Set upon the Rood: new music for choir & ancient instruments by Delphian Records

SET UPON THE ROOD

NEW MUSIC FOR CHOIR & ANCIENT INSTRUMENTS

Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge (tracks 1–8 & 10–12)

Geoffrey Webber director

Barnaby Brown triplepipe (tracks 1, 10), aulos (track 12)

John Kenny Loughnashade horn, chimes (tracks 2 & 5–7)

Patrick Kenny carnyx, chimes (tracks 3 & 5–7)

Bill Taylor lyre (tracks 8, 9, 11, 12)

James Leitch organ (track 1), crotales (tracks 2-7)

Michael How organ (track 11), crotales (tracks 2-7)

Bass Iona triplepipe in D –a launeddas made by Luciano Montisci, with fingerholes moved from their traditional Sardinian positions to modify the tonality

Aulos by Thomas Rezanka with reeds by Robin Howell, reproduced from an original in the Louvre from around the time of Christ

Carnyx by John Creed, after a 1st-c. BC to 1st-c. AD original found in 1816 at Leitchestown, Deskford, Scotland

Loughnashade horn by John Creed, after a 1st-c. BC original found in 1794 in Co Armagh, Ireland

Wire-strung lyre (track 8) by Tim Hobrough, after early 7th-c. fragments found at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England

Noli Pater James MacMillan (b. 1959) [8:16]

John Kenny (b. 1957) [4:00]

Gut-strung lyre (tracks 9, 11, 12) by Guy Flockhart, after early 8th-c. fragments found under the church of St Severin, Cologne, with an amber bridge based on a mid 8th-c. original found in a chieftain’s grave in Broa, Halla, Gotland, Sweden

8 Cantata Stuart MacRae (b. 1976) [8:54]

Clare Lloyd Griffiths & Catherine Harrison sopranos, Nathan Mercieca alto, James Robinson tenor, Malachy Frame bass

9 Crux fidelis Bill Taylor (b. 1957) [4:59]

Clover Willis soprano, Humphrey Thompson baritone

10 Cantemus Francis Grier (b. 1955) [13:05]

Polly Furness, Eleanor Walder, Clover Willis & Aleksandra Wittchen sopranos, Corinne Hull & Alice Webster altos, Stephen Bick tenor, Humphrey Thompson bass

11 Iste Confessor Stevie Wishart (b. 1959) [3:58]

Clover Willis soprano, Corinne Hull alto, Kavi Pau tenor

12 Set upon the Rood Stephen Bick (b. 1993) [12:58] Stephen Bick baritone

Total playing time [68:20]

Recorded on 29-31 August 2016 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford

Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing & mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover image: Raffi Youredjian

Design: John Christ

Booklet editor: John Fallas

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk

With thanks to the Warden and Fellows of the House of Scholars of Merton College

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One hot summer’s day in 2004 in a monastery high in the hills of northern Sardinia, the Caius choir sang a new work by Barnaby Brown setting an ancient Celtic text – Adiutor laborantium, featuring the composer playing the local traditional instrument, the launeddas. This reed instrument with three pipes was once popular in Britain and Ireland, and the choir was at that point beginning work with Barnaby Brown on a project to recreate music from the time of St Columba; that project itself led to a previous album recording with Delphian Records. However, the excitement of performing a new composition using an ancient instrument was such that we soon began to consider plans for a more extended second project, involving several composers and a wide range of ancient instruments.

Ideas for the programme gradually took shape over subsequent years, inspired by other efforts made to bring together the very old and the very new, such as Canty’s album Carmina Celtica (Linn Records) – which features music for choir and early Gaelic harp by James MacMillan – and further informed by the fascinating work being carried out by the European Music Archaeology Project, which was already engaged in its own extended collaboration with Delphian to document its work in reconstructing very early instruments. Although the ways in which these instruments were played in ancient times can only ever be imagined, the fantastic

range of musical sounds that they possess speaks powerfully to us today. It does so whether played with historical or contemporary ambitions, and is perhaps especially welcome at a time when the development of standard classical musical instruments seems becalmed. Multifarious sonorities from our ancient past thus reappear in our midst, and they open up new possibilities for composers in our own time. Take the most recent archaeological reconstruction featured here, a Graeco-Roman aulos. Employed by Stephen Bick for the central section of the present album’s concluding work, this common instrument from Biblical times sounds perhaps closest to the modern clarinet or saxophone; the particular example we used for this recording is modelled on an original from around the time of Christ (plus or minus two hundred years), probably from a Graeco-Roman site in Egypt.

Our featured composers approached the task of blending ancient and modern in a number of different ways. In some pieces we hear musical elements relating to the medieval past, such as chant and organum, whilst in others we encounter more firmly avant-garde approaches. We hear the lyre in two different dispositions, one using a traditional modal scale and one which emphasises the tritone. We encounter the instrument used both as an accompaniment to choral sonorities and in the more intimate circumstances of a solo

vocal narration. We hear the triplepipes with voices alone and also in conjunction with a large-scale modern organ, and the carnyx and Loughnashade horn are featured alongside some ancient percussion in the form of crotales and chimes. The mixture of sounds to be heard on the album also includes different tuning systems: in John Kenny’s piece, for example, the voices sing mostly in equal temperament but also sometimes take their pitch directly from the ancient instruments. Many of the texts chosen by the composers are themselves old, if not ancient, and the compelling and potent language of the Celtic texts chosen by James MacMillan and John Kenny has inspired them both to employ heightened forms of speech as well as ecstatic singing. By contrast, Stuart MacRae sets a seventeenth-century text on a topic close to contemporary concerns.

MacMillan’s Noli Pater was jointly commissioned by Gonville & Caius College and the St Albans International Organ Festival, and was first performed at the 2015 Festival. Starting with a low-pitched cluster ‘like a distant rumble’, the composer interprets the text in typically imaginative ways, dealing with mankind’s relationship with the elemental forces of nature and the place of St John the Baptist in the unfolding of salvation. The triplepipes appear first in full flight, as it were, enhancing the shouts of praise from the

singers, but at the conclusion of the piece the drone is dropped and a single ‘chanter’ pipe is heard against delicate sounds from the organ, before the pipe is left finally alone.

John Kenny’s The Deer’s Cry was first performed at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music in 2016. The composer writes as follows concerning the poem also known as ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’:

This hymn is attributed to Patrick and certainly reflects many of the themes found in Patrick’s thought. The version we have today was likely written in the late seventh or early eighth century. The hymn is a celebration of the wisdom and power of God both in creation and redemption. It is an excellent example of a lorica – a ‘breastplate’ or corslet of faith recited for the protection of body and soul against all forms of evil: devils, vice, and the evil which humans perpetrate against one another. The name of the hymn derives from a legend of an incident when the High King of Tara, Loeguire, resolved to ambush and kill Patrick and his monks to prevent them from spreading the Christian faith in his kingdom. As Patrick and his followers approached singing this hymn, the king and his men saw only a herd of wild deer and let them pass by. The word ‘cry’ also has the sense of a prayer or petition. The Deskford carnyx and Loughnashade horn are both magnificent examples of Celtic Iron Age musical art, specific to the peoples on both sides of the Irish Sea, and would have been a powerful ancestral memory to Patrick’s people.

Kenny’s exploration of these ancient instruments involves much creative thinking about the range of sounds that such instruments can produce, and he extends this creativity to his use of voices, employing many different forms of human sounds, vocalised and otherwise. Mumbling, whistling, chattering and breathing sounds are among the techniques employed by the singers alongside the huge range of timbres and pitches that John and Patrick Kenny conjure out of their instruments, the whole effect being akin to the magic and wizardry referred to in the text. The sense of mystery is also enhanced by the use of three languages –English, Latin and Old Irish – the last of which appears in part for the sound-world of the chanting of monks accompanied by the horn.

Stuart MacRae’s Cantata is a setting of the poem ‘Man’, by the seventeenth-century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan. At a time when the plight of migrants is of much public concern, MacRae uses his forces of solo quintet, choir and wire-strung lyre to explore the unfixed and ever-transient nature of the human condition, whether literal or metaphorical. The lyre is tuned to include the whole-tone scale from F to C sharp, heard in the initial strummed chords, plus a low C, so that tonal ambiguity pervades the

whole piece; the composer adds deliberately disjointed phrases to heighten this sense of unease and lack of repose, with devices such as staccato notes and clusters, short motivic fragments, constantly shifting textures, and overlapping phrases sung at different speeds. The conclusion – setting the line ‘God order’d motion but ordain’d no rest’ – has a haunting circularity, with the listener never able to guess which phrase will come next, or on which note the work might end.

By contrast with the complexity of the works of MacRae and Kenny in particular, the two hymn settings included on the programme – by Bill Taylor and Stevie Wishart – offer moments of relative repose based on the principle of varied repetition. Crux fidelis, writes Bill Taylor,

is a Gregorian plainsong from the Office of the feast of the Holy Cross with a text by Venantius Fortunatus, sixth-century Bishop of Poitiers. I have arranged it for gut-strung lyre and two solo voices, and chose to set the original text, along with two later verses referring to the cross as the Victor’s trophy and as a tree, twisting its branches as if they were sinews. Amongst several praise poems Venantius Fortunatus wrote for Frankish nobles is one for Lupus, a duke of Champagne, where the lines appear:

These are all different names of lyres, played by various peoples across the civilised – and uncivilised – world in the early Middle Ages.

Stevie Wishart writes that:

Composing new music for ancient instruments is very much part of my work as a composer. I like building on and learning from music traditions of the past, especially as it is these old instruments that can sound new to our ears today, but as forgotten friends rather than strangers from the future.

For the choir’s earlier recording project with Barnaby Brown, In Praise of Saint Columba (Delphian DCD34137), the Celtic text ‘Cantemus in omni die’ was performed as a lively dance-like work with pipes, bells and drum, making much of the alternation of the two sides of the choir, as specifically referred to in the poem. Francis Grier’s Cantemus employs a bass Iona triplepipe, and also builds on the idea of alternation. After the instrumental opening solo voices are heard in call and response, and then the chorus enters but in two groups singing together and then in canon, separated by varying time gaps. Such patterns pervade the whole piece, with the pipes anchoring the work in a kind of varied ritornello procedure. Although rooted on the D drone of the pipes, many of the musical phrases drift away from this centre with many chromatic twists and turns, all finally resolving onto a climactic burst of D major.

Wishart’s setting of the hymn Iste Confessor comes from a much larger work, her Vespers for St Hildegard. The anonymous text – dating from the eighth century, and originally thought to be for St Martin of Tours – is the prescribed Office Hymn for Vespers of a Confessor. Each voice part is introduced with a solo voice or semi-chorus before a tutti repeat, so that the full five-part texture at the end forms a musical expression of the increasingly joyous words. The optional instrumental parts, played here on the lyre and chamber organ, are mostly improvised over specified chord patterns.

Stephen Bick’s Set upon the Rood is a setting of his own modern English rendering of parts of the early medieval poem The Dream of the Rood. The work opens with the visionary dreamer singing to the lyre (in this performance Bick himself takes the role of dreamer/narrator/ composer/singer) to introduce the story of the cross and its theological significance as a Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa, Graecus Achilliaca, crotta Britanna canat. (Let the Roman praise you with his lyre, the barbarian with his harp; let the Greek praise you with the Achillean, the Briton with the crwth.)

symbol of both death and victory. Suddenly the cross itself speaks: here cast as a twopart choir, narrating its story through a rapid alternation between Decani and Cantoris, rather like the Anglican chanting of psalms (the text also has a somewhat psalm-like appearance on the page, with pauses in the middle of each line). At the point where ‘all creation wept’, the aulos enters to herald the lament alluded to in the text, in which the choral writing changes to sustained chords, and the ‘sorrow song’ appears in the form of the plainchant ‘Vexilla regis’, another medieval poem attributed to Venantius Fortunatus that mentions the wood of the cross. The two-part choir then returns as the cross speaks now about the significance of its role in the story of salvation, commanding the dreamer to tell the

vision to all people. After the climax – adorned with the sopranos singing overlapping phrases of the plainsong – the lyre reappears, waking the dreamer from his vision, and his final meditation focuses on our hope for the future, now firmly ‘set upon the rood’.

This recording is dedicated to the memory of John Chumrow OBE, whose financial support made this project possible. Thanks are also due to the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford and its Organist and Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas, and to Chris Batchelor, Anne and Jonathan Furness, Louise, Robert and Hetty Gullifer, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Nancy-Jane and Benjamin Thompson, and David Titterington.

1 Noli Pater

Noli, pater, indulgere

Tonitrua cum fulgore, Ne frangamur formidine

Huius atque uridine.

Te timemus terribilem

Nullum credentes similem; Te cuncta canunt carmina Angelorum per agmina.

Teque exultent culmina

Caeli vagi per fulmina,

O Jhesu amantissime

O Rex regum rectissime.

Benedictus in saecula Recta regens regimina.

Johannes coram Domino

Adhuc matris in utero

Repletus Dei gratia pro Vino atque siccera.

Elizabeth et Zacharias

Verum magnum genuit, Johannem Baptizam Precursorem Domini.

Manet in meo corde

Dei amoris flamma

Ut in argenti vase auri Ponitur gemma.

anon., 6th–8th c.

Father, give no quarter

To lightning and thunder, Let us not be shattered By fear and the blast.

Before your dread majesty

We tremble, believing you have no equal;

Through all the ranks of angels

All creatures sing your praise.

The pathless heights of heaven

Laud you amid the lightning

O Jesu most loving,

O King of kings most righteous, Blessed for ever, Ruling every right direction.

John was open to the Lord, Still within his mother’s womb, Filled with the grace of God Instead of wine and strong drink.

Elizabeth and Zacharias

Begot one truly great: John the Baptiser, Forerunner of the Lord.

The flame of God’s love Remains in my heart

Like a jewel of gold laid In a case of silver.

Translation: Cally Hammond

The Deer’s Cry

2 Christus mecum.

Christus me protegat hodie Contra venenum, Contra combustionem, Contra demersionem, Contra vulnera,

Donec meritus essem multum praemii.

Christus ante me, Christus me pone, Christus in me, Christus infra me, Christus supra me, Christus ad dextram meam, Christus ad laevam meam, Christus hine, Christus illine, Christus a tergo.

Críst limm, Críst reum, Críst im degaid,

Críst indium, Críst ísum, Críst uasum,

Críst desum, Críst tuathum,

Críst i llius,

Críst i sius,

Críst i nerus,

Christ with me.

Christ to shield me today, Against poison, Against burning, Against drowning, Against wounding, So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise,

Críst i cridiu cech duini immumrorda, Críst i ngin cech oín rodom-labrathar, Críst i cech rusc nonom-dercathar, Críst i cech cluais rodom-chloathar.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye of every man who sees me, Christ in the ears of every man that hears me.

3 I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the three-ness, through confession of the one-ness Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism, Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial, Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension, Through the strength of His descent for the judgement of Doom.

I arise today through the love of the Cherubim, Alone and in a multitude. Strength of heaven, Light of the sun, Radiance of the moon, Splendour of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth, Firmness of rock.

4 Apud Temoriam hodie virtutem amoris Seraphim

In obsequio Angelorum, In spe resurrectionis ad adipiscendum praemium.

In orationibus nobilium Patrum, In praedictionibus prophetarum, In praedicationibus apostolorum, In fide confessorum, In castitate sanctarum virginum, In actis justorum virorum.

5 Atomriug indiu

Niurt Dé dom luamairecht.

Cumachtae nDé dom chumgabáil, ciall Dé dom inthús, rose nDé dom remcisiu, cluas Dé dom étsecht, briathar Dé dom erlabrai, lám Dé dom imdegail, intech Dé dom remthechtas, sciath Dé dom imdítin, sochraite Dé dom anacul.

God’s host saves me From snares of devils, From temptation of vices, From every one who shall wish me ill, Afar and anear, Alone and in a multitude.

I arise today through the love of the Cherubim, In the obedience of angels, In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward

In the prayers of patriarchs, In the predictions of prophets, In the preaching of apostles, In the faith of confessors, In the innocence of holy virgins, In the deeds of righteous men.

6 I summon today all these powers between me and those evils, Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, Against incantations of false prophets, Against black laws of pagandom, Against false laws of heretics, Against craft of idolatry, Against spells of women and smiths and wizards, Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

I arise today

Through God’s strength to pilot me.

God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak to me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me.

7 God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me from snares of devils.

Christus mecum. Christus me protegat hodie Contra venenum, Contra combustionem, Contra demersionem, Contra vulnera, Donec meritus essem multum praemii.

Christus ante me, Christus me pone, Christus in me.

Críst i cridiu cech duini immumrorda, Críst limm, Críst reum, Críst im degaid, Críst indium, Críst ísum, Críst uasum, Críst desum,

Christ with me.

Christ to shield me today, Against poison, Against burning, Against drowning, Against wounding, So that reward may come to me in abundance. Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,

Críst tuathum,

Críst i llius,

Críst i sius, Críst i nerus.

Christus infra me, Christus supra me.

Críst i cridiu cech duini immumrorda, Críst i ngin cech oín rodom-labrathar, Críst i cech rusc nonom-dercathar, Críst i cech cluais rodom-chloathar.

attrib. St Patrick (385–461), versions in Latin and Old Irish; English transl. Kuno Meyer (1858–1919)

8 Cantata

Weighing the stedfastness and state

Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye of every man who sees me, Christ in the ears of every man that hears me.

Of some mean things which here below reside, Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date And Intercourse of times divide, Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flow’rs Early, aswel as late, Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bow’rs;

I would (said I) my God would give The staidness of these things to man! for these To His divine appointments ever cleave, And no new business breaks their peace; The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine, The flow’rs without clothes live, Yet Solomon was never dress’d so fine.

Man hath stil either toyes, or Care, He hath no root, nor to one place is ty’d, But ever restless and Irregular About this Earth doth run and ride, He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He sayes it is so far That he hath quite forgot how to go there.

He knocks at all doors, strays and roams, Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have Which in the darkest nights point to their homes, By some hid sense their Maker gave; Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms God order’d motion, but ordain’d no rest.

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)

9 Crux fidelis

Crux fidelis, inter omnes Arbor una nobilis; Nulla silva talem profert, Fronde, flore germine; Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, Dulce pondus sustinet.

Pange lingua, gloriosi Lauream certaminis, Et super Crucis trophaeo Dic triumphum nobilem;

Faithful Cross, above all other, One and only noble Tree, In foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thy peer may be; Sweetest wood, and sweetest iron; Sweetest weight is hung on thee.

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle, Sung the last, the dread affray; O’er the Cross, the Victor’s trophy, Sound the high triumphal lay,

Qualiter Redemptor orbis Immolatus vicerit.

Flecte ramos, arbor alta, Tensa laxa viscera, Et rigor lentescat ille, Quem dedit nativitas; Et superni membra Regis Tende miti stipite.

Crux fidelis … … sustinet. Amen.

Venantius Fortunatus (c.530–c.609), from a processional hymn in praise of the Cross; verses reordered

10 Cantemus

Cantemus in omni die concinentes varie conclamantes Deo dignum ymnum sanctæ Mariæ.

Bis per chorum hinc et inde collaudemus Mariam ut vox pulset omnem aurem per laudem vicariam.

Maria de tribu Iudæ summi mater Domini oportunam dedit curam egrotanti homini.

How, the pains of death enduring, Earth’s Redeemer won the day.

Bend, O lofty Tree, thy branches, Thy too rigid sinews bend; And awhile the stubborn hardness, Which thy birth bestowed, suspend; And the Limbs of Heaven’s high Monarch Gently on thine arms extend.

Let us sing every day, harmonising in turns, together proclaiming to God a hymn worthy of Mary.

In twofold chorus, from side to side, let us praise Mary, so that the voices strike every ear with alternating praise.

Mary of the tribe of Judah, Mother of the Most High Lord, gave fitting care to languishing mankind.

Gabriel advexit verbum sinu prius paterno quod conceptum et susceptum in utero materno.

Hæc est summa hæc est sancta virgo venerabilis quæ ex fide non recessit sed exstetit stabilis.

Huic matri nec inventa ante nec post similis nec de prole fuit plane humanæ originis.

Per mulierem et lignum mundus prius periit per mulieris virtutem ad salutem rediit.

Maria mater miranda Patrem suum edidit per quem aqua late lotus totus mundus credidit.

Hæc concepit margaretam non sunt vana somnia pro qua sani Christiani vendunt sua omnia.

Gabriel first brought the Word from the Father’s bosom which was conceived and received in the Mother’s womb.

She is the most high, she the holy venerable Virgin who by faith did not draw back, but stood forth firmly.

None has been found, before or since, like this mother –not out of all the descendants of the human race.

By a woman and a tree the world first perished; by the power of a woman it has returned to salvation.

Mary, amazing mother, gave birth to her Father, through whom the whole wide world, washed by water, has believed.

She conceived the pearl –they are not empty dreams –for which sensible Christians have sold all they have.

Tonicam per totum textam Christi mater fecerat quæ peracta Christi morte sorte statim steterat.

Induamus arma lucis loricam et galiam ut simus Deo perfecti suscepti per Mariam.

Amen, amen, adiuramus merita puerperæ ut non possit flamma pyræ nos diræ decepere.

Christi nomen invocemus angelis sub testibus ut fruamur et scripamur litteris celestibus.

The mother of Christ had made a tunic of a seamless weave; Christ’s death accomplished, it remained thus by casting of lots.

Let us put on the armour of light, the breastplate and helmet, that we might be perfected by God, taken up by Mary.

Truly, truly, we implore, by the merits of the Child-bearer, that the flame of the dread fire be not able to ensnare us.

Let us call on the name of Christ, below the angel witnesses, that we may delight and be inscribed in letters in the heavens.

Translation © Gilbert Márkus

11 Iste Confessor

Iste Confessor Domini colentes

Quem pie laudant populi per orbem: Hac die laetus meruit supremos Laudis honores.

Qui pius, prudens, humilis, pudicus, Sobriam duxit sine labe vitam. Donec humanos animavit aurae Spiritus artus.

Cuius ob praestans meritum frequenter, Aegra quae passim iacuere membra, Viribus morbi domitis, saluti Restituuntur.

Noster hinc illi chorus obsequentem Concinit laudem, celebresque palmas; Ut piis eius precibus iuvemur Omne per aevum.

Sit salus illi, decus, atque virtus, Qui super caeli solio coruscans, Totius mundi seriem gubernat, Trinus et unus. Amen.

Hymn at Vespers on the feasts of Doctors and Confessors

This Confessor of the Lord, whom the people of the world dutifully venerate, on this day joyfully merited the highest honours of praise.

Pious, prudent, humble and chaste, he led a sober life, without stain, as long as the breath of life animated his human frame.

On account of his outstanding merit, limbs that lay sick everywhere were often, the strength of the disease overcome, restored to health.

So our choirs sing gracious praises to him and to his famous victories. May we be assisted by his pious prayers through all ages.

Salvation, glory and power be unto him who is glorious on the throne of Heaven, who rules the cosmos of the whole universe, three and one. Amen.

Cú Chuimne of Iona (d. 747)

12 Set upon the Rood

Lo! I will tell the sweetest dream Which came to me amid the night When voices were at rest. It seemed I saw a shining tree, Lifted aloft, wound round with lights, Brightest of beams. This was no guilty gallows, But beheld by holy souls, Mortal men and all the Maker’s marvels.

Splendid was that saving shoot but I, stained by sin, Wounded with woes. I gazed upon the glorious tree, Shining with splendours, wrapped with worth, Girt with gold. Gems had on The Wielder’s wood worthily weighed.

But blood burst from its side, dripping through the gold, And I began to glimpse an ancient struggle. I was struck with sorrow, afraid of that fair sight: It was a sign of death! Its colours and clothes changed: Now stained with scarlet, now blazing in beauty, Now drenched in doom.

I lay there such a long while, Woefully watching the terrible tree, Until I heard it speak! Best of the wood began to speak:

‘It was long ago – I still remember: –I was hewn from holt’s edge, Ripped up from my roots. Strangers seized me, Made me a mockery, they bore me on broad shoulders, Set me on the summit.

‘Then I saw a young hero coming forward with courage. The mighty youth – it was God Almighty! – cast off his cloak, Strong in the sight of many, climbed the high gallows. I trembled when he embraced me, but dared not buckle or bend; I had to stand fast. A rood I was raised.

I lifted up a mighty lord; I dared not fail him, Heaven’s high king. They drove me through With dark nails. On my side still Are scars seen: the hateful open wounds.

‘A fell fate I had on that hill!

I saw the God of Hosts ruthlessly racked out. Darkness descended, covering with clouds The Wielder’s corpse: shining splendour Smothered in shadow! All creation wept, Mourning its king: Christ on the cross.

‘Then came friends from afar to their Prince’s side, Faithful ones. They took him down, Most reliable, released him from his wretched torment. They laid him down, limb-weary, Watched over the Lord of Heaven, who rested there awhile, Spent from the strife.

‘Then they began to sing a sorrow-song, Lamenting long in the fading light, Ere they departed.

‘Now you know, beloved man of mine, What baleful blows I have endured, What sorrows sore. Now is the season come When I am worshipped far and wide, When every knee on earth and under earth Will bend to this beacon. On me God’s son Suffered a little while; but glorious now I am raised on high that I may heal

Each and all who look to me in awe.

‘Now, I charge you – beloved man of mine –

Tell this vision unto all people, Reveal in words that this is the glorious tree Almighty God for mankind’s many sins

Suffered upon, for Adam’s ancient crime.

‘Death he tasted there, but the Lord arose, Glorious in strength, our mighty help, and will come again on that day, Almighty God, with his angel hosts, Seeking mankind: the Lord himself.

‘But none need fear his judgment Who bears in his breast the best of beacons, For through the rood every soul

Basses enter here with verse 3 of ‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt’ (text overleaf).

Sopranos (divisi a 2) sing verse 4 of ‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt’.

That wanders the earth, seeking his homeland, Shall enter at last the halls of heaven.’

Then I prayed to that tree with great gladness

With strong spirit. My heart was heaven-bound, Eager to leave this life. It is now my deepest desire

To seek out and see that victory tree.

My will weighs much on my mind; My hope is set upon the rood.

May he be friend to me who earlier endured

The hanging-tree for human sin.

He loosed us and gave us life,

A heavenly home, and hope too was renewed ’Mid blessings and bliss when he harrowed hell.

O! the Son was victorious in that venture, When with myriads and multitudes

A great host of ghosts he came into his kingdom

The One-Wielder Almighty to the bliss of angels And all already in heaven, dwelling in delight.

When their Lord came, Almighty God, When he returned home.

Selections from The Dream of the Rood (anon., 8th–10th c.), transl. Stephen Bick

Vexilla Regis prodeunt (verses 1 & 2 are not sung)

Vexilla Regis prodeunt: Fulget Crucis mysterium, Qua vita mortem pertulit, Et morte vitam protulit.

Quae vulnerata lanceae

Mucrone diro, criminum

Ut nos lavaret sordibus, Manavit unda et sanguine.

Impleta sunt quae concinit David fideli carmine, Dicendo nationibus: Regnavit a ligno Deus.

O Crux ave, spes unica,

In hac triumphi gloria!

Piis adauge gratiam, Reisque dele crimina.

Venantius Fortunatus

The banners of the King go forth: the mystery of the Cross shines, by which our life bore death, and by death gave us life.

Which was pierced by the sharp point of the lance from the stain of sin to wash us shedding water and blood.

Now is fulfilled what was foretold by David in his faithful hymn saying to the nations God has reigned from a tree.

Hail, O Cross, our only hope On this triumphant day! increase grace to the just and blot out the sin of the wicked.

Above: John Kenny holding the reconstructed Loughnashade horn and Patrick Kenny the Deskford carnyx. Photo: Victor Albrow

Back cover: Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor. Photo: Graham Steele

Sopranos

Caroline Daniel

Polly Furness

Emily Myles

John Chumrow Choral Scholar

Eloise Pedersen

Caius Fund 2013 Choral Scholar

Lorna Price

Caius Fund 2015 Choral Scholar

Eleanor Walder

Clover Willis

James Pitman Choral Scholar

Aleksandra Wittchen

Altos

Katharine Curran

Corinne Hull

Cleo Newton

Caius Fund 2014 Choral Scholar

Tristan Selden

Alice Webster

Caius Fund 2015 Choral Scholar

Tenors

Stephen Bick

Sebastian Blount

Robert Humphries

Max Noble

Sir Keith Stuart Choral Scholar

Kavi Pau

Peter and Therese Helson

Choral Scholar

Basses

Aaron Fleming

Patrick Burgess Choral Scholar

John Gowers

Matthew Innes

Margaret Chumrow Lay Clerk

Jack May

Caius Fund 2013 Choral Scholar

Chase Smith

Caius Fund 2014 Choral Scholar

Robert Smith

Humphrey Thompson

Organ Scholars

James Leitch

Peter Walker Organ Scholar

Michael How

Wilfrid Holland Organ Scholar

Solo quintet for track 8 (former choir members)

Clare Lloyd Griffiths

Catherine Harrison

Nathan Mercieca

The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge is one of Britain’s leading collegiate choirs. The College was founded in 1348 but the musical tradition stems from the late nineteenth century, when the wellknown composer of church music Charles Wood became Organist. The choir in Wood’s day contained boy trebles; it is now a mixed undergraduate ensemble and is directed by Geoffrey Webber.

The Choir’s recordings have often specialised in the rediscovery of forgotten choral repertories, including previously unpublished music from within the English choral tradition and beyond. Themed CD releases include a recording of modern and medieval vocal music entitled All the ends of the earth, and a further recording of modern and medieval Christmas music, Into this world this day did come (DCD34075).

James Robinson

Malachy Frame

The choir sings Chapel services during the University term and has a busy schedule of additional activities including concerts, recordings and broadcasts. It travels extensively abroad, performing at a variety of venues ranging from major concert halls to universities, cathedrals and churches in Europe, America and Asia. The choir also gives a number of concerts in the UK each year, and has made appearances at St John’s Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, the Spitalfields and Aldeburgh festivals, and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Broadcasts of Choral Evensong have been notably adventurous in content and have ranged from Baroque anthems performed with period instruments to Russian and Greek Orthodox music, South African music, and music composed especially for the choir by leading British composers such as James MacMillan. The choir has also appeared on television programmes on BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and on several foreign networks.

A 2011 recording of music by the leading British composer Judith Weir (DCD34095) achieved high acclaim and was BBC Music Magazine ’s Choral & Song Choice in December 2011.

The choir has also joined together with the Choir of King’s College London in two recording projects – Rodion Shchedrin’s ‘Russian liturgy’ The Sealed Angel (DCD34067) and Deutsche Motette: German Romantic choral music from Schubert to Strauss (DCD34124) – and has collaborated with the scholar and piper Barnaby Brown on the bestselling and resoundingly acclaimed In Praise of Saint Columba: The Sound -world of the Celtic Church (DCD34137, BBC Music Magazine Choral & Song Choice, September 2014) and with the organist Magnus Williamson on Chorus vel Organa: Music from the lost Palace of Westminster (DCD34158), a reconstruction of both vocal and organ performance practices in the first half of the sixteenth century.

www.gonvilleandcaiuschoir.com

Geoffrey Webber studied music at Oxford University, where he was Organ Scholar at New College. After graduating with a First, he became Acting Organist at New College and Magdalen College, and later University Organist and Director of Music at the University Church. During this time he also directed the Edington Festival. After completing his doctorate on German Baroque music he became Director of Music at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge and now divides his time between conducting, lecturing, teaching and research. He has recently established the first degree in choral conducting at the University of Cambridge, which attracts students from all over the world.

Born and raised in Glasgow, Barnaby Brown was principal flautist of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, he took up the Baroque flute and sang with the Choir of Gonville & Caius College. Subsequently he returned to his first love, the classical music of the Highland bagpipes. His quest to revive the northern triplepipe, the bagpipe’s predecessor, took him back a thousand years and transplanted him to Sardinia.

Between 2006 and 2012, his artistic collaborations included smelting Japanese, Indian and Scottish traditions for the Edinburgh Festivals commission Yatra, composing ‘Scottish Bali’ with Gamelan Naga Mas, developing modules on several programmes at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and helping design the European Music Archaeology Project. In 2014, his first recording with the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge – In Praise of Saint Columba (Delphian DCD34137) – delighted critics in all the major newspapers, and was described on BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library as ‘doing for the music of the ancient Celtic church what Gothic Voices did for Hildegard of Bingen’.

His groundbreaking doctoral research on pibroch, undertaken at the University of Cambridge and funded by the AHRC project ‘Bass culture in Scottish musical traditions’, provides the foundation for a further Delphian recording, Spellweaving: ancient music from the Highlands of Scotland (DCD34171), Vol 1 of the label’s acclaimed series in collaboration with the European Music Archaeology Project.

www.barnabybrown.info

Bill Taylor is a specialist in the performance of ancient harp music from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and is one of very few players investigating these repertoires on lyres,

medieval gut-strung harps, wire-strung clarsachs and Renaissance harps with buzzing bray pins. He is one of the foremost interpreters of music in the Robert ap Huw manuscript, containing the earliest harp music from Europe, and he has made two solo recordings of this repertoire using historical harps.

Bill plays and teaches in the Scottish Highlands and works with Ardival Harps in Strathpeffer. He performs and records as a soloist as well as with ensembles including Graindelavoix, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, Quadrivium and Sinfonye. As a teacher he is much in demand, and is frequently invited to lead workshops in the UK, Europe and the USA, including regular appearances at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival.

www.billtaylor.eu

Trombonist and composer John Kenny is internationally acclaimed as an interpreter and creator of contemporary music, having performed and broadcast in over 50 nations to date. He also works extensively with improvisation and early music and is particularly active in collaboration with dance and theatre. Since the early 1990s he has also become increasingly involved with musical archaeology. In 1993 he became the first person for two thousand years to play the great Celtic war horn known as the carnyx.

He now lectures and performs on the carnyx internationally in the concert hall and on radio, television and film. He is a member of the European Music Archaeology Project, with whom he has worked to bring to fruition the reconstruction of many lip reed instruments of antiquity, including the magnificent Tintignac carnyx, discovered in 2004 in the Corrèze region of southern France, and the Etruscan litus and cornu. In September 2016 an album documenting this work, Dragon Voices: the giant Celtic horns of ancient Europe, was released on Delphian (DCD34183).

John is a professor at both the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and is regularly invited to give masterclasses and lectures at conservatoires and universities throughout Europe, the USA and Asia. In 2017 he was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Trombone Association.

www.carnyxscotland.co.uk

Born into a musical family, Patrick Kenny took up the trombone aged ten, and was also a chorister at Old St Paul’s in Edinburgh, Scotland’s oldest ‘sang school’. He studied at St Mary’s Music School, obtained the Advanced Jazz Diploma of St Andrew’s University, and went on to the Guildhall School

of Music & Drama, London and the Paris Conservatoire. From 2013 to 2015 he pursued an advanced study project, generously sponsored by the Musicians Benevolent Fund, which enabled him to meet and study with leading trombonists across Europe and the USA in the fields of jazz, classical and early music. He was a semi-finalist in the BBC Young Brass Musician of the Year 2010, and has performed at the Mumbai International Festival, International Jazz Conference in Toronto, and at the International Trombone Festival, Beijing.

Patrick is currently based in London, working as a freelance musician – on tenor, alto and bass trombones, bass trumpet, sackbut and didjeridu – as well as a brass teacher, composer and arranger across a wide variety of genres. He has performed and recorded with many leading popular and jazz artists, and in 2016 founded The London Groove Collective, whose first EP album will be released in 2017.

Patrick has played the carnyx at events including the opening ceremony of Derry Year of Culture, Ireland, and the televised celebrations for the re-opening of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. In 2014 he was invited to become a member of the European Music Archaeology Project.

In Praise of Saint Columba: The Sound-world of the Celtic Church

Barnaby Brown triplepipes & lyre, Simon O’Dwyer medieval Irish horn, Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber

DCD34137

Just as the influence of Irish monks extended not only across Scotland but also to mainland Europe, so we imagine our way back down the centuries into 7th-century hermits’ cells, 10th-century Celtic foundations in Switzerland, and the 14th-century world of Inchcolm Abbey, the ‘Iona of the East’ in the Firth of Forth. Silent footprints of musical activity – the evidence of early notation but also of stone carvings, manuscript illuminations, and documents of the early Church –have guided both vocal and instrumental approaches in the choir’s work with scholar and piper Barnaby Brown.

‘performances of grace … musical conviction and beauty of tone’ — BBC Music Magazine, September 2014, CHORAL & SONG CHOICE

Chorus vel Organa: Music from the lost Palace of Westminster Magnus Williamson organ, Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber

DCD34158

The modern Houses of Parliament conceal a lost royal foundation: the chapel of St Stephen, begun by Edward I and raised into a college by his grandson Edward III. This recording brings together a repertoire of music that dates from the final years of the college under Henry VIII, and reconstructs both the wide range of singing practices in the great chapels and cathedrals and the hitherto largely unexplored place of organ music in the pre-Reformation period.

‘The resourceful Geoffrey Webber’s choir […] sounds invigoratingly individual. Magnus Williamson’s improvised chamber organ responses and interludes, based on surviving partbooks, add to the atmospheric archaeology … An extremely worthwhile compilation’ — The Observer, June 2016

Spellweaving: ancient music from the Highlands of Scotland

Barnaby Brown, Clare Salaman, Bill Taylor

DCD34171 (EMAP Vol 1)

The patronage of elite Highland pipers collapsed after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, leading to efforts to preserve this extraordinary repertoire through notation. By 1797, Colin Campbell had written 377 pages in a unique system based on the vocables of Hebridean ‘mouth music’, but Campbell’s extraordinary work of preservation has remained overlooked or misunderstood until now. Barnaby Brown’s realisations for a variety of drone-based instruments refocus attention on music whose trance-inducing long spans and elaborate formal patterning echo the knots and spells of Celtic culture.

‘beguiling performances using an instrumentarium of bagpipes, vulture - bone flute, clarsach (folk harp) et al, as well as Brown’s pleasingly light-toned voice’ — Sunday Times, May 2016

Dragon Voices: the giant Celtic horns of ancient Europe

John Kenny

DCD34183 (EMAP Vol 3)

People of Celtic culture all over ancient Europe were fascinated by lip reed instruments, and made great horns and trumpets in many forms – including the carnyx, a two-metre-long bronze trumpet surmounted by a stylised animal head, and the Loughnashade horn from Ireland, with its exquisite decorated bell disc.Recent developments in music archaeology have vastly increased our knowledge and understanding of both the physical construction of these instruments and their likely playing techniques. John Kenny’s newly created music explores their uniquely expressive sounds in solo, duo and ensemble textures, drawing upon Celtic mythical characters, echoes of ancient ritual in modern society, and impressions of real places in Ireland, Scotland and France.

‘at some points sounds like a dragon awakening, at others like avantgarde jazz’ — The New York Times, April 2016