Win at College

Several generations of Bachs have been gathered by Richard Marlow and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge for their programme of motets. All of them have been recorded at various times in the past but many only infrequently, and one or two, perhaps, now make their first appearance on CD. There is no dull music here and two of the pieces, at least, are of outstanding expressive beauty. The earlier of these is Johann Bach’s profoundly affecting Unser Leben ist ein Schatten (“Our life is but a shadow”). This member of the clan survived both the Black Death and the savage bombardment of Erfurt during the Thirty Years War.

When King’s College, Cambridge was founded by King Henry VI in 1441, careful provision was made for a choral foundation of sixteen men and sixteen choristers to sing daily services in the Chapel. English worshippers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were generous when it came to music, making regular donations and bequests to churches and monasteries, so that masses could be sung for the salvation of their souls. It is no coincidence that the music of this era should therefore have reached new heights of richness and complexity; indeed, England was home to some of the most elaborate polyphony composed anywhere in Europe.

Both Duruflé and Fauré wrote their Requiems for choir and organ first. The orchestrations were afterthoughts bending to the excesses of public appeal and publishers' demands, at least that's what I was taught in college. Both works can be wonderful with orchestra and on this CD, the consistently excellent St. Martin in the Fields gives a beautiful interpretation of the Fauré Requem with orchestra.

Eustache du Caurroy is one of the unacknowledged masters of French Renaissaice polyphony whose works are rarely performed, due in part to the general lack of accessible or reliable editions. The majority of his compositions were for liturgical use - probably at the French Royal Court during the reigns of the successive monarchs Charles IX, Henri III and Henri IV. The motets recorded here illustrate two contrasting styles of vocal writing: imitative polyphony and 'musique mesurée', the former equating to the familiar, pan-European idiom of Palestrina and his later Renaissance contemporaries, the latter outlining protracted chord-against chord movement reflecting the natural stress-patterns of the words. The Missa pro Defunctis, the major work on this disc, was first performed at the funeral of Henri IV and remained for many years the official requiem sung at funerals of French monarchs.

In a year of Handel celebration and many new recordings, this is a welcome addition to the discography. Stephen Layton, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a stellar group of soloists—in fact, the best in solo Handel singing that this country has to offer—present a disc of three of the Chandos anthems which is sure to achieve the same critical and public acclaim as the recent Dettingen Te Deum from Trinity.

The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, is one of Britain’s great mixed choirs. Under its new director, the mercurial Stephen Layton, it has reached new heights of musical excellence in this latest disc for Hyperion. Accompanied throughout by the Academy of Ancient Music, the choir performs one of Handel’s most florid and dazzling works, the Dettingen Te Deum, which was written to celebrate King George II’s triumphal return from the Battle of Dettingen in 1743. As might be imagined, much of this work is thrillingly bellicose, but some highly cultivated writing shows the composer’s range, expressive versatility and imagination.

Orlando Gibbons belongs to the generation of English composers which followed that of William Byrd, 40 years his senior, who died in 1623. He was a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, where his elder brother was Master of the Choristers, and later became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, which he served as an organist and to which he later added the position of organist at Westminster Abbey. He wrote music for the Church of England, madrigals, consort music and keyboard works.

The juxtaposition of old and new which lies at the heart of much Christmas music lends this recording by the mixed-voice Choir of The Queen’s College Oxford its theme. The repertoire ranges in period from Hildegard of Bingen to pieces composed during the last few years. The central work – Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols – vividly encapsulates the intersection of ancient and modern, setting medieval and Renaissance texts, and drawing on plainchant as musical inspiration, while – in its series of fresh, vivid, and sharply-etched miniatures – eschewing the sentimentality which had become attached to Christmas and its music.