Sacred Music: St. John Henry Newman's Words and Music

I purchased and have listened to Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's new CD of various settings of St. John Henry Newman's poetry and famous meditation adapted for commissioned works:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

Harry Christophers went to a Church of England minister for a "translation" of Newman's Meditation more suited to be set to music and Christophers is most pleased that Robert Willis, the Dean of Canterbury, eliminated the use of the third person singular masculine pronoun when referring to God. So listening to the CD, one hears five different variations on the theme of Newman's Meditation, with different texts. They are all meditative, virtuosic, and inward looking. 

But Harry Christophers has programmed more traditional settings of Newman's works: Sir William Henry Harris's version of "Lead, Kindly Light", Richard Runciman Terry's of "Praise to the Holiest in the Height, and "Firmly I Believe and Truly" with a hymn tune by William Boyce (Halton Holgate). So these are works for congregations to sing, and the Sixteen sing them gloriously. 

The adapted works for Meditation mostly just glided by as I listened to them, while the three quoted hymns stand out as praise to God, declarations of faith, and thanksgiving for providence.

I've also listened twice to the recent performance of Sir Edward Elgar's setting of Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius at the Proms. Critical reception of this work, almost always from a secular publication, is always mixed: admiring Elgar's achievement, but descrying Newman's religion (what Harry Christophers refers to as his "ideology" in the Meditation CD liner notes). For example, The Guardian review has to remind us:

First performed in Birmingham town hall, Gerontius has always provoked extreme reactions, initially to its Roman Catholicism in a mostly Anglican country, now because its religiosity, with all the resonance of that word, is too much for some.

I don't think that Newman should be even indirectly accused of religiosity, with its implications of falsity and hypocrisy of excessive piety. And certainly not Elgar, who as this article from The Newman Review notes, had a very common-man view of the title character:

I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner, a repentant one of course but still no end of a worldly man in his life, & now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with Church tunes & rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear one’s self away from a well to do world than from a cloister.[3]

Perhaps Elgar went a little far in his judgment of the title character, but he sees Gerontius, even in this Dream, as a real human being. I rather think Gerontius was not as worldly as Elgar thinks, as he proclaims:

Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;
and through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.

Gerontius is more aware of his condition than someone who has been "no end of a worldly man in his life"; he's been well-instructed in the Faith and believes it, even as he faces the crisis of his death.

Nevertheless, every time I listen to live or recorded performance, I appreciate how Elgar created a dramatic, almost operatic musical narrative. The deathbed sequence in the first part is filled with Gerontius' expressions of both faith and fear, as he tries to rouse himself even before he dies to declare his faith and trust in his Saviour. Elgar sets Newman's quotations from the traditional prayers for the dying with clarity, while Gerontius' fears are also sensitively set as he fades away from life. The Priest confidently send Gerontius on his way:

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God
The Omnipotent Father, Who created thee!

And the second part, as the Soul adjusts to eternal life "temporarily" without a body, is imaginative and inspires awe. The dialog between the Soul and Angel transports the listener to the Soul's particular judgment, and the long interlude of the Choirs of Angelicals prepares us for the denouement of the promised-to-be-brief parting of the Angel from the Soul, with the final intrusion of the Soul's deathbed on earth, even as the Souls in Purgatory join him in the hopes to "see Him in the truth of everlasting day." And the Angel's loving farewell! Glorious!

Elgar's music is transcendent and Newman's drama is based on doctrine and devotion. Perhaps Elgar's work--not an oratorio, as he would not allow that term--is something only a Catholic may fully appreciate. 

Nevertheless, the announcers on the BBC mentioned the audience's rapt silence during the performance in Albert Hall, and the ovation was enthusiastic at the end. Such a confident, promising conclusion, as the orchestra, choirs, and Angel serenade the Soul demonstrates more than the audience may have dreamed as true--even as that final Amen and timpani roll presage a warning for the rest of us.

The English Reformation in Art and Music

Two packages arrived on Monday: one containing a fine used copy of of Margaret Aston's The King's Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait and the other a newly released CD from Stile Antico, In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile.

I've listened to the CD twice and am still reading the book.

I'm familiar with the stories of most of the composers on the CD (Dowland, Byrd, Dering, Philips, White, and De Monte) and have CDs with some of the same works (Byrd's "Tristitia et anxietas" and his "Quomodo cantabimus", written in response to Philippe de Monte's "Super flumina Babylonis"; Robert White's "Lamentations a 5", etc).

Richard Dering's "Factum est silentium" was an exciting and exuberant discovery:

Factum est silentium in caelo,
Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:
Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.
Millia millium minestrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.
[Alleluia.]

There was silence in heaven
When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

The voice of a thousand thousand was heard saying:
Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.
A thousand thousand ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.
[Alleluia.]

Here it is sung by the Choir of Clare College! As another record label, Hyperion, describes Dering and this work, which is the Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle during the Lauds of Michaelmas:

Dering was, like Philips, an English Catholic musician who went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands (or, according to another account, converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1612). By 1617 he was organist to the convent of English nuns in Brussels, and in the same year published his first collection of Cantiones Sacrae; the publisher was the noted Phalèse of Antwerp who also published music by Philips. Factum est silentium comes from a second collection which appeared in 1618; its declamatory, dramatic style shows clearly the influence of the new Italian Baroque style which Dering’s compatriots in England were perhaps slower to embrace.

The new work on the CD, a setting of Shakespeare's poem, "The Phoenix and The Turtle", underwhelmed me. The words were lost in the music of Huw Watkins. The liner notes explain that he "portrays the busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations, before a slower sublime setting of the concluding threnody." "Busy hustle and bustle of funeral preparations"? I don't hear that in the poem's opening:

Let the bird of loudest lay 

On the sole Arabian tree 

Herald sad and trumpet be, 

To whose sound chaste wings obey. 

But thou shrieking harbinger, 

Foul precurrer of the fiend, 

Augur of the fever's end, 

To this troop come thou not near. 

From this session interdict 

Every fowl of tyrant wing, 

Save the eagle, feather'd king; 

Keep the obsequy so strict. 

Let the priest in surplice white, 

That defunctive music can, 

Be the death-divining swan, 

Lest the requiem lack his right. 

And thou treble-dated crow, 

That thy sable gender mak'st 

With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. . . .

This sounds more directions first for who should not attend the funeral and then who should, not running around making arrangements! The notes do mention the theory that Shakespeare is paying tribute to St. Anne Line and her exiled husband Roger.

More on Aston's study of the meaning and date of "King Edward VI and the Pope" which is in the National Portrait Gallery in London after I've finished reading the book.

The Lost Songs of St. Kilda

This kind of story and endeavor resonates with me. Although the Catholic faith and culture in England didn't come down to one man giving that knowledge to another, there was a remnant left to sustain it and help revive it when the time came. The new CD, The Lost Songs of St. Kilda represents an even more tenuous remnant: one man remembering the old songs of a forsaken home and teaching them to another; that other man in old age remembering the old songs of that forsaken home and playing them; and a third man, recording the songs for the rest of us to hear and glimpse the life that is gone. As BBC Scotland News tells the story:

It all began when Trevor Morrison sat down at the piano in Edinburgh's Silverlea Care Home 10 years ago and began to play.

The magic did not go unnoticed.

The tunes were simple, naive even, but memorable and with an extraordinary emotional depth.

As a 10-year-old child on the west coast island of Bute during World War Two, Trevor had been taught piano by a former resident of St Kilda.

His teacher had left the remote archipelago in the outer Hebrides when they were evacuated in 1930.

Somehow, a lifetime later and in failing health, Trevor managed to remember the tunes his teacher had shown him.

Stuart McKenzie, who had been volunteering in the care home, offered to record them.

"He played the most astonishing tunes. They were so different. Complicated, but simple," Mr McKenzie says.

"I went home, got my computer, downloaded a bit of software and went along to a local electrical store and paid £3 for a microphone we could put down the back of the piano for him. And away he went."

Decca has combined the recordings of Morrison made by McKenzie with orchestrations of the melodies and works inspired by the music. This website has samples of the music and a timeline of the history of St. Kilda, which is not really named for any saint as far as anyone can tell.

The album won't be released in the United States until early October. It is a remarkable survival of aspects of a lost culture.

For the Christian Review: Amateurs and Music

My comparison/contrast essay on Florence Foster Jenkins and Gilbert Kaplan has been posted on The Christian Review site:

From France and the USA/UK, two movies have been made recently about the same woman. The French movie, titled “Marguerite,” presents a fictionalized version of the story, while the U.S. film, starring Meryl Streep, is presented as a “biopic” titled simply “Florence Foster Jenkins,” with the explanatory subtitle, “The Inspiring Story of the World’s Worst Singer.” . . .

Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) loved music; she attended concerts and operas; she studied singing; she wanted to perform. She had the money and time to dedicate to the art of classical singing; to learn the languages and the arias; to pay her accompanist and to rent the concert hall.

The only problem: Florence Foster Jenkins could not sing on pitch. Or in rhythm. Or even with proper diction. There was indeed a medical problem as her husband had, like Isak Dinesen’s, given her syphilis. Nevertheless, she fulfilled her dreams of singing on stage.

The two movies examine this story to depict what happens when someone so self-deluded takes the delusion public. It’s one thing to sing the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” in the shower (you’ll swallow lots of water!), another to sing it on stage at Carnegie Hall. Sample her efforts at singing Mozart here. . . . .

Perhaps a counter-balance to her story is Gilbert Kaplan’s fascination and dedication to Mahler’s Second Symphony, the “Resurrection.” Kaplan, who died at the age of 74 on January 1, 2016, followed the same path as Mrs. Jenkins—but as a conductor.

He earned his money on Wall Street in financial publishing and went to a performance of Mahler’s Second conducted by Leopold Stokowski in 1965; it changed his life. With money enough and time, he studied the score; he learned how to conduct; he traveled around the world to hear live performances of Mahler’s massive symphony: five movements; 90 minutes long; 100 piece orchestra; large choir; soloists; offstage brass and percussion—and an organ!

Then he conducted the Mahler Second Symphony with several world-class symphony orchestras, recorded it twice, and still continued to study it. There was quite a debate among critics and even symphony orchestra musicians whether or not he truly conducted the performances or what he contributed to the interpretation of the masterpiece.

But Kaplan’s dedication bore great fruit and he became known as a specialist on the “Resurrection” Symphony. He purchased the autograph manuscript and published a facsimile, co-editing the latest critical edition of the symphony. Kaplan never accepted a fee for his conducting engagements and limited them to three outings with the Second Symphony annually, the only work he conducted in public, although he did record the “Adagietto” from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. When the Vienna Philharmonic, which Mahler conducted, invites you to conduct and records the results, you have succeeded.

Read the rest there, of course.

Progressive Album Rock and Henry VIII's Six Wives

Please note: this may be the only hard rock seventies post in connection with Henry VIII I'll ever make!

My husband and I are spinning more discs. He has visited a couple of the record stores here in Wichita and purchased several long-playing, 33-1/3, vinyl records. Earlier this week he bought Rick Wakeman's 1973 album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII for me, at my request:

Rick Wakeman was the keyboard artist for the English rock band Yes (in the 1970s, 1990's and 2000's). He is also a solo artist (with quite a back up group on this album). The Six Wives of Henry VIII is a 1973 studio album, inspired by Wakeman's reading of Nancy Brysson Morrison's The Private Life of Henry VIII. As he says in the liner notes:

The album is based around my interpretations of the musical characteristics of the wives of Henry VIII. Although the style may not always be in keeping with their individual history, it is my personal conception of their characters in relation to keyboard instruments.

It is indeed a personal interpretation!

My husband and I listened it to it and you can sample it here. Wakeman does not recreate the musical style of sixteenth century England in these musical interpretations. They are sometimes melodic, but there are jazzy and even soulful sections in the compositions. The album presents the wives out of chronological order and it's interesting to note that the wife to whom Henry was married the longest gets the shortest musical treatment:

1. Catherine of Aragon (3:45)
2. Anne of Cleves (7:50)
3. Catherine Howard (6:36)
4. Jane Seymour (4:44)
5. Anne Boleyn (Incl "The day thou gavest Lord is ended") (6:31)
6. Catherine Parr (7:00)

The back cover includes brief biographies for each of the wives in their proper chronological order with commonly accepted portraits and the inside fold of the album shows the layout of his keyboards. Wakeman played all his keyboards in the studio and also went to St. Giles-without-Cripplegate, an historic London church, the play the organ for the Jane Seymour track. Among the historical figures associated with the church are John Foxe, John Milton, Lancelot Andrewes, St. Thomas More, John Bunyan, Ben Jonson, Oliver Cromwell, and Daniel Defoe!

In the Anne Boleyn composition, Wakeman included the hymn tune. St. Clement, for "The day thou gavest the Lord is ended" a popular Anglican hymn:

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended
The darkness falls at thy behest;
To thee our morning hymns ascended
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.

As o'er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren 'neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never
Like earth's proud empires, pass away;
Thy Kingdom stands, and grows for ever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.

More about the hymn and its composition here.

In 2009, Rick Wakeman performed an expanded version with a section dedicated to "The Defender of the Faith" at Hampton Court Palace in celebration of the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne. More about that event here.

Pope Benedict XVI: Music, Beauty, and Prayer

We watched this DVD last week and will need to watch it or listen to the music again, at least--especially to hear Hilary Hahn's own credenzas in the Mozart violin concerto. The concert was broadcast live in 2007 on April 16, Pope Emeritus Benedict's 80th birthday. Other than the opening remarks and the pope's final remarks, the musical selections on the disc are:

Giovanni Gabrieli (1553 - 1612)
Canzon noni toni a 12, C 183 (rev. by T. Unger)
Stuttgart Radio Brass, Gustavo Dudamel

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Violin Concerto No.3 in G, K.216
1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Rondo (Allegro)
Hilary Hahn, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Gustavo Dudamel

Antonín Dvorák (1841 - 1904)
Symphony No.9 in E Minor, Op.95 "From the New World"
1. Adagio - Allegro molto
2. Largo
3. Scherzo (Molto vivace)
4. Allegro con fuoco
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Gustavo Dudamel

Giovanni Gabrieli (1553 - 1612)
Sonata XIII (rev. by T. Unger)
Stuttgart Radio Brass, Gustavo Dudamel

One reason why I'd just like to listen to the music is that the video images are rather limited--either close-ups of the soloist, conductor, or sections of the orchestra or wide angles of the hall (the Paul VI audience hall) and the audience. There is no middle. Even if people were enjoying the music their expressions--even Pope Benedict's--did not necessary show it.

Pope Benedict thanked the musicians after the concert and discussed his love of music and its universal language of beauty:

Above all, I would now like to thank the musicians of this evening's event, the members of the Stuttgarter Radio-Sinfonieorchesters, the SWR, who with their skill have offered us all an authentic experience of the inspiring power of great music.

I thank Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor, and Hilary Hahn, the soloist, and all of you, Ladies and Gentlemen. Since the language of music is universal, we see people from completely different cultural and religious backgrounds who let themselves be gripped and likewise guided by it and who also interpret it.

Today, this universal aspect of music is given special emphasis, thanks to the electronic and digital instruments of communications. How many people there are in the most diverse countries who are able to take part in this musical performance at home, or experience it later!

I am convinced that music - and here I am thinking in particular of the great Mozart and this evening, of course, of the marvellous music by Gabrieli and the majestic "New World" by Dvorák - really is the universal language of beauty which can bring together all people of good will on earth and get them to lift their gaze on high and open themselves to the Absolute Good and Beauty whose ultimate source is God himself.

In looking back over my life, I thank God for placing music beside me, as it were, as a travelling companion that has offered me comfort and joy. I also thank the people who from the very first years of my childhood brought me close to this source of inspiration and serenity.

I thank those who combine music and prayer in harmonious praise of God and his works: they help us glorify the Creator and Redeemer of the world, which is the marvellous work of his hands.

This is my hope: that the greatness and beauty of music will also give you, dear friends, new and continuous inspiration in order to build a world of love, solidarity and peace.

After hearing that first sentence in the last paragraph I thought about a CD we'd just rediscovered: Music from Holy Cross Monastery in Austria by Alberich Mazak, from the SEON label that was purchased by Sony Music. Mazak was a monk at the monastery in the seventeenth century (he lived from 1609 to 1661, who studied music and philosophy before becoming a priest and monk. According to the liner notes, he wrote "masses, litanies, sacred cantatas, psalms, offertories, antiphons and even simple German pieces." Unfortunately, we don't have the works contained in his Opus Three, which "presumably contained Mazak's most progressive style and represented the climax of his work". Holy Cross Monastery maintains a website and even records some of Mazak's music on their YouTube channel (The Monastic Channel). 

Pope Benedict visited Holy Cross Monastery in September of 2007 and commented on prayer and chant in the monastic life:

Dear brother priests and deacons, dear brothers and sisters in the consecrated life! I realize that discipline is needed, and sometimes great effort as well, in order to recite the Breviary faithfully; but through this officium we also receive many riches: how many times, in doing so, have we seen our weariness and despondency melt away! When God is faithfully praised and worshiped, his blessings are unfailing. In Austria, people rightly say: “Everything depends on God’s blessing!”.

Your primary service to this world must therefore be your prayer and the celebration of the divine Office. The interior disposition of each priest, and of each consecrated person, must be that of “putting nothing before the divine Office”. The beauty of this inner attitude will find expression in the beauty of the liturgy, so that wherever we join in singing, praising, exalting and worshipping God, a little bit of heaven will become present on earth. Truly it would not be presumptuous to say that, in a liturgy completely centred on God, we can see, in its rituals and chant, an image of eternity. Otherwise, how could our forefathers, hundreds of years ago, have built a sacred edifice as solemn as this? Here the architecture itself draws all our senses upwards, towards “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined: what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). In all our efforts on behalf of the liturgy, the determining factor must always be our looking to God. We stand before God – he speaks to us and we speak to him. Whenever in our thinking we are only concerned about making the liturgy attractive, interesting and beautiful, the battle is already lost. Either it is Opus Dei, with God as its specific subject, or it is not. In the light of this, I ask you to celebrate the sacred liturgy with your gaze fixed on God within the communion of saints, the living Church of every time and place, so that it will truly be an expression of the sublime beauty of the God who has called men and women to be his friends!

The soul of prayer, ultimately, is the Holy Spirit. Whenever we pray, it is he who “helps us in our weakness, interceding for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). Trusting in these words of the Apostle Paul, I assure you, dear brothers and sisters, that prayer will produce in you the same effect which once led to the custom of calling priests and consecrated persons simply “spirituals” (Geistliche). Bishop Sailer of Regensburg once said that priests should be first and foremost spiritual persons. I would like to see a revival of the word “Geistliche”. More importantly, though, the content of that word should become a part of our lives: namely, that in following the Lord, we become, by the power of the Spirit, “spiritual” men and women.

Timely words for this year dedicated by Pope Francis to the Consecrated Life!

Baroque Pearls

Because the December 2014 issue of the BBC Music Magazine included a CD by Rachel Podger playing CPE Bach chamber works and a review of her latest CD, Perla Barocca, I ordered the latter for my husband as a Christmas gift. (The BBC Music Magazine has both a December AND a Christmas issue each year.)

Perla Barocca presents works by Fontana, Frescobaldi, Uccellini, Castello, Marini, Pandolfi Mealli,Leonarda, Gabrieli, Cima, and Bertali. We listened to this CD often during our Christmas/New Year break. The music is often festive and vibrant, with Rachel Podger's violin, Marcin Swiatkiewicz's harpsichord and organ, and Daniele Cammiti's Theorbo collaborating--the chaconne (chiaconne) by Bertali at the end of the CD is particularly rhythmic and exciting.

The Gramaphone reviewer liked the CD too:

It would be hard to imagine a more enticing introduction to the delights of 17th-century Italian violin music. The composers represented in this programme were all fascinated by the violin’s technical possibilities but, more than that, were absorbed by the task of creating viable forms for instrumental music. Starting from vocal models, the Cima is like a madrigal in the way each sentence presents a new variant, whereas the later sonatas by Fontana, Castello, Marini and Uccellini take their cue from the highly expressive vocal monody. By the time we reach Isabella Leonarda’s captivating sonata, the succession of ideas has coalesced into a sequence of short, distinct movements.

The term "baroque pearl" refers to a pearl that is not uniformly round. During the Renaissance era, they were highly prized for their natural beauty and uniqueness, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Henry VIII's Musical Spy (and Double Agent)

From Alamire, directed by David Skinner, comes this new release of Tudor church music with a connection to the White Rose of York:

One of the most magnificent musical treasures in the British Library is a sumptuously illuminated choir book given the shelf-mark Royal MS 8.g.vii. It is magnificent for several reasons, not least its beauty and contents, but also its origin, history, and ultimate destination. The book was devised and assembled in the finest scriptorium of all of Europe in the early sixteenth century: the workshop of Petrus Alamire (c. 1470-1536). Alamire (aka Peter van den Hoven), was not only a brilliant illuminator and music scribe, he was also a noted musician and composer in his own right.

But there were many interests of Petrus Alamire: the merchant, the mining engineer, and, most famously, the diplomat and spy. Musicians of Alamire’s popularity and talent were often widely travelled, frequently visiting the various courts of Europe; such a career was a perfect cover for sensitive political and diplomatic exchanges. Between 1515 and 1518 a number of letters survive which show that Alamire acted as a spy for Henry VIII against Richard de la Pole, last member of the House of York who openly sought claim to the English throne. Pole in turn, hired Alamire as a counter-spy against Henry VIII.

This so-called ‘Spy’s Choirbook’ contains some of the finest music of Continental Europe from the early sixteenth century by such noted composers as Heinrich Isaac, Petrus de la Rue and Josquin Desprez. Most of the works have not been performed in modern times, and this is the first recording dedicated to this most interesting of musical manuscripts from the Alamire scriptorium.

Hannah Furness highlights the two-disc CD set for The Telegraph:

Choral music not heard since the time of Henry VIII has been brought to life for the first time in 500 years.

The manuscript, a book of 34 religious songs, was given to Henry VIII as a lavish gift from a French diplomat in his early reign.

Containing songs referencing Henry and his then-bride Catherine of Aragon, it is considered the most "luxurious" surviving diplomatic gift of its kind.

It remained in the Royal Collection after the king's death, and was later given to the nation by George II where it has remained in the vaults of the British Library ever since.

Dr David Skinner, a Cambridge fellow, has now examined the manuscript to bring the music back to life with ensemble choir featuring nine singers and period instruments. . . .

Dr Skinner said the whole score "has certainly never been performed live in its entirety before", adding: "I think that our version is pretty close to what might have been heard in around 1520."

The entire collection has now been recorded, and will be available for sale under the name The Spy's Choirbook from October 1. (October 14 in the U.S.A.)

Petrus Alamire was a double agent and also informed on Henry VIII to Richard de la Pole. Henry found out and Alamire stayed away from England!

David Starkey's "Music and Monarchy"

 

This Christmas, my husband gave me a copy of the DVD set of the BBC's series, "David Starkey's Music & Monarchy", a beautifully produced overview of musical history in England, considering the influence of the monarchy on mostly ceremonial church music.

 

Starkey begins with Henry V, who even wrote music for parts of the Mass, and ends the series with the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. During the four episodes, choirs and ensembles perform great music by well known composers like Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Henry Purcell, George Handel, Thomas Arne, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, Edward Elgar, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Also, there are works by lesser known composers like Thomas Tomkins, William Lawes, Henry Lawes, Pelham Humphrey, William Croft, and Albert, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria. Eton College, King's College, Cambridge, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Canterbury Cathedral are among the venues, while the Choirs of Eton, King's College, Canterbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's Cathedral perform in situ. Fretwork, Alamire, the Academy of Ancient Music, The Parley of Instruments, The Band of the Life Guards, and several soloists also perform.

 

The musical selections and the performance are uniformly excellent, and Starkey's narration and his interviews with performers, conductors, and music historians are enlightening. The story of English music and monarchy basically follows, from Henry VIII on, the outline of English Reformation history during the Tudor dynasty, with the repercussions of religious division during the Stuart Dynasty, the Interregnum, Restoration, Glorious Revolution, Protestant succession through the House of Hanover, the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and finally, the House of Windsor succeeding. In the latter part of the history, Starkey considers the impact of the Oxford Movement on English church music, but he really does not consider the impact of secularization on English church music.

 

There were a couple of very great surprises: that Willliam and Mary dissolved the Chapel Royal and ended Henry Purcell's career as a royal composer of religious music--and that Thomas Arne wrote both "Rule, Britannia" and "God Save the King" in the midst of conflict between George II and his estranged son, Frederick the Prince of Wales (who was the father of King George III). Arne wrote "Rule, Britannia" for Frederick as part of a masque honoring King Alfred the Great and supporting the expansion of the British Navy, and then wrote "God Save the King" to support George II.

 

To me, the most noticeable gap is how little he considers the crucial restoration of Tudor church music during the reign of Mary I--when Tallis and Byrd and others were able to write polyphony again. That gap also means that Starkey does not consider the influence of great Spanish composers like Victoria, de Monte and Guerrero on English polyphony, or the exile of Catholic composers like Peter Philips, John Bull, and others. Starkey would only have had to consult Harry Christophers and The Sixteen to explore that crucial period through their CD The Flowering of Genius. Instead, Starkey skips over that period, perhaps because it does not fit his rather Whiggish narrative of English history.

 

That issue aside, the musical performances and the venues make this two-disc set a prized possession. As my husband commented, we could watch the first episode over and over again:

 

Around the World with the Wichita Public Library

My husband and I have vicariously visited four European capitals in the past couple of weeks: Paris, London, Rome, and Prague--via Naxos Musical Journey DVDs combining video of famous sights in each city with appropriate classical music. We thought two were very effective and two less effective. We have been to all but one of the cities, Prague.

The DVD on Paris, which also includes Chantilly, Versailles, and Chartres, was one of the effective presentations, with scenes from all the famous sights, including Notre Dame, the Musee D'Orsay, Sacre Coeur, etc, and of families in the parks at Luxembourg, the interior of Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon (we ate dinner there twice on business trips to Paris). Good detail in Chantilly, Versailles, and Chartres, too. The music ranges from Marais to Wagner; Mozart to Satie; Meyerbeer to Puccini--all appropriately chosen for the venue and choreography of the video presentation.

The DVD on Rome we thought less effective, primarily because the video concentrated so much on street scenes, the Spanish Steps (we thought we'd never stop seeing them), and did not even visit all four major basilicas in Rome--no St. Mary Major, St. Paul Outside the Walls or St. John Lateran at all. The views of the Roman Forum were effective. The musical selections were great, however:

The music here included is all associated in one way or another with Rome and its traditions. It ranges from the overture to Mozart's Roman opera La clemenza di Tito to Wagner's Tannhäuser, whose hero seeks pardon for his sins in the Eternal City, from Puccini's opera Tosca, set in Rome dominated by a corrupt chief of police, to Berlioz's evocation of the city in the age of Benevenuto Cellini, his Roman Carnival Overture.

Again, the DVD for London we thought was great: lots of sights, including both Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and the bonus of Oxford, including Christ Church and Christ Church Cathedral. The music was beautiful, with many selections from the Enigma Variations by Elgar, including "Nimrod" during the scenes of Christ Church. The Verdi selection was interesting--the chorus of the Scottish Exiles from Macbeth (accompanying images of the Tower of London). The video ends with a bang: fireworks and Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks!

But the DVD for Prague seemed a little dull--not even a good view of the Charles Bridge! The video did include many beautiful scenes along the river and of countryside and parks--and again, the music was great:

The music included here is associated in one way or another with Prague or Bohemia. It includes works by the Bohemian composers Smetana and Dvořák, by the Moravian composer Janáček, and by Fibich who, with Mozart, always found a ready welcome for his music in Prague.

There are more DVDs in the series, including Salzburg (lots of Mozart), Vienna, and Madrid, and DVDs that encompass highlights from the entire country, like Finland, Germany, and Uzbekistan, as well as two videos dedicated to regions of France, the chateaus of the Loire and Brittany & Normandy--the easy way to armchair travel, without luggage or crowds, or really being there!

An Appreciation of Elgar and "Englishness"

From The Walsingham Society's blog comes this appreciation of two English artists by James Patrick:

Beneath their defense of beauty lay themes that gave their art its power. There was a reliance upon tradition in a way that presaged Eliot”s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which is to say that in the work of each the past lived in the present, transformed by a new moment of creativity. “Both Elgar and Strauss (like Brahms and in contrast to Wagner) acknowledged the weight of history and mirrored some degree of awe for the traditions of composition…. Despite recent efforts to construe Elgar as a modernist innovator, he remained within the framework of ideas, conflicts, forms and vocabulary of the late nineteenth century.”10 [endnotes in the the blog post] Voysey’s houses, the house that loves the ground, with its great sheltering roof, looking always as though it should be thatched, its white cast walls, the reminiscence of Tudor half-timbering, recapitulated in a new, subtly modern key the past of English domestic architecture.

Elgar’s music from the first was understood as expressing something authentic about the modern English character, landscape, and self-image. “Because the gesture, rhetoric and sonority he fashioned have come to locate the unique power, intensity, confidence, and refinement of the English, Elgar’s music has retained its role as an embodiment of Englishness.”11 His critics sometimes deprecated his music as expressions of jingoism, the nonsensical neologism descriptive of the perfervid patriotism that beset the nation in the shadow of the Great War, but the imperial swagger was pride in England and its past more than pride in imperial success.12 Critics have noted that in Elgar’s music at its most assertive what one sometimes hears is a sub-theme reflecting something of Kipling’s “Recessional,” a muted acceptance of an all-too-transitory glory.13 Voysey’s architecture was, obviously, rooted in what he conceived to be the national architecture of Tudor England, informed by a love for Pugin and Ruskin and by what the Ruskinian tradition considered the Gothic principle that buildings grow from the inside.

Few great composers are tied to a national heritage as tightly as was Elgar, whose works sing of a great nation, possessed of a heroic past (Froissart, The Black Knight, 1892), and of a great empire at its zenith, when the domination of the oceans by Great Britain and its government of a quarter of the globe seemed as solid as Everest. When the Pomp and Circumstance March in D Major, “Land of Hope and Glory,” was premiered in London on 22 October 1901 the crowd roared for an encore, and to restore order the conductor, Henry Wood, played it again; it has ever after been a kind of second national anthem.14 The great marches themselves were another sign of Elgar’s ability to use the tradition: “I did not see why the ordinary quick march should not be treated on a large scale, in the way that the waltz, the slow march, and even the polka have been treated by the great composers.”15 Elgar provided the setting for the coronation of George V in 1911 and the British empire Exhibition of 1924, for which he produced the Empire March and the Pageant of England. In that year he was appointed Master of the King’s Musick and in 1931 was created a baronet, Sir Edward of Broadheath. There was pride in the imperial bloom, but the love affair was with everything English. Elgar preferred that the very names of instruments reflect their English past— hautboy rather than oboe—, and Voysey would write, “Instead of studying the five orders of architecture, we had far better study the five orders of Englishmen.”16

I am not familiar with Charles Voysey, but according to wikipedia, he was:

an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. He was one of the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture, a notion which he rejected. His English domestic architecture draws heavily on vernacular rather than academic tradition, influenced by the ideas of Herbert Tudor Buckland (1869–1951) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852).

There is an organization with a web page devoted to his life and work: The C.F.A. Voysey Society.

Advent Hymns and Christmas Carols

The liturgical background of our traditional hymns during Advent and carols during the Christmas season, according to Christopher O. Blum in Crisis Magazine:

It is from the medieval Church and from her very life, the liturgy, that the custom of singing songs to the Christ child descends. The earliest noëls sprang directly from such chants as the Carolingian anthem Puer natus est and the O antiphons sung before the Magnificat at vespers during the octave leading up to Christmas. The word noël itself derives from the Latin natalis and appears in the form of the salute Noé! in Christmas Masses in the 12th century, meaning approximately “Hail, newborn one.” In the 13th century, the O antiphons emerged from the monastic choirs and took to the streets in the form we still know and love as Veni, veni Emmanuel. Many of the earliest Christmas songs that survive today are similarly bound to the liturgy and its language, often taking the form of what is called macaronic verse, in which Latin lines alternate with vernacular, with Bl. Heinrich Suso’s In Dulci Jubilo and the anonymous Célébrons la Naissance Nostri Salvatoris being particularly fine examples of the type.

It was the holy audacity of Saint Francis of Assisi that made the occasional pious work of creative clerics into one of the most popular manifestations of Christian piety, the carol and caroling. In 1223, Francis transformed the tiny village church at Greccio into the first living manger scene, complete with ox and ass and straw. Francis was granted a vision of the Christ child that night while the Little Brothers stood around singing their songs of praise. The grace of that midnight Mass multiplied like the loaves and fishes as the friars traveled throughout Europe carrying with them their new songs and their custom of reenacting the shepherds’ joyous march to the crèche. From these processions comes the word carol, which appears in the 13th century and comes from the old French name of a type of dance.

Towards the end of the medieval period, the invention of the printing press led to the preservation of many early carols and noëls. Back when England was still Merry, the publisher Winken de Woorde produced an edition of English carols (1520), and French, Spanish, and German publishers were not slow to follow suit. Thanks to Martin Luther’s own love of singing, the custom of celebrating Christmas with song survived in Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia, and even enjoyed a new flourishing with such hymns as Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen by Michael Praetorius (flourished ca. 1600) and the immortal Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Read the rest here.

The Peterhouse Partbooks

I am always thrilled to find someone who has a project that means so much to them when it may seem so obscure to anyone else. Herewith, Blue Heron, a group engaged in bringing the Peterhouse Partbooks from the early 16th century age of English Cathedral music to our attention:

Peterhouse’s Henrician partbooks are the most important extant source of English church music on the eve of the Reformation. The repertory of five-part polyphony that they contain is both large and varied, consisting of seventy-two compositions in the standard forms of the day—Mass, Magnificat, votive antiphon, ritual plainchant setting, and one or two pieces whose function is debatable—and more than half of these works do not survive in other sources. The composers represented (twenty- nine, plus one anonymous) range from those widely admired both at the time and also today, such as Robert Fayrfax and John Taverner, whose careers are relatively well documented and whose music is ubiquitous in sources of the period, to the most obscure, such as Hugh Sturmy, whose careers have yet to be traced and whose music survives nowhere else. The musical quality of the collection is generally very high, and many pieces (by no means only those by well-known composers) show not only skilled craftsmanship but also marked imagination and strong character.

The cover above is for the first of five cds of music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, containing the titular Three Marian Antiphons by Hugh Aston, a Magnificat by Robert Jones and Quales sumus O miseri by John Mason. You can read the complete CD liner notes here.

Their second cd, cover (?) above contains:

Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Volume 2

Nicholas Ludford (c1490-1557): Missa Regnum mundi

Sarum plainchant · Proper for the Feast of Saint Margaret

Richard Pygott (c1485-1549): Salve regina

Restored by Nick Sandon

The second installment in Blue Heron’s 5-CD series of Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks features Nicholas Ludford’s radiant Missa Regnum mundi, sung in a musical context like that of its probable original occasion, a festal mass for St Margaret, with plainchant items from the Proper according to the Use of Salisbury. The disc concludes with Richard Pygott’s extraordinary Salve regina, one of the longest votive antiphons extant and a marvel of rhetorical expression.

This is the world premiere recording of all the music on the disc.

More on ordering the discs from the Blue Heron website here.

Note the Date: June 29, 2012

Last Friday, June 29 was the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul. Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at the Vatican and presented the Pallium to Archbishops from around the world, including a few from the United States. At an event and on a feast so important to one of the great marks of the Catholic Church, our apostolicity, the choir of the Anglican Westminster Cathedral sang:

Westminster Abbey’s Choir sang for Pope Benedict XVI, with the Cappella Musicale Pontificia ‘Sistina’, the Sistine Chapel Choir, at the Papal Mass marking the Solemnity of St Peter and St Paul in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, on Friday 29th June, a historic occasion of great significance for Anglican-Catholic relations.

The service was broadcast live across the world and was the first time in its 500-year history that the Sistine Chapel Choir had sung alongside another choir during a service.

The Abbey Choir was invited to Rome by Pope Benedict XVI, following his visit to the UK in September 2010, during which he attended an ecumenical service of Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey. This reciprocal visit is a further fruit of the Pope’s visit to Great Britain and is a powerful symbol of the communion already achieved between the Anglican and Catholic churches.

The Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr John Hall said: ‘It is not hard to detect behind this invitation from His Holiness a papal project to restore some of the Church’s musical tradition to the liturgy. The experience of participating in these liturgies in Rome has enriched the Abbey and its Choir and the Anglican tradition of worship.’

The Papal Mass is an important annual liturgy presided over by Pope Benedict XVI, during which the Pallium (an ecclesiastical vestment symbolising Papal authority) is imposed on new Metropolitan Archbishops from around the world.

The evening before, the Sistine Chapel Choir and the Westminster Abbey Choir performed a concert:

Both choirs began by singing Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus and Magnificat.

The Abbey choir then sang O Clap Your Hands (Gibbons), Hear My Prayer (Purcell), I Love The Lord (John Harvey), Hymn to the Mother of God (Tavener), and Laudibus in Sanctis (Byrd).

The Sistine Chapel Choir sang Tu es Petrus (Mawby). This was the first piece of Anglican music the Sistine choir has ever sung and the composer, Colin Mawby, was in the audience. Both choirs then sang Palestrina’s Credo.

The concert was attended by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, SDB, Cardinal Secretary of State to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who said afterwards that the concert was ‘a tangible sign of our will to walk side by side.’

Even the Associated Press noticed this effort of Pope Benedict XVI to use culture as a means of finding something in common between the Catholic Church and the Church of England:

Benedict himself was behind the decision to invite Westminster to Rome, so awed by the quality of the choirboys when they sang for him at Westminster Abbey during his September 2010 visit. He specifically asked that the choirs be united as one, rather than alternate during the performance as is commonly done, said the Very Rev. John Hall, dean of Westminster Abbey.

Palombella, the Sistine choirmaster, jumped at the chance, eager to open up his choir to outside influences and shed the Sistine's reputation as a historical relic closed to innovation.

"These meetings are good for both Sistine and Westminster," he said in an interview. "Because it makes us learn the precision and detail of the English choirs, and it makes the English learn the warmth and intensity that the Italian choir has."

We can be certain that Pope Benedict XVI as a musician knew the challenge and the opportunity this tremendous musical collaboration entails. This blog posts several excerpts from the Mass last Friday. The Catholic Westminster Cathedral Choir in London also specializes in Palestrina's music and has recorded his Tu Es Petrus Mass.

Stile Antico's New Recording

Tune Thy Musick to Thine Heart: "For its latest recording on Harmonia Mundi, Stile Antico is joined by the outstanding viol consort Fretwork to explore the wealth of sacred music written not for church performance, but for the court and for the home. Sung entirely in English, this fascinating programme spans two centuries and a vast range of styles, from the austerity of Browne and Taverner to the harmonic daring of Tomkins and Ramsey, and from the smallest works by Campion and Dowland to the great verse anthems of Gibbons and Amner." The Stile Antico site for this disc contains a few audio samples and a video introducing the recording. I have listened to the album several times and their diction is excellent, although I do have to consult the texts in the CD booklet just because of the interweaving of the vocal line sometimes. Another great release by Stile Antico and Harmonia Mundi!

Thomas Arne, Rule, Britannia! and God Save the Queen

For those who love irony (and who doesn't?) consider that Thomas Arne, composer of the ultimate John Bull, "sun doesn't set on the British empire", patriotic tune, "Rule, Britannia!" AND the British national anthem, "God Save the King/Queen" was a "Roman" Catholic in eighteenth century England. He was born on March 12, 1710 and died on March 5, 1778 (he is buried in St. Paul's Church at Covent Garden, the so-called "Actors' Church" where he was also baptized.) This baptism and burial reflects the restrictions on Catholics dating from the penal laws passed during the reign of James Ist. In 1778, George III signed the first Catholic Relief Act, which removed some restrictions and required a new oath of loyalty.

Because he was a Catholic, Arne could not obtain any royal posts or of course write for the Church of England. Arne was also a Freemason, when Pope Clement XII had forbidden Catholics to be Freemasons in 1738, so that's a conundrum. He became a great contributer to English stage music:

Arne went on to compose such operas as "Rosamund" (1733), "Tom Thumb" (1733), "Comus" (1738), "Judith" (1761), "Artaxerxes the Great" (1763), "The Fairy Queen" (1771), and "Caractacus" (1775), as well as the oratorio "The Death of Abel" (1744), and "Four Symphonies" (1767). Working for the Drury Lane Theatre in the 1740's, he also wrote incidental music for several Shakespeare plays, including "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night", "The Merchant of Venice", "The Tempest", "Love's Labour's Lost", and "Romeo and Juliet". "The Masque of Althred" (1740), featuring "Rule, Brittania!", was first performed at Frederick, the Prince of Wales's summer home, Cliveden. The words for Rule, Britannia! are by James Thomson:

When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

It always closes the annual Proms with quite enthusiastic audience participation. The link above is to a performance by Renee Fleming, an American opera singer, on September 11, 2010 (thus her waving the Stars and Stripes in remembrance of 9/11).

The Unfinished Vespers of December 29, 1170

This recording by the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, founded by the late Mary Berry tells the story of the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket by recreating the vespers interrupted that night by Henry II's knights:

The story of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket has been told many times. There are contemporary eye-witness accounts of how the four knights rushed in and slew the Archbishop in his own cathedral of Canterbury; there are scholarly modern historical studies; the story is told in the stained-glass windows of the cathedral itself; and of course there are Chaucer’s entertaining Canterbury Tales… This recording approaches the story from another angle: it is an attempt to capture through music each major act of the grim drama as it unfolds. . . . It is rare to find intact the office music for the feast of St Thomas. In nearly all the sources the relevant pages have been torn out or defaced in the 16th century by order of Henry VIII. However, in an early 13th-century noted breviary from Lewes Priory it appears in pristine condition and it is from this source that the music for the recording has been transcribed.

Mary Berry was an Augustinian Canoness Congregation of Notre-Dame de Jupille in Belgium and a great champion of Gregorian Chant who died on May 1, 2008. Her Times obituary is here:

Devout and erudite, Berry radiated a joyful and sunny blessing, occasionally interspersed with crisp commands if singers flat-footed a wrong note. There were no concessions to ignorance — either of the chant or the liturgy — but her bubbling humour leavened long hours of choir practice. With a fund of interesting and mildly scurrilous anecdotes delivered with a twinkle in her eye, she was fortunate to attract many fine cantors to sing at festivals and record CDs on the Herald label.

The cantors of the Schola, a professional group of singers interested in Gregorian chant and early music, specialise in the reconstruction and performance of liturgy from the 10th century to modern times. Led by Berry, they were the first in the field to record a reconstruction of a complete festal service based on the tropes and organa of the Winchester Troper, and this won the Michael Beazley Medieval Recording of the Year in 1991. Their work was, and continues to be, very significant in bringing early music to a wider audience.

In 2000 she was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for her work with Gregorian chant, and in 2002 she was appointed CBE for her services to plainsong and Gregorian chant.

I ordered this CD last December and did not receive it until February! Customs between the U.K. and the U.S. held it up considerably. I will listen to it again today.

St. Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

It is rather interesting to note that the breviary that provided the office music for the Feast of St. Thomas a Becket survived the suppression of Lewes Priory, the great Cluniac house.

Sacred Music by Robert Parsons

I have been listening to this new CD of Tudor church music by the composer Robert Parsons. Andrew Carwood includes these interesting details about the last track on the disc, an Ave Maria:

Ave Maria has become Parsons’ most famous and well-loved motet since it was included in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems in 1978. Settings of the Ave Maria are not frequent in England—even William Byrd only set them as required by the liturgy in his two books of Gradualia (1605 and 1607) rather than as stand-alone pieces. Parsons simply sets the lines found in the Gospel of St Luke and has no invocation for the dead (authorized by Pope Pius V in 1568). This is a magical setting and it is not surprising that there is a beautiful ‘Amen’ coda. Initially the piece gives the impression of using a cantus firmus in the top part but it is in fact free-composed throughout. Parsons starts each medius phrase one note higher than the previous one, beginning on F and then moving up to D with long slow notes before reaching ‘benedicta tu’ when it joins the other voices in equal importance. Paul Doe has suggested that this piece might have been prompted by the early promise or subsequent plight of Mary, Queen of Scots. There is no direct evidence for this but it is not unreasonable to consider Parsons and indeed most of the mid-sixteenth-century writers—Sheppard, Tallis, White, Mundy and Tye—as Catholic sympathizers. They seem more free, more expressive, more expansive and more brave in their Latin compositions and it is tempting to speculate that in setting words from Psalms 15 and 119, the Lamentations and the Funeral Responds, they were consciously producing music with a Catholic slant. In comparison their English works tend to be shorter and less virtuosic and even the fledgling Great Services are short on excellent material, but then these mid-sixteenth-century composers were creating a new genre not previously explored and were probably writing to fulfil a set of rules which were not entirely clear. England had to wait for another generation—headed by William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley—before writing in English could achieve greatness.

Robert Parsons became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1563 and died in 1572, of drowning.

The recording was made in the Fitzalan Chapel of Arundell Castle in 2010. You can listen to extracts and read the liner notes here. Note how often Andrew Carwood highlights the religious changes of the Tudor succession while discussing the Parson's compositions and their dates.

Arthur Bliss, Composer and Convert

Arthur Bliss was born on August 2, 1891 (just nine days before Blessed John Henry Newman died!). He attended Pembroke College at Cambridge and served in WWI with distinction, suffering wounds and a gas attack. His brother Kennard died in the war, like so many thousands of that generation. Arthur became a Catholic in 1918.

He was a composer and conductor for the BBC and became Elizabeth II's Master of the Queen's Music, composing occasional music for great events. The Arthur Bliss Society promotes his work. He was influenced by Ralph Vaughn Williams, Edward Elgar, Stravinsky and Ravel.

According to this site,

Sir Arthur Bliss studied music at Cambridge under Charles Wood and at the Royal College of Music in the company of other brilliant students including Herbert Howells, Ivor Gurney and Eugene Goosens. His musical studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in which he gave distinguished service but was also wounded in the Battle of the Somme and gassed at Cambrai. The tragic death in battle of his brother,Kennard, together with his own war experiences had a profound and lasting impact on his life and in his music, and found expression most particularly in his choral symphony, Morning Heroes (1930).

After the war Bliss established himself as a composer on the London scene before moving to the USA in the early 1920s to accompany his American father who had retired there. In California he met Gertude Hoffmann, whom he married and brought back to London in 1925. They had two daughters, Barbara and Karen.

In the meantime Bliss the composer continued to flourish, being commissioned to write the cinema's first great film score with the music for Alexander Korda's film of H.G. Wells' Things to come (1935).

In 1941 he became director of music at the BBC, where he established programmes such as "This Week's Composer", still enjoyed today in a similar form. Following his knighthood in 1950 he was appointed Master of the Queen's Musick. In this capacity he composed numerous works and fanfares for royal occasions including the Investiture of the Prince of Wales (1969). He continued composing up until his death at the age of 83.

Arthur Bliss was a prolific and versatile composer and he wrote over 140 works for every combination of voice and instrument, including large scale orchestral and choral works, music for brass bands, chamber instrumental music, songs, operas, ballets and film music. He even found time to indulge his passion for literature and wrote many articles on musical issues which are now collected together in Bliss on Music.

Bliss's autobiography As I remember, provides a rich insight into his character, his life and his work.

Here is a review of a cd of his sacred music, which includes a music setting of Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem, "God's Grandeur":

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.