Funeral Music

While Herreweghe’s choir employs women for the treble parts, the ensemble is so expertly trained that their sound comes very close to the characteristic English choir of men and boys. Only a small number of instruments and voices is used, and this, in conjunction with a sensitive approach to style, produces performances of superior beauty and taste. Extensive care has been lavished on both clarity and precision of English diction, and outstanding choral intonation makes the clash of Purcell’s cross-relations and his dissonant chromaticism singularly effective. The singing by the soloists is consistently beautiful.

Martin Neary and Westminster Abbey Choir, aided and abetted by the New London Consort, marked the tercentenary of Purcell’s death with this recording, a majestic album of the composer’s music for Queen Mary in life and in death. The Funeral Music opens here with Wood’s transcription of the ‘Old English March’ in procession through Westminster Abbey’s reverberant interior, then in company with the windband marches of Tollet and Paisible and Purcell’s Funeral March. For sense of place, history, and grandeur, nothing beats Neary’s recording. His choir are on peak form in Morley’s Funeral Sentences but hindered by indistinct recorded sound.

It may be news to many readers that these composers wrote organ music at all, and in the case of Dvorak he virtually didn't, for these are composition exercises from his student days which remained in the archives of Prague Conservatoire until they were found and edited by Jarmil Burghauser in 1980. Some of the world's most boring music has been written as before-service preludes and Dvorak's student exercises are more engaging than many a more professional job, but it would be unwise to read more into them than that. Occasionally Mr. Ericsson seems to be trying too hard, but generally he leaves their homely charm to speak for itself.