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HEAR MY PRAYER - Hymns and Anthems |
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Composer: |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eleanor Daley, Stephen Chatman, Edgar Leslie Bainton, Antonio Lotti, Henry Purcell, Herbert Howells, Felix Mendelssohn, Maurice Durufle, Gabriel Faure, Charles Villiers Stanford, Gerald Finzi, Cesar Franck, John Cameron |
Artist: |
Darius Battiwalla, Colm Carey, Priti Coles, Laurence Cummings, Anna di Mauro, Jozsef Mukk, Michael Thompson, Greta de Reyghere, Ellen Sejersted Bodtker, Christopher Whitton, Jan van der Crabben, Elin Manahan Thomas, Renaat Deckers, Marijke van Arnhem, Karina Gauvin, Angele Dubeau, Roderick Williams, Marcus Ullmann, Klaus Hager, Donna Brown, Claudia Schubert, Mark Dobell, Maria Zadori, Kare Nordstoga, Ruth Massey |
Conductor: |
Michel Piquemal, Patrick Peire, Noel Edison, Christopher Robinson, Laszlo Kovacs, Fredrik Otterstad, Harry Christophers, Ivan Fischer, John Pryce-Jones, Jeremy Summerly, Johannes Wildner, Gilbert Patenaude, Helmuth Rilling, Roderich Kreile, Bernhard Klee, Rolf Beck, Tom Winpenny, Timothy Seelig |
Choir: |
Capella Brugensis, Hungarian State Opera Chorus, Kosice Teachers' Choir, Oxford Camerata, Oxford Schola Cantorum, St. John's College Choir, Cambridge, Halifax Choral Society, St John's Choir Elora, Michel Piquemal Vocal Ensemble, Elora Festival Singers, Stuttgart Gachinger Kantorei, Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, Sixteen, The, Dresdner Kreuzchor, male section, Dresden Boys Choir, Solvguttene, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Choir, Jeunesses Musicales Choir, St Albans Cathedral Choirs, Turtle Creek Chorale |
Ensemble: |
Camerata Cassovia, Camerata Budapest, Collegium Instrumentale Brugense |
Orchestra: |
Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, Camerata Cassovia, Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra, Stuttgart Bach Collegium, Dresden Staatskapelle, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris |
Lyricist: |
Edward Taylor, William Bartholomew, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Aquinas, Jean Racine, Bible, Bible - Old Testament, Bible - New Testament, Mass Text |
Label: |
Naxos |
Catalogue No.: |
8.557493 |
Format: |
CD |
Barcode: |
0747313249329 |
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HEAR MY PRAYER
Hymns and Anthems
While hymns of one kind or another, songs of praise, have
for centuries had their place in Christian worship, whether as part of the
liturgy or in a more popular form, both hymn and anthem took on a new
complexion with the religious changes of the sixteenth century. In England these changes were reflected in the The Booke of the Common Prayer of 1549,
issued in the early reign of Edward VI, who had been strongly influenced by his
Protestant tutors and guardians. As in the Catholic Counter-Reformation,
attempts were made to simplify church music, for the better understanding of
the people, but music always retained some place in the worship of what was now
the Church of England, amid all the confusing changes that were taking place.
The brief reign of Queen Mary, with a return of allegiance to Rome, did much to
save church music that might otherwise have suffered under an increasingly
Calvinistic government, and on the death of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant
daughter of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, brought about something of a
compromise, which, while impossible for Catholics and unwelcome to Puritans,
nevertheless preserved a degree of ceremony, with music to match. The period
saw the development of the English anthem, the full anthem and the verse anthem,
with its solo element. With a break of fifteen years during the Civil War and
the Commonwealth period, choral music of the Anglican custom has continued in 'quires
and places where they sing'. The present recording includes anthems largely
from the Anglican tradition, with a smaller number of works from the traditional
Catholic liturgy and music associated with it.
Charles Villiers Stanford was born in Dublin in 1852 and
held a position of importance in the British musical establishment, from his
time as an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he served as organist at Trinity College. He studied in Leipzig under Reinecke and in Berlin and was subsequently
professor of music at Cambridge and professor of composition at the newly established
Royal College of Music. He made early contributions to the music of the
Anglican liturgy in settings for the morning and evening services that remain a
continuing part of cathedral repertoire. His 'Justorum animae' (The souls
of the righteous) sets a Latin text from The Book of Wisdom. It is the
first of a set of three motets, published in 1905.
After apprenticeship to the organist of Gloucester Cathedral,
Herbert Howells became a pupil of Stanford at the Royal College in London, where he later taught, becoming professor of music at London University in 1950.
He wrote music for the Catholic and Anglican liturgies, works that often arose
from friendship with those concerned with the various establishments for which
they were written. His 1945 Magnificat, a setting, together with the Nunc
dimittis, of canticles for the evening service was composed for King's
College, Cambridge, where his friend Boris Ord was for many years responsible
for the music.
Henry Purcell was fortunate to have been born on the eve of
the restoration of the Chapel Royal under Charles II. Before the Civil War the
Chapel Royal had occupied an important position in English church music and was
to continue to do so in the years after 1660. Purcell was a chorister in the
Chapel as a boy and served as composer in ordinary to the King's violins, and
organist at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, enjoying royal favour in
the succeeding reigns, until his early death in 1695. His setting of Psalm
LXIII, 'O God, thou art my God', a full anthem, has been dated to c.1680-1682.
The five-voice setting of the litany prayer 'Remember not, Lord, our offences' comes
from the same period.
Mendelssohn made a number of contributions to Protestant
music in Germany and his larger scale choral compositions include the two
oratorios, St Paul and Elijah, works strongly influenced
by Handelian tradition. His connection with England brought church compositions
for Anglican use. The hymn 'Hear my Prayer', for soloist, chorus and organ,
written in 1844, has long been established as a popular element in an ambitious
chorister's repertoire. The English words are by William Bartholomew, and the
work is also known in a German version.
The 'Cantique de Jean Racine' was set by Gabriel Fauré first
for chorus and organ, and, like the later Requiem, was subsequently
reworked in various ways. In 1865 it won the composer first prize in
composition at the Ecole Niedermeyer, where he had spent eleven years as a student,
latterly under the tuition of his lifelong friend Camille Saint-Saëns. The text
is taken from the canticles written by Racine at the command of Louis XIV and Madame
de Maintenon for the benefit of the pupils of the latter's female educational
establishment at Saint-Cyr. Fauré's setting marks the climax of his career at
the Ecole Niedermeyer, which he left to become organist at St Sauveur at Rennes, where it was first performed, with revised accompaniment, the following year.
Maurice Duruflé belongs to that group of French Catholic
composers whose career was closely associated with the organ. Duruflé was a
pupil of Charles Tournemire, Louis Vierne and then Eugène Gigout, and from 1930
served as organist at the Paris church of St Etienne du Mont. His Four
Motets on Gregorian Themes for unaccompanied choir date from 1960. The first
of these, 'Ubi caritas et amor', from the liturgy for Maundy Thursday, makes
use of the appropriate Gregorian melody.
Of Jewish parentage, Gerald Finzi identified closely with
the form of English musical nationalism that flourished under Vaughan Williams
and Gustav Holst, and was, in his vocal writing, always sensitive to the words
of poems he set. Agnostic himself, he nevertheless made a contribution to
Anglican repertoire in a Magnificat and in appropriate poetic settings,
including his setting of the Puritan Edward Taylor's 'God is gone up', written
in 1951 and first heard at the important London St Cecilia's Day morning
celebrations at St Sepulchre's, Holborn Viaduct, with the choirs of St Paul's
and Canterbury Cathedrals, Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal.
A pupil of Stanford at the Royal College of Music, Edgar
Bainton made his early career in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1933 he was appointed
director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney. He won success
with a variety of compositions, and exercised a strong influence on the
development of music in Australia. He belonged by training and inclination to
his own generation of English composers, sharing in the pastoral tradition with
which it was associated until more astringent continental influences made
themselves felt. His setting of 'And I saw a new Heaven' remains one of his best
known compositions, a standard element of Anglican choral repertoire.
Mozart and his father Leopold were employed by the Archbishops
of Salzburg, the latter holding for many years the position of
Vice-Kapellmeister. Mozart himself was closely involved with the music of the
archiepiscopal court and chapel, as a violinist, composer and, finally, organist,
his last appointment in Salzburg before he found freedom in Vienna. He wrote a
quantity of church music, regretting the enforced liturgical reforms of his final
patron in Salzburg. His first setting of a Kyrie dates from 1766, when
he was ten, and his last unfinished work in Vienna was a setting of the Requiem.
His well-known setting of Psalm CXVI, 'Laudate Dominum omnes gentes', forms
part of his Vesperae solennes de Confessore, written in Salzburg in 1780. It is scored for a soprano soloist, who sings the Psalm text, followed by
a four-part setting of the Gloria.
The Italian composer Antonio Lotti studied with Legrenzi in Venice, where, for his entire career, he was employed at the basilica of St Mark, latterly
as primo maestro di cappella. He was prolific as a composer of operas
and secular cantatas, but at the same time made a very considerable addition to
church repertoire. His eight-voice setting of the Crucifixus, words at
the heart of the Credo, is characteristic, in its use of discord and its
dramatic effect, of the period and place of its composition.
Director of Music at Fairlawn Heights United Church since 1982, Eleanor Daley was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, and studied at Queen's
University in Kingston. She has been associated with a number of choirs and
choral groups, both as a composer and as a choral conductor. Her setting of
Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem 'In Remembrance' forms part of her Requiem, a
work for which she assembled a number of varied texts.
Stephen Chatman, a faculty member of the composition department
at the University of British Columbia for many years, and since 1987 professor there,
is among the most successful Canadian composers. Born in 1950, he studied at
Oberlin Conservatory and at the University of Michigan and writes in an
eclectic musical language that he has made his own. His 'Remember' is a setting
of a poem by Christina Rossetti.
The arrangement of Elgar's 'Nimrod' variation, a tribute to
his friend and adviser August Johannes Jaeger, one of those portrayed in the
so-called Enigma Variations, has been transformed into a solemn choral memorial
tribute, which has found apt occasional use in services of remembrance. Equally
familiar must now be César Franck's Panis angelicus, originally for
tenor, organ, harp, cello and double bass and written in 1872. It was later
added to his Mass for three voices, and has been variously arranged. The
text is part of a Corpus Christi hymn by St Thomas Aquinas.
Keith Anderson
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