The Merton Collection: Merton College at 750 by Delphian Records

The merton collection

Merton College at 750

Choir of Merton College, oxford

Recorded on 13-15 April 2013 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford

Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks

24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover & booklet design: John Christ

Booklet editor: John Fallas

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

Cover image: Nowton Court, reproduction wallpaper by Cole & Co from an original designed by Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852) and produced by Cowtan & Sons, c.1840; Victoria & Albert Museum, London / The Bridgeman Art Library

Choir photography: KT Bruce ktbrucephotography.com

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

On 14 September 1264, Walter de Merton, Lord Chancellor to Henry III and later Bishop of Rochester, established a foundation for the combined purposes of religion, education, learning and research. It was the first independent, self-governing College in the University of Oxford, and Merton’s statutes provided the model for those at Peterhouse, the oldest of the Cambridge Colleges. Walter de Merton’s vision for a community of scholars who would live, study and worship together has inspired the foundation of many academic communities, and the formula remains at the heart of his own College to this day.

Merton’s most significant buildings date back to the decades following its foundation. Work on the Chapel began in the late 1280s. Much of its stained glass is original, and it contains one of the finest pre-Reformation lecterns surviving in England, originally given to the College in 1504. Mob Quad, the oldest quadrangle in the University, was built between c.1288 and 1378, and houses the oldest continuously functioning academic library in the world, with over 300 medieval manuscripts in its collection.

Living and working in this historic and inspiring environment are the College’s members, its greatest treasure. How could Walter de Merton ever have imagined that his College, originally founded for twenty fellows, would within 120 years admit undergraduates for the first time,

six hundred years later open its doors to female students and, 750 years after its foundation, comprise over seventy Governing Body fellows, more than 600 students, and over 100 staff?

On 1 November 2006, during the Wardenship of Prof Dame Jessica Rawson, the College’s Governing Body resolved to set up a choir consisting of eighteen choral scholars, two organ scholars, and two part-time Directors of Music, as well as a number of volunteer singers. Since then, three further things have happened. In September 2012 Benjamin Nicholas’s position became full-time, enabling the choir to sing more regularly and to further develop the reputation it had quickly gained as one of Oxford’s finest mixed-voice ensembles. The College’s musical life has been enshrined at the heart of its 2014 celebrations with the commissioning of a number of leading contemporary composers for the Merton Choirbook. Finally, the College has commissioned Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa to build a new organ for the Chapel. It is the first Dobson organ to find a home outside the USA, and will be inaugurated in April 2014. As the College looks back in thankfulness and celebration over its 750 - year history, it can be certain that generations to come will recognise the beginning of the twenty-first century as a time when it laid firm musical foundations for its future.

It’s an obvious, but often unremarked, fact that the history of what is generally called Western ‘classical’ music could fairly be represented through the medium of choral works alone – there is scarcely a musical idiom, style or fashion, from the medieval period to our own day, that isn’t present in the choral repertoire. This may seem hardly worthy of note until you consider that there can be hardly any other musical genre of which it is true. Keyboard music, perhaps – but only if that term is permitted to embrace the whole family of instruments: virginal, spinet, clavichord, harpsichord, organ, piano … Choral music is the seed from which much of the Western music tradition sprang; churches and cathedrals, from the Middle Ages onwards, were the hothouses in which that musical tradition germinated, grew and flourished. ‘Quires and places where they sing’ (as the Book of Common Prayer has it) are the bedrock of Western music: the great medieval and Renaissance composers who laid the foundations of our musical culture were singers first and foremost, and they learnt their compositional skills in choirs.

with the College itself. Indeed, the earliest music on the disc is by John Dunstaple, a composer whom scholarship has only recently connected to Merton.1 Originator of a new musical style that was richer and more sonorous than anything heard in music hitherto, Dunstaple became widely influential not just in England but – as the presence of his music in continental sources attests – in Europe too. Cast in the form of an isorhythmic motet, in which a recurring pattern of note-lengths is imposed on the pitch framework, Veni Sancte Spiritus/Veni Creator is one of his most famous compositions, welding together (in the typical fashion of the time) multiple texts in the different voice parts: in this case, the Pentecost hymn ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’, the Pentecost sequence ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ and an otherwise unknown trope on that sequence.

So Merton College Choir’s journey through three quarters of a millennium of choral repertoire is not just a demonstration of this accomplished ensemble’s versatility, it also permits a bird’s-eye view of some important moments in musical history, and features several works or composers associated

The survival of music down the centuries – both of works and of information about composers – is often a matter of chance or luck. While we know far more about John Sheppard than about Dunstaple (he was informator choristarum, ‘instructor of the choristers’, at Merton’s neighbour Magdalen College, and also a Gentleman, or adult singer, in the Chapel Royal of Mary Tudor), he is far less well known today than contemporaries such as Tallis and Taverner – and this despite the fact that something like

1 See Rodney M. Thomson, ‘John Dunstable [sic ] and his books’, Musical Times vol. 150, no. 1909 (Winter 2009), pp. 3–16.

eighty of his works survive, nearly a tenth of the extant repertoire of Latin-texted polyphonic works by English composers from this period. Libera nos, salva nos I, the first of two settings Sheppard made of this text, is based on a plainsong hymn for the monastic service of Matins on Trinity Sunday, though it is possible that the piece was intended for the twice-daily recitation of the same text ordained in the statutes of Magdalen College. The plainsong is heard in long notes in the bass part, supporting no fewer than six upper voices, intertwined above it.

The next generation of English composers would live and work amidst the upheavals –political, ecclesiastical and of course musical – of England’s break with the Church of Rome. For the church musicians of the day this meant abandoning familiar Latin repertoire as the Catholic rite was abolished, providing music for the new Book of Common Prayer (where a radically simplified musical style was expected), reverting to the old Latin ways when Catholicism was re-established under Mary Tudor, and – finally, after the death of Mary (in the same year as Sheppard) – devising new works for the more flexible musical accommodations of the Elizabethan Settlement. If, in the early days of the Anglican church, composers writing for the newly - made English liturgies were careful to observe Thomas Cranmer’s injunction that there

should be ‘to every syllable a note’ – in other words, that church music must be purged of those lengthy elongations in the melodic lines which obscured the intelligibility of the text –by the late 1500s composers were allowing themselves more latitude. William Mundy’s Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, composed for the new Prayer Book English-language service of Evensong (assembled by Cranmer from the old Latin monastic night services of Vespers and Compline), shows its provenance as a postReformation piece not just through the use of English, but through its scrupulously clear word-setting. Large sections of both canticles are sung chordally; and even when the music is more complex and imitative, the repetitions of the part-writing are so arranged that the clarity of the text is never obscured.

That care for words is also evident in Englishtexted sacred pieces intended for domestic, rather than liturgical, use – such as William Byrd’s Praise our Lord, all ye gentiles. This paraphrase of Psalm 117 appeared in 1611 in Byrd’s final publication, Psalmes, Songs, and Sonnets, where sacred pieces rub shoulders with light-hearted madrigals and other secular works, all intended for the entertainment and edification of performers in the home. And the easy expressivity with which postReformation English composers had learnt to deal with sacred words in their own tongue is demonstrated beautifully in the miniature

masterpiece which is Orlando Gibbons’ This is the record of John. This is in the form known as a verse anthem, an accompanied piece in which sections for a solo voice or voices (the ‘verses’) alternate with those for the full choir. Here, a solo alto narrates the well-known Gospel passage in which John the Baptist puts right those who would call him the Christ, explaining – in Gibbons’ spine-tingling music –that he is merely the forerunner: one who ‘crieth in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord”’.

All the most successful musicians of Gibbons’ day worked in London around the royal court: Gibbons himself was Organist of the Chapel Royal, and for the last two years of his life also of Westminster Abbey, where his successors included John Blow and Henry Purcell. (Blow, Purcell’s predecessor and teacher, modestly resigned to make way for his more talented pupil and then resumed the post after Purcell’s untimely death.) Purcell’s Remember not, Lord, our offences sets a section of the Litany, scored for five-part choir, the sober reflective words underpinned by quiet harmonies and poignant dissonance. Hear my prayer, O Lord stands as one of the most tantalising musical torsos in the whole English sacred repertoire: scribal details in the original manuscript suggest that it is a self-contained section of a lost larger piece. But what survives is an astonishing musical miniature – 34 bars in which a single,

bare opening line unfolds gradually into a rich eight-part texture, the music gathering in power and intensity until the shattering climax of the final bars.

By the mid-eighteenth century, musical life in London was dominated by the towering figure of Handel, whose presence overshadowed even the best English composers of the day. Maurice Greene held posts as Organist at both St Paul’s Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, as Master of the King’s Musick, as a long-serving Professor of Music at Cambridge University, and initiated a major anthology of church music (completed after his death by his pupil William Boyce), as well as composing in every significant genre; but he was dismissed by the contemporary music historian Charles Burney with the verdict that he was ‘usually very correct in his harmony, but as to invention and design, he seldom soars above mediocrity’. Such faint praise notwithstanding, Greene’s verse anthem Lord, let me know mine end is a fine work, still frequently to be heard in church, chapel and cathedral. Its clear and expressive vocal lines are shaped and paced independently of the underlying bass part, which treads implacably through the piece, only coming to rest on the final chord, and perhaps symbolising the inexorable unfolding of mortal life.

When England again began to produce major composers in the late nineteenth century,

those such as Charles Stanford and Hubert Parry looked first to the Austro-German symphonic tradition for inspiration and models, even if they themselves later became influential teachers to the strikingly individual composers who followed them: Vaughan Williams, Holst, Bridge, Ireland and others. After undergraduate studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, Stanford studied in Leipzig and Berlin, before returning to Trinity in 1877 as college Organist. The two motets included here come from a set of three published in 1905 but probably dating from the late 1880s; they are dedicated to the College’s choir and to Alan Gray, who succeeded Stanford as its director in 1892. In Justorum animae the writing is fundamentally chordal, with richly sonorous divided part-writing creating dramatic climaxes. Beati quorum via demonstrates Stanford’s effortless mastery of imitative counterpoint: the six parts constantly unfurl and entwine so that the trajectory of the music is always clear and transparent, its even pace representing the steady tread of those who ‘walk in the law of the Lord’.

The outbreak of war in 1914, and the prospect that so much they held dear in the music of continental Europe would become the preserve of the enemy, caused both Stanford and Parry desolation and despair. More poignantly, both witnessed the decimation of young musicians amongst the male population of the institutions at which they taught. A profound sense that

the old order was changing, in the sphere of music as elsewhere, lies behind one of Parry’s last works, completed just before his death in the final year of the Great War: the Songs of Farewell, six settings of sacred texts for unaccompanied chorus. The fourth of the set, There is an old belief, finds renewed meaning in words from a century earlier which look beyond the grave to some serene and tranquil place of rest and reunion where ‘dear friends shall meet once more’. In a striking espousal of this conviction, Parry quotes the opening notes of the Latin plainsong Credo at the words ‘That creed I fain would keep’. But the movement ends in a mood of sad resignation – an epitaph for all that the Great War had wrought.

The first of three further twentieth-century works included here is another meditation on death, composed in the midst of another war. Vaughan Williams, though himself agnostic, nonetheless had a great sympathy and affection for John Bunyan’s Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress and used it as the basis of a number of works – staging posts, in a sense, to the full-scale operatic treatment of the book which stands as one of his career’s crowning achievements. In his 1941 motet Valiant-for-truth he creates a miniature operatic scena for unaccompanied voices: the narrative is set as free-flowing recitative moving between the parts, the other voices accompanying and illustrating Bunyan’s moving

description of a pilgrim passing through the River of Death to eternal life in the Celestial City, where trumpets sound in welcome.

Veni sponsa Christi is the second of three motets which Lennox Berkeley composed in 1972 for the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge. It uses words proper to the Roman Catholic feasts of Virgins and Virgin Martyrs, in which these Brides of Christ are summoned to receive the crown of immortal life. Berkeley was an undergraduate at Merton from 1922 to 1926, though he studied not music but modern languages (and coxed for the College Boat Club). He followed this, like many of his composer contemporaries, with a period of study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Boulanger’s uncompromising commitment to craftsmanship and technique, her passion – unusual at the time – for the music of earlier periods (notably the Renaissance and Baroque), and her extraordinary range of acquaintance with the leading artistic figures of the time made her a powerfully influential teacher. Berkeley’s time under her tutelage, during which he also met Ravel, gave his music a distinctly French accent, as well as a classical elegance and restraint which are typified here.

Just twenty-five years, but a vast stylistic gulf, separate Berkeley’s motet from Arvo Pärt’s The Woman with the Alabaster Box. All of Pärt’s most characteristic music, as his wife Nora has

described it, inhabits ‘a reduced sound-world measured only in millimetres … By the end the listening attention is utterly focused. At the point after the music has faded away it is particularly remarkable to hear your breath, your heartbeat’. The present piece retells in St Matthew’s words the story of the woman who anoints Jesus’s body with precious ointment. Pärt sets the disciples’ outraged reaction to this profligacy (the ointment might better have been sold to help the poor) and Jesus’s gently chiding response (the woman’s actions are beautiful and prefigure his death) in the same even, unhistrionic style.

And so we move into the present, when an institution like Merton – with its newly invigorated choral foundation – can itself be a leading instigator of new music for worship. With contributions from many notable living composers, the Merton Choirbook, when complete, will form a snapshot of the sacred music of our day comparable in scope and scale to the great Eton Choirbook of the early 1500s. But whereas the great composers represented in the Eton collection were those English musicians associated with the court of Henry VI and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Merton Choirbook has cast its net wider, and counts several non-British composers amongst its contributors. They include the Anglo-American James Lavino (born in Philadelphia, although he has spent substantial

periods living and studying in London), the Latvian Eriks Ešenvalds and the Norwegianborn, now US-resident Ola Gjeilo.

In many cases, of course, a composer writing sacred music today will find him- or herself setting the same texts as his predecessors. Lavino’s Beati quorum via sets the same Latin psalm text as Stanford’s motet, but Lavino takes his cue from the first word – ‘Blessed’ –to write in an eight-part idiom which luxuriates in richly voiced chords and luminous sonorities.

Gjeilo’s Perenni Domino perpes, by contrast, sets a Trinitarian text by the medieval philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard. A rhythmic motif derived from the opening words underpins the central part of the piece, complemented by rich harmonies and an arch structure which grows from a gentle opening to a colossal climax before sinking back to a contemplative close.

Ešenvalds’ Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis is conceived for essentially the same Anglican service of Evensong as William Mundy’s sixteenth-century setting, although – somewhat unusually for a paired setting – Ešenvalds has used the Latin words for the two canticles. Benjamin Nicholas wanted the Merton Choirbook to contain an a cappella setting in Latin (following in the recent tradition of Pärt’s setting of these texts) as well as one in English with organ accompaniment, and perhaps

questions of language are not so freighted for a composer, especially a non-English one, working today. As with Mundy, however, clarity of text is an important factor, and Ešenvalds achieves this by making his setting mostly chordal. Both the Magnificat (the joyful song of the Virgin Mary upon learning that she is to bear the Son of God) and the Nunc dimittis (when the old man Simeon sees Biblical prophecy, and a long-held hope, fulfilled at last in the infant Jesus he holds in his arms) are first-person texts, a fact of which Ešenvalds reminds us when, after pages of brilliant choral writing, he gives the ‘Gloria’ of each canticle to a lone voice, quietly accompanied by sustained chords.

Michael Emery is Senior Producer of the BBC Singers at BBC Radio 3, and is a former Organ Scholar of Merton College.

Texts and translations

1 Magnificat

Magnificat anima mea Dominum et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo.

Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae: ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes.

Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est, et sanctum nomen eius.

Et misericordia eius a progenie in progenies timentibus eum.

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui.

Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.

Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.

Suscepit Israel puerum suum recordatus misericordiae suae, sicut locutus est ad patres nostros, Abraham et semini eius in saecula.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

2 Nunc dimittis

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.

Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum, quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum: lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

[for translation see tracks 15–16 ]

Veni Sancte Spiritus/Veni Creator

Quadruplum

Veni Sancte Spiritus, et emitte celitus lucis tue radium. Veni pater pauperum, veni dator munerum, veni lumen cordium.

Consolator optime, dulcis hospes anime, dulce refrigerium. In labore requies, in estu temperies, in fletu solatium.

O lux beatissima, reple cordis intima tuorum fidelium. Sine tuo numine, nihil est in lumine, nihil est innoxium.

Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est saucium. Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium.

Come, Holy Ghost, and send out from heaven the ray of your light. Come, father of the poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of hearts.

Best consoler, sweet guest of the soul, sweet refreshment. In work, rest; in heat, temperateness; in weeping, solace.

O most blessed light, refill the innermost heart of your faithful.

Without your spirit nothing is in the light, nothing is harmless.

Wash what is dirty, soak what is dry, heal what is wounded. Bend what is rigid, warm what is cold, set right what has gone astray.

Da tuis fidelibus, in te confidentibus, sacrum septenarium. Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium.

Sequence at Pentecost

Triplum Veni Sancte Spiritus, et infunde primitus rorem celi gratie. Precantes humanitus salva nos divinitus a serpentis facie.

In cuius presentia ex tua clementia tecta sint peccata. Nostraque servitia corda penitentia tibi fac placata.

Languidorum consolator et lapsorum reformator, mortis medicina.

Peccatorum perdonator, esto noster expurgator, et duc ad divina.

Hymn at Pentecost

Grant to your faithful, trusting in you, the sevenfold sacred gifts. Grant the reward of virtue, grant salvation at the last, grant eternal joy.

Come, Holy Ghost, and pour first of all the dew of heaven’s grace. Us who pray humanly, save divinely from the serpent.

In whose presence by your clemency may our sins be covered. And make our service to be a heart reconciled to you through penitence.

Consoler of the faint-hearted and restorer of the fallen, remedy for death. Pardoner of sins, be our cleanser, and lead us to the divine.

Duplum Veni Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita: imple superna gratia que tu creasti pectora.

Qui Paraclitus diceris, donum Dei altissimi, fons vivus, ignis caritas, et spiritalis unctio.

Tu septiformis munere, dextre Dei tu digitus, tu rite promisso Patris sermone ditans guttura.

Accende lumen sensibus, infunde amorem cordibus, infirma nostri corporis virtute firmans perpeti.

Hostem repellas longius, pacemque dones protinus: ductore sic te previo vitemus omne noxium.

Per te sciamus da Patrem noscamus atque Filium, te utriusque Spiritum credamus omni tempore.

Hymn at Pentecost

Come, Creator Spirit, visit the minds of your people: fill the breasts you have created with grace from above.

You who are called the Paraclete, gift of the highest God, font of life, fire of love, and balm for the spirit.

You, sevenfold in gifts, you, the finger of God’s right hand, you, endowing throats with speech solemnly promised of the Father.

Kindle a light in our minds, pour love into our hearts, strengthening our weak bodies with perpetual virtue.

Drive the enemy far away, and give us peace forthwith; with you thus going before us as leader may we avoid all harm.

Grant that through you we may know of the Father, may know too the Son, and may for all time trust in you, the Spirit of both.

4 Libera nos, salva nos

Libera nos, salva nos, iustifica nos, O beata Trinitas.

6th Psalm Antiphon at Matins on Trinity Sunday

Free us, save us, absolve us, O blessed Trinity.

5 The Woman with the Alabaster Box

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment and poured it on his head, as he sat at meal.

But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

When Jesus understood it, he said unto them: Why trouble ye the woman? For she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be

preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Matthew 26: 6–13

6 There is an old belief

There is an old belief, That on some solemn shore, Beyond the sphere of grief Dear friends shall meet once more.

Beyond the sphere of Time and Sin And Fate’s control, Serene in changeless prime Of body and of soul.

That creed I fain would keep, That hope I’ll ne’er forgo, Eternal be the sleep If not to waken so.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854)

7 Praise our Lord, all ye gentiles

Praise our Lord, all ye gentiles, praise him, all ye people; because his mercy is confirmed upon us, and his truth remaineth for ever. Amen.

Psalm 117

8 This is the record of John

This is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; and said plainly, I am not the Christ.

And they asked him, What art thou then? Art thou Elias? And he said, I am not. Art thou the prophet? And he answered, No.

Then they said unto him, What art thou? that we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said, I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.

John 1: 19

9 Veni sponsa Christi Veni sponsa Christi, accipe coronam quam tibi Dominus praeparavit in aeternum. Alleluia.

Antiphon at Vespers from the Common of Virgins

Come, bride of Christ, accept the crown that the Lord has prepared for you for eternity. Alleluia.

10 Hear my prayer, O Lord

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto thee.

Psalm 102:1

11 Remember not, Lord, our offences

Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor th’offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins, but spare us, good Lord.

Spare thy people, whom thou hast redeem’d with thy most precious blood; and be not angry with us for ever. Spare us, good Lord.

from the Litany (Book of Common Prayer)

12 Valiant-for-truth

After this it was noised abroad, that Mr Valiant-for-Truth was taken with a summons; and had this for a token that the summons was true, ‘that his pitcher was broken at the fountain’. When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he:

‘I am going to my Father’s, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at

to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have fought his battles, who now will be my rewarder.’

When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the riverside, into which as he went he said, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And as he went down deeper, he said, ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’

So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

John Bunyan (1628–1688)

13 Justorum animae

Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum mortis. Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori; illi autem sunt in pace.

Offertory at the Feast of All Saints

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die; but they are at peace.

14/

17 Beati quorum via Beati quorum via integra est, qui ambulant in lege Domini.

Psalm 119 (118): 1

Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.

15 Magnificat

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my sp’rit rejoiceth in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him thoroughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm, he hath scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He rememb’ring his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to our father Abraham and his seed for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

16 Nunc dimittis

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy Word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people:

to be a light to lighten the gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

18 Lord, let me know mine end

Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live. Behold, thou hast made my days, as it were a span long: and mine age is ev’n as nothing in respect of thee. And verily ev’ry man living is altogether vanity.

For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.

And now, Lord, what is my hope? truly my hope is ev’n in thee.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears, consider my calling.

Hold not thy peace at my tears.

O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen.

Psalm 39: 5-8, 13, 15

19 Sacred Origins

Perenni Domino perpes sit gloria, ex quo sunt, per quem sunt, in quo sunt omnia; ex quo sunt, Pater est, per quem sunt, Filius, in quo sunt, Patris et Filii Spiritus.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142)

To the eternal Lord be perpetual glory, from whom, by whom and in whom all things have their being:

it is the Father from whom they are, the Son by whom they are, and the Spirit of the Father and the Son in whom they are.

The Choir of Merton College is one of Oxford’s leading mixed-voice choirs. It consists of thirty undergraduates and postgraduates, many of whom hold choral scholarships at Merton College. The choir has toured to France (2009, 2010 and 2011), the USA (2011) and Sweden (2013); recent performances have included Tallis’s Spem in alium in the Beaujolais Festival, Mozart’s Requiem in Saint-Germaindes-Prés, Paris, Orff’s Carmina Burana in the St Jude’s Proms, the premiere of David Briggs’ Messe Solennelle in St Paul’s Cathedral and concerts in Cadogan Hall and St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh.

The main focus of the choir’s work is the singing of the services during term-time in the College’s thirteenth-century chapel. In addition to Choral Evensong, special services such as the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Carol Services and the Requiem Mass for All Souls have a large following. The choir also plays a leading role in the annual ‘Passiontide at Merton’ festival, with performances of Bach’s St John Passion, Handel’s Messiah and, in 2013, of Arvo Pärt’s Passio. The 2014 festival will see the premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of the Lord.

The College has begun a significant commissioning project in the build-up to its 750th anniversary celebrations in 2014. Composers including John Tavener, Matthew

Martin, Rihards Dubra, Eriks Ešenvalds and Howard Skempton have already had works premiered by the choir, and a set of seven newly-commissioned Advent Antiphons was the centrepiece of the choir’s second recording for Delphian, Advent at Merton (DCD34122), which remained in the Specialist Classical Chart for six weeks upon release in autumn 2012; while the choir’s debut CD, In the Beginning (Delphian DCD34072), featuring music by Gombert, Weelkes, Holst, Copland and Gabriel Jackson, was named a ‘Gramophone Choice’ in the December 2011 edition of that magazine.

In addition to its recording relationship with Delphian, Merton College Choir has broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and in February 2013 was filmed for the BBC Two series David Starkey’s Music and Monarchy.

Benjamin Nicholas has held the full-time post of Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music of Merton College, Oxford since September 2012. He has conducted the College Choir on tours to the USA and France, on BBC Radio 3 and on recordings for Delphian. From 2000 until 2012 he directed the choir of men and boys at Tewkesbury Abbey, and was largely responsible for the founding of Tewkesbury

Biographies

Abbey Schola Cantorum when the Abbey School closed in 2006. He led that choir on thirteen overseas tours and in seven recordings on Delphian – including discs devoted to Weelkes, Mozart, Stanford and Rutter – and was Director of Choral Music at Dean Close School from 2005 until 2012. In 2011 he succeeded Andrew Carwood as Director of the

Schola Cantorum at the Edington Festival of Music and in 2013 became Festival Director.

Benjamin Nicholas has conducted much of the large-scale choral repertoire including Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, Verdi’s Requiem and the Berlioz Te Deum. Recent concerts include Holst’s Sa¯vitri with Sarah Connolly and the Trondheim Soloists in the Cheltenham Music Festival, and Bach’s Mass in B minor in Cheltenham Town Hall. He has commissioned new work from numerous composers including Bob Chilcott, Rihards Dubra, Howard Goodall, Grayston Ives, Gabriel Jackson, Howard Skempton and Philip Wilby.

Benjamin was a chorister in the Choir of Norwich Cathedral before holding organ scholarships at Lincoln College, Oxford and St Paul’s Cathedral. As an undergraduate he was Conductor of The Oxford Chamber Choir, and in 2000 held the post of Director of Music of St Luke’s Church, Chelsea.

Peter Phillips was educated at Winchester College and at St John’s College, Oxford, where he was Organ Scholar between 1972 and 1975 and read music under David Wulstan and Bernard Rose.

In 1973 he founded the Tallis Scholars, with whom he has now appeared in over 1750 concerts and made over fifty discs, encouraging interest in polyphony all over the world.

He taught at the Royal College of Music until 1988, since when he has devoted himself to concert-giving and recording. In addition to the Tallis Scholars, he has worked with many other specialist ensembles; he currently appears regularly with the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Intrada of Moscow, Musica Reservata of Barcelona and the Tudor Choir of Seattle.

He has made numerous television and radio appearances, on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service as well as on German, French, Canadian and North American radio, where he has enjoyed deploying his love of languages. Peter also works extensively with the BBC Singers.

As well as leading choral workshops annually in Venice, Barcelona, Rimini and Evora, Peter is Artistic Director of the Tallis Scholars Summer

Schools – annual choral courses based in Uppingham (UK), Seattle (USA) and Sydney (Australia), dedicated to exploring the heritage of Renaissance choral music and developing an appropriate performance style. He has contributed a music column to the Spectator magazine for thirty years, and is the publisher of The Musical Times. In 2005 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, a decoration intended to honour individuals who have contributed to the understanding of French culture in the world.

Peter first worked in Merton College Chapel in 1974, since when, first with the Tallis Scholars and BBC Singers and now as a Reed Rubin Director of Music and Bodley Fellow in the College, he has returned to make many broadcasts and recordings.

The Choir of Merton College, Oxford

Reed Rubin Organist & Director of Music

Benjamin Nicholas

Reed Rubin

Director of Music

Peter Phillips Organ Scholars

Anna Steppler

Charles Warren Sopranos

Harriet Asquith

Jennifer Cearns

Katie Coleman

Polly Gamble

Sarah Hewlett

Eleanor Hicks

Catriona Hull

Emily Lay

Lucy Pinching

Daisy Syme-Taylor

Emily Tann

Clare Webb

Altos

Kathryn Boast

Thea Dickinson

Patrick Dunachie

Caroline George

Jeremy Kenyon

Elizabeth Leather

Tenors

Timothy Coleman

Thomas Dyer

Aidan Hampton

Francis Shepherd

Domhnall Talbot

Mothusi Turner

Charles Warren Basses

William Bennett

Christopher Borrett

Jonathan Burr

Alistair Clark

Giles Colclough

Richard Hill

Stephen Hyde

Robin Price

Benjamin Stewart

Jacob Swindells

In the Beginning

Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips

DCD34072

Established in 2008, Merton College’s new choral foundation is rapidly emerging as a major force in collegiate choral music. Its debut recording – bookended by Gabriel Jackson’s ravishing version of the rarely set Johannine Prologue and Copland’s glowing account of the first seven days of creation – makes inventive play with the theme of beginnings and endings, in a sequence of Renaissance and modern works that reflects the range and reach of the choir’s daily repertoire.

‘… will undoubtedly establish them as one of the UK’s finest choral ensembles. Listening to their superb performances and seamless blending of voices, it’s hard to believe that the choir is only four years old’ — Gramophone, December 2011, EDITOR’S CHOICE

Advent at Merton

Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips

DCD34122

The beginning of Advent is celebrated with a particular solemnity at Merton. For its second recording, the choir explores the musical riches that adorn this most special time in the church’s year, centring on a newly commissioned sequence of Magnificat antiphons from seven leading composers including Howard Skempton, Eriks Ešenvalds and Sir John Tavener. The mingled hopes, fears and expectations of the season are beautifully articulated by this fervent body of young singers.

‘an immensely accomplished and responsive mixed-voice choir … Delphian’s recorded sound is beautiful’

— International Record Review, December 2012

Mozart: ‘Coronation’ Mass, Vespers, Ave verum corpus

Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum; Charivari Agréable / Benjamin Nicholas DCD34102

Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum of Dean Close Preparatory School are joined by Charivari Agréable in vividly communicative interpretations of three of Mozart’s sacred masterpieces. The forces are very much as Mozart intended – a period orchestra, an all-male chorus, and soloists drawn from the choir (including 2009 BBC Chorister of the Year Laurence Kilsby). Under Benjamin Nicholas’s spirited direction, these performances bristle with energy and the invigorating freshness of youth.

‘The choir are full of the abandon of this delicious music, and the smallscale period instrument band Charivari Agréable accompany most agreeably (fantastic gunshot timps!)’ — Gramophone, January 2012

Haec Dies: Byrd and the Tudor revival Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber DCD34104

The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge explores the fascinating relationship between sixteenth- and early twentieth-century music as understood by the pioneers of the Tudor revival in England. Centred on Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices – revelatory and influential listening for a whole host of later composers – this mosaic of reworkings, reimaginings and lovingly crafted homages is brought to life with all the scholarly acumen and full-throated fervour that we have come to expect from one of Britain’s finest choirs.

‘A brilliantly conceived disc … Under Geoffrey Webber’s sure direction [the choir] clearly relishes every moment with both precision and passion’ — International Record Review, September 2012

The Merton Collection: Merton College at 750