prayer of Mannaseh were both composed for the rich reverberant of norman Cathedral in Ripon, and are musical tributes to the Dean, Christopher Campling, and the retiring Bishop, David Young. The Goldfinch Carol and the setting of Isaac Watt’s hymn Wondrous Cross is humbler in intention. The first sets a text by Guy Wilson, Master of the Royal Armories, which seeks to recreate the mediaeval legend of the Goldfinch represented at the Nativity as a portent of Christ’s Passion. Mark Jarman’s fine text for Sonnet is taken from his rich collection Unholy Sonnets and is a frank expression of contemporary belief and doubt mixed in equal measure. The organ music spread throughout this selection are taken from Three Preludes on English Tunes which recast well known English hymn tunes in new atmospheric surroundings. Both Martyrdom and Down Ampney use pedal tones, created by erasers being inserted into the keys, whereas the Recessional on Michael takes as its inspiration Howells’ magnificent tune for the hymn All my hope on God is founded. The final work, Evening Liturgy, was first performed in Norwich Cathedral in 1994, and is a sequence of reflective pieces suitable for use in a nocturnal service of reflection and prayer. The music combines unaccompanied choral music, chant, and prayer in a seamless texture, and uses various texts, from both Biblical sources and Bonheoffer argue a simple case…. That all, of any race or gender, are equal in the sight of God.
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