Samuel Sebastian Wesley: Choral Music

SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY SACRED CHORAL MUSIC

The Choir of Holy Sepulchre

The National Musicians’ Church Toby Ward

SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY ( 1 8 1 0 — 1 8 7 6 ) SACRED CHORAL MUSIC

T H E C H O I R O F H O LY S E P U LC H R E The National Musicians’ Church Toby Ward conductor, Richard Gowers organ

Soprano: Hilary Cronin* 1, 2, 5, 9, 19, Eve McGrath* 2, 5, 10, 13, 16, Rachel Haworth Alto: Amy Blythe* 2, Elisabeth Paul* 5, 10, 13, 16, Joy Sutcliffe Tenor: Oscar Golden Lee* 2, 5, Daniel Thomson* 10, 12, 13, 16, Will Wright*, David de Winter Bass: Gareth Thomas*, Gavin Cranmer-Moralee* 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 16, 18, Piers Kennedy * regular members of the Choir of Holy Sepulchre

The Choir of Holy Sepulchre are grateful to the following for their generosity in sponsoring this recording: Jan & Les Fisher, Richard Grylls, Elaine & Peter Horton, Margaret Horton, Valerie Langfield, Christopher Liddle, the late Tony Luker, Andrew McCrea, Romina Oliveto, Cindy & Ian Shipp, and all those who donated via Simon Lindley. Thanks also to Dominic Gwynn and Luke Mitchell for organ care and assistance in the console.

Recorded on 1-3 August 2022 at St James’ Church, Bermondsey Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: James Waterhouse 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Academic adviser and editions: Peter Horton

Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover: anonymous oil painting of S.S. Wesley, reproduced with kind permission of the Royal College of Music Photography: foxbrush.co.uk Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

1 Blessed be the God and Father

[7:49]

2 O give thanks unto the Lord

[8:44]

3 O Thou who camest from above (‘Hereford’)

[2:38]

Let us lift up our heart 4 I. Let us lift up our heart 5 II. Be not very sore, O Lord 6 III. Thou, O Lord God 7 IV. Thou Judge of quick and dead 8 V. O may we thus ensure 9 Wash me throughly

[4:46] [4:00] [4:28] [1:37] [2:25]

[5:03]

The wilderness 10 I. The wilderness 11 II. Say to them of fearful heart 12 III. Then shall the lame man leap 13 IV. For in the wilderness 14 V. And a highway shall be there 15 VI. And the ransomed of the Lord 16 VII. And sorrow and sighing

[3:06] [2:46] [0:14] [2:00] [1:08] [2:24] [2:29]

17 Psalm 142

[3:18]

Credo (from Communion Service in E) 18 I. I believe in one God 19 II. Who for us men 20 III. And the third day 21 IV. And I believe in the Holy Ghost

[0:57] [1:12] [0:44] [2:25]

22 O God, whose nature and property

[3:55]

23 All people that on earth do dwell (‘The Hundredth Psalm’)

Total playing time Tracks 18–21 and 23 are premiere recordings

[5:57] [74:18]

Notes on the music When, towards the end of his life, the organist and composer Samuel Sebastian Wesley was asked for some reflections on his long involvement with the composition of church music, he had no hesitation in identifying his most significant works, or of singling out three characteristics which set his music apart from anything his contemporaries had done: My published 12 anthems is my most important work … I think the style of my Anthems should have notice. I think they may claim notice for the manner in which the words are expressed and for the new use made of broad massive harmony combined with serious devotional effects. What is now called the church style … is merely a series of monotonous Concords suited to the abilities of uneducated country choirs. My church music never descends to this.

One can imagine the scornful tone with which those final words were uttered, as Wesley, for whom the composition of sacred music had been not merely an occupation but a calling, sought to distance himself from the purveyors of ‘monotonous Concords’ active in the 1870s. To borrow a metaphor from cookery, while works by his contemporaries could be likened to bland dishes with few ingredients and no seasoning, his own compositions, in contrast, were richly flavoured with a generous addition of herbs and spices. As a result, they were more than capable of conveying (as he put it) ‘that most important feature in vocal composition, expression’,

fashioned in a manner uniquely his own. We see this fully illustrated in his anthem Wash me throughly, a piece of music which must surely have surprised and even shocked the first congregation to hear it. But who was this man who, depending on his audience, spoke with such authority or arrogance?

For well over a century, from the 1740s to 1876, three generations of the Wesley family were prominent in the religious and musical life of England: the first and best known were the brothers John (1703–91) and Charles (1707–88), who were the joint founders of Methodism. Charles’s younger son Samuel (1766–1837) was one of the foremost composers and organists of his time, as was his son, Samuel Sebastian, whose musical career began when he was accepted as a Child (chorister) of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, in 1817. Here he would remain for the next eight years under the care of William Hawes, Master of the Children. In a letter of thanks to Hawes for his ‘extremely kind offer’, Samuel wrote of his seven-year-old son that he was ‘very fond of music’.

As one of the Children, Samuel Sebastian’s principal duty would have been to join the other boys and men in the chapel in St James’s Palace for the morning and evening services on saints’ days and Sundays. In addition to this, when he later became one of the leading boys, and the King (George IV)

was in residence at the Royal Pavilion, he and another chorister would travel each week with a few of the Gentlemen to Brighton to take part in the private Saturday evening concerts and the Sunday services. Reports were sometimes included in the Court Circular, which, in March 1823, praised ‘the sweet and divine effect’ of ‘Master Wesley’s’ singing.

The choir’s repertoire, like those of most cathedrals and choral foundations at that time, was conservative, with a preponderance of works dating from the late seventeenth or eighteenth centuries but, with the exception of a handful of works by Attwood (composer to the Chapel Royal) and several by John Stevenson, included very few written or published after 1800. Ironically, the boys were more likely to encounter contemporary music as a result of Hawes’s practice of allowing them to sing in public and private concerts for a fee, rather than in their ‘official’ capacity in the choir.

Inevitably, however, his voice broke and brought to an end his time as a chorister, and in March 1826 he was the recipient of a document which stated that: ‘Mr. Samuel Sebastian Wesley was formerly a Chorister of His Majesty’s Chapel, St. James’s, and … has received his musical education among the gentlemen of that establishment, and … is fully competent to undertake the musical duties of any Cathedral.­­­­’ A lasting legacy

of his time in the choir is to be found in the pointed Psalter, with Chants which he published almost twenty years later, in 1843.

It was, he wrote, ‘founded on the Chant singing of the best master of Vocal Utterance this country ever had, probably one Tom Welsh … [who] was a Chapel Royal man when I was a Boy there. I used ever to listen & admire his Chanting & it was at that time I resolved to do a pointed Psalter “when I was a man”.’Among his own compositions in the Psalter is his expressive single chant for Psalm 142.

Within weeks of his departure from the Chapel Royal, he obtained his first professional postas organist at St James’s Chapel, Hampstead Road and was soon to write one of his first pieces of church music, O God, whose nature and property. This anthem included both traditional and novel harmonies which proved to be a sign of things to come in his later compositions.

Also in 1826, his name had been suggested for the vacancy at Blackburn Parish Church (now Cathedral), but while nothing came of this directly, a by-product was an informal report – the earliest we have – of his organ-playing. Among the comments, two compliments on his pedal playing, ‘which is a very difficult & very important part of a modern organist’s duty’ and the performance of fugues by Bach, ‘a severe trial for any performer’, are of particular interest: as more

Notes on the music organs were now being built with pedals, far more skill in pedal playing was required than previously.

It was not, however, only as an organist that Wesley’s career was developing: he was also listed as ‘Pianist’ and ‘Conductor of the Chorus’ at the English Opera House, as the annual three-month summer season of opera in English at the Lyceum Theatre, London was known. Given that the company’s music director was Hawes, there can be little doubt that he was instrumental in the engagement of his former pupil.

During the next few years Wesley devoted most of his time to composing secular music such as the melodrama The Dilosk Gatherer.

But this was alongside his work as a London parish organist, his arrangement of the Hundredth Psalm (All people that on earth do dwell) being one of his compositions from this period. Wesley’s setting, which is far more exuberant than many of that time, demonstrates the overlap between secular and church styles in his music.

On 10 July 1832, Wesley’s career and his life moved in a very new direction when he was elected organist of Hereford Cathedral.

What had precipitated such an abrupt and unexpected change of course? It could be surmised that he had been encouraged to apply for the post by Dr John Merewether,

recently appointed Dean of Hereford after serving at Hampton Parish Church where Wesley was organist. On his arrival in Hereford, Merewether had discovered a parlous state of church music ‘led’ by an infirm organist. It is no surprise that he should have remembered his outstanding young organist at Hampton and encouraged him to move to Hereford. In addition to appointing a new organist, Merewether was keen to improve the cathedral organ. The London organ builder J.C. Bishop was summoned and a number of additions and improvements agreed upon, including new action for the pedals and additional pedal pipes. Wesley could now enjoy a more versatile instrument, on which he could display his outstanding ability as a pedal player. He was composing for an organ very close in design to the one

by Bishop which survives almost unaltered in St James Church, Bermondsey. Like the Hereford organ of Wesley’s day, it has the English long compass, enabling his organ parts to be played as written.

He must soon have started thinking about the composition of an anthem to celebrate the recommissioning of the organ at Mattins on 8 November 1832. This was The wilderness.

In several respects Wesley’s anthem is a remarkable achievement, particularly for a twenty-two year-old composer with little experience of large-scale anthem compositions. Faced with the challenge

of writing a celebratory anthem, he saw no reason not to employ a richer style of harmony in music for a cathedral, much as he might have written for the theatre. Simply in terms of length, it was one of Wesley’s most substantial scores to date, but it also showed him unafraid to reimagine the increasingly moribund forms of anthem and canticle setting, and realign them with the European musical mainstream.

Over the following few years Wesley produced several compositions which pushed the boundaries of English church music still further in a new direction, encompassing a more operatic style. Unusually, the adult members of the Hereford cathedral choir were all in holy orders; as a result they were officiating in their own parishes on Sunday mornings, leaving a choir of boys to sing the offices at the cathedral. As a partial remedy two lay adult singers were appointed. It was for such a choir that Wesley wrote Blessed be the God and Father – although at its first performance only one of the men turned up! This explains why in the anthem there are sections for treble voices only, and for adult voices in unison. It is an anthem full of drama, moving from a quiet opening to the triumph of the final chorus introduced by a fortissimo chord for full organ – surely inspired by a similar chord in the overture to Weber’s Der Freischütz, a work Wesley must have known well.

His setting of the Credo from the Communion Service in E (also originally written for boys only, in 1834) displays a similar harmonic exuberance and important treble solo. The anthem O Give thanks unto the Lord, from about a year later, contains another treble solo, more demanding in range and technique than a boy might have been expected to perform; it is possible that Wesley might have approved of this part being sung by a woman at a future date. By the time he wrote O Give thanks it is likely that he had moved to take up the post of organist at Exeter Cathedral, accompanied by his new wife, Marianne, the sister of the Dean of Hereford. It is in her manuscript album of music that we find what is now one of Wesley’s best-known works, the psalm tune Hereford, most frequently today used for the hymn ‘O Thou who camest from above’.

The excellence of the choir at Exeter enabled Wesley to embark on more ambitious compositions written for double choir. One of these three extended anthems was Let us lift up our heart (1836), including a substantial baritone solo and ending with his grandfather Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘Thou judge of quick and dead’. But perhaps none of his anthems illustrates his use of a greater depth of chromatic harmony better than Wash me throughly (1840). The anguished tone with which it opens may reflect Wesley’s own grief at the death of his infant

Notes on the music daughter, Mary. Writing in the early twentieth century the eminent pianist and champion of Wagner, Edward Dannreuther described it as ‘poignantly expressive’, adding that ‘there is nothing in the range of modern religious music more sincerely felt and expressed’.

This recording of a selection of Wesley’s music is the first to have been made using an organ as close as possible in design to the one in Hereford Cathedral in the 1830s. It enables us to hear Wesley’s music in all its richness and vibrancy as he would have heard it himself. © 2024 Peter Horton

Texts A former librarian of the Royal College of Music, Peter Horton’s books include Samuel Sebastian Wesley: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2010), and a two-volume edition of Wesley’s anthems for Musica Britannica.

Particular thanks are due to Margaret, Edward, John and Alice Horton for their generous assistance in the preparation of the booklet essay.

1 Blessed be the God and Father

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.

But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

Love one another with a pure heart fervently.

See that ye love one another.

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

Amen.

1 Peter 1: 3–5, 15, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25

2 O give thanks unto the Lord

O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious and his mercy endureth for ever.

Who can express the noble acts of the Lord or shew forth all his praise? For thou, Lord, art good and gracious and of great mercy unto all them that call upon thee. All nations whom thou hadst made shall come and worship thee, O Lord and shall glorify thy Name. For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.

Blessed are they that alway keep judgement and do righteousness; they always are blessed.

Psalm 106: 1–2; Psalm 86: 5, 9–10; Psalm 106: 3 (Book of Common Prayer) 3 O Thou who camest from above

O thou who camest from above the fire celestial to impart, kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart!

There let it for thy glory burn with inextinguishable blaze, and trembling to its source return in humble prayer and fervent praise.

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire to work, and speak, and think for thee; still let me guard the holy fire, and still stir up the gift in me.

Texts Ready for all thy perfect will, my acts of faith and love repeat; till death thy endless mercies seal, and make the sacrifice complete.

Charles Wesley (1707–1791)

Let us lift up our heart

4 Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto

God in the heavens. Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. Doubtless thou art our Father, thy name is from everlasting. Be not very sore, O Lord; neither remember iniquity for ever. Behold, see we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Oh that thou wouldst rend the heav’ns and come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence.

5 Be not very sore, O Lord, neither remember

iniquity for ever. But we are at all as an unclean thing; we all do fade as a leaf. See we beseech thee, we are all thy people.

Thou, O Lord, art our Father. We are thine, O Lord. Thy name is from everlasting. We are the clay and thou our potter; we are the work of thine hand.

6 Thou, O Lord, art the thing that I long for;

The Wilderness

thou art my hope, even from my youth.

Through thee have I been holden up ever since I was born. Go not far from me, O God: my God, haste thee to help me. In Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust.

10 The wilderness and the solitary place shall

Lamentations 3: 41, 40; Isaiah 63: 16, 64: 9, 1, 6, 8; Psalm 71: 4–5, 10, 1 (Book of Common Prayer)

strong, fear not: behold, your God; he will come and save you, even God.

7 Thou judge of quick and dead,

before whose bar severe, with holy joy or guilty dread we all shall soon appear;

Do thou our souls prepare for that tremendous day; and fill us now with watchful care, and teach our hearts to pray.

8 O may we thus ensure

a lot among the blest, and watch a moment to secure an everlasting rest.

Charles Wesley 9 Wash me throughly

Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and forgive me all my sin. For I acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever before me.

Psalm 51: 2–3 (Book of Common Prayer, slightly altered)

17 Psalm 142

Amen.

I cried unto the Lord with my voice: yea, even unto the Lord did I make my supplication.

I poured out my complaints before him: and shewed him of my trouble.

When my spirit was in heaviness thou knewest my path: in the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

I looked also upon my right hand: and saw there was no man that would know me.

I had no place to flee unto: and no man cared for my soul.

I cried unto thee, O Lord, and said: Thou art my hope, and my portion in the land of the living.

Consider my complaint: for I am brought very low.

O deliver me from my persecutors: for they are too strong for me.

Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks unto thy Name: which thing if thou wilt grant me, then shall the righteous resort unto my company.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.

Amen.

Isaiah 35: 1–2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10

Book of Common Prayer

be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.

11 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, be

12 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and

the tongue of the dumb shall sing.

13 For in the wilderness shall waters break out,

and streams in the desert.

14 And a highway shall be there; it shall be

called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but the redeemed shall walk there;

15 And the ransom’d of the Lord shall return

and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness,

16 And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Texts Credo

18 I believe in one God, the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made;

19 Who for us men and for our salvation came

down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried;

20 And the third day he rose again according to

the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

21 And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the

giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and apostolic Church; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

22 O God, whose nature and property

O God, whose nature and property is ever to have mercy and to forgive, receive our humble petitions; and though we be tied and bound with the chain of our sins, yet let the pitifulness of thy great mercy loose us; for the honour of Jesus Christ, our mediator and advocate. Amen.

‘Prayers and thanksgivings upon several occasions’ in the Book of Common Prayer 23 All people that on earth do dwell

All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; him serve with fear, his praise forth tell, come ye before him and rejoice!

The Lord, ye know, is God indeed; without our aid he did us make; we are his folk, he doth us feed, and for his sheep he doth us take.

O enter then his gates with praise; approach with joy his courts unto; praise, laud, and bless his name always, for it is seemly so to do.

For why? the Lord our God is good; his mercy is for ever sure; his truth at all times firmly stood, and shall from age to age endure.

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost, The God whom Heaven and earth adore, From men and from the angel host Be praise and glory evermore.

Ang­lo-Ge­ne­van Psal­ter, 1561; at­tr. to Willi­am Kethe (d. 1594), based on Psalm 100 and doxology

Biographies The Choir of Holy Sepulchre (the National Musicians’ Church) is one of the UK’s leading professional church choirs, made up of singers from the finest vocal ensembles in the country. The group exists primarily to sing weekly Choral Evensong at Holy Sepulchre, and a host of civic services. Central to this are the services of thanksgiving and remembrance for departed musicians, for which the choir has sung settings of the Requiem by Fauré, Duruflé and Victoria. The choir has an ongoing partnership with the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble with whom it collaborates on performances at the church. In addition, the choir has given concerts as part of the church’s promotion of music and spirituality and has made a CD, Soul’s Desire, of music from Palestrina to the present day. It made the premiere recording of Paul Fincham’s hugely successful carol, Ring the Bells, and has commissioned new works by Joshua Pacey and Lucy Walker. Their Director of Music is Peter Asprey.

Toby Ward was born in Otley in 1993, and studied singing and organ at two of S.S. Wesley’s great choral foundations: Leeds Parish Church and Gloucester Cathedral. He read music at King’s College Cambridge as a tenor choral scholar, with further studies at the Royal College of Music.

Specialising in early music and liturgy, Toby is Artistic Director of Ensemble Pro Victoria and Praefectus Cantorum of the Grand Priory of England. He led Ensemble Pro Victoria to a joint-first prize at the London International Early Music Festival Young Ensemble Competition in 2020, and their subsequent debut recording Robert Fayrfax: Music for Tudor Kings & Queens (Delphian DCD34265) received a Gramophone Award nomination. He has conducted the ensemble on BBC Radio 3 multiple times, including ‘Tudor Vespers of 1521’ from Hampton Court Palace, and ‘The Seven Joys of Mary’ from St Albans Cathedral.

He has held posts teaching boy trebles at Westminster Abbey, Durham and Newcastle Cathedrals, and currently teaches at Queen Anne’s, Caversham. Between 2019 and 2022 he was organist of Holy Sepulchre, the National Musicians’ Church.

Richard Gowers is a British pianist, organist and conductor. He is Director of Music at St George’s Hanover Square, Handel’s church in London. Solo appearances include the SaintSaëns ‘Organ’ Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall with both the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras. As an ensemble musician he works with some of the UK’s leading groups, including the LSO, LPO, BBC Singers and Tenebrae. He also extensively appears as a recitalist across Europe as well as further afield in the USA and Australia, and

has won prizes at competitions in Northern Ireland (2013) and St Albans (2019). His 2018 disc of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur was a Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’. As a song and chamber pianist he has performed at Leeds and Oxford Lieder Festivals, and at Wigmore Hall.

He read Music at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was organ scholar, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the conservatoires in Leipzig and Stuttgart.

Robert Fayrfax (1464–1521): Music for Tudor Kings & Queens Ensemble Pro Victoria / Toby Ward DCD34265

In that golden age of British choral music half a millennium ago, when polyphonic voices soared in the vaulting of the great late-Gothic churches and chapels that seemed to have been built for them to fill, one composer was in especial favour with the royal family: Robert Fayrfax. A newly reconstructed movement from a mass for the private wedding of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, later treasured in darker times by the recusant gentry for its Catholic associations, sits here alongside exuberant masterpieces from the Eton Choirbook and, in intimate contrast, Fayrfax’s seven surviving courtly songs, brought together on a single recording for the first time. An exciting new signing for Delphian, Ensemble Pro Victoria’s young professionals bring both freshness and individuality to Fayrfax’s music in the five hundredth anniversary year of his death. ‘one of Britain’s finest young vocal ensembles … supported by musical scholarship of the highest order’ — Early Music Review, October 2021 Tudor Music Afterlives Ensemble Pro Victoria, Toby Carr lute, Magnus Williamson organ; Toby Ward director DCD34295

Following the freshness and vigour of their quincentenary portrait celebration of Robert Fayrfax, Ensemble Pro Victoria’s second Delphian album brings a similar boldness of approach to a wider-ranging collection, charting some rarely explored territory from a time of great religious, societal and musical change. Broken fragments of huge pre-Reformation works, preserved only in lute tablature; the first reconstruction and recording of some of the earliest Anglican psalm settings ever written; French chansons and motets once popular in England; improvisatory organ verses within Lady Mass movements by Ludford; and an English-texted version of a much-loved Tallis anthem that shows it in a quite different light: these forgotten ‘afterlives’ of earlier Tudor music help build a much more complete picture of music in sixteenth-century England.

‘This combination of cutting-edge scholarship and outstanding performance gives us a recording of the highest quality, apt for edification and pleasure’ — Early Music Review, November 2022

Pelham Humfrey: Sacred Choral Music The Choir of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace / Joseph McHardy; Alexander Chance, Nicholas Mulroy, Nick Pritchard, Ashley Riches soloists DCD34237

A protégé of Henry Cooke, first director of the choir of the Chapel Royal after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Pelham Humfrey was part of a generation of musicians who enriched the musical life of their native England with influences drawn from continental Europe – from France, where Humfrey had studied between 1664 and 1667, and from the Italian musicians at work in the London to which he returned, succeeding Cooke in 1672. Today the same choir sings at St James’s Palace, where, joined by a small instrumental ensemble led

by Delphian regular Bojan Čičić and with an antiphonal layout inspired by records of the former chapel at Whitehall, this group of ten boy choristers and six adult singers revives the musical and devotional world of its former director.

‘A terrific new disc which … under McHardy’s fine direction, brings a new sense of style to the music of this period’ — Planet Hugill, January 2021, FIVE STARS Antonio Lotti (1667–1740): Crucifixus The Syred Consort, Orchestra of St Paul’s / Ben Palmer DCD34182

It is not widely known that Antonio Lotti’s famous eight-part setting of the ‘Crucifixus’ is in fact drawn from a complete Credo setting, itself part of the Missa Sancti Christophori that receives its first recording here. Much of Lotti’s music was written for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice at a time when expense and extravagance were not spared, and it is at the cutting edge of the galant style that prefigured the Classical era. Rhythmic shock and awe, masterful variety, incessant invention and outrageous, luscious harmonies make this music over-ripe for revival. In their Delphian debut, The Syred Consort and Orchestra of St Paul’s have collaborated with musicologist Ben Byram-Wigfield to bring it to dazzling life. ‘propelled with purpose and vitality … There’s an unyielding quest to uncover the imagery and sensibility of Lotti’s almost cinematic perspectives with graphic immediacy’ — Gramophone, May 2016

DCD34268