Viri Galilaei
FAVOURITE ANTHEMS FROM MERTON
CHOIR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD
BENJAMIN NICHOLAS & PETER PHILLIPS
VIRI GALILAEI
FAVOURITE ANTHEMS FROM MERTON
CHOIR OF MERTON COLLEGE,
OXFORD
Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips conductors
Charles Warren & Peter Shepherd organ
Recorded on 28-30 June 2015 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Design: John Christ
Booklet editor: Henry Howard
Cover: J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), Sky Study, watercolour on paper, private collection; Photograph © Agnew’s, London/Bridgeman Images
Choir photography © John Cairns
Session photography © Delphian Records
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
the Delphian mailing list: www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join
Morley (1557/8–1602) Nolo mortem peccatoris
John Rutter (b. 1945) The Lord bless you and keep you [2:41]
Hubert Parry (1848–1918) Blest pair of sirens [10:46]
William Byrd (1539/40–1623) Diliges Dominum [2:58]
Roger Quilter (1877–1953) Lead us, heavenly Father Oliver Kelham tenor
Thomas Tallis O nata lux
Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) Lo, the full, final sacrifice Francis Shepherd tenor, Thomas Herring bass [15:20] 11 William H. Harris (1883–1973) Faire is the heaven [5:24] 12 William Byrd Ave verum corpus [3:44] 13 Patrick Gowers (1936–2014) Viri Galilaei [7:57] Total playing time [75:36] With thanks to the Warden and Fellows of the House of Scholars of Merton College, Oxford
Why, in our multicultural, multi-racial, largely secularised age, should a recording of favourite sacred pieces be both an attractive prospect for a choir and a sound commercial one for a record company? On the CD racks of many a cathedral and chapel bookstall, alongside more specialised (and perhaps rarefied) choral offerings, a recording of popular anthems will often find a place. Partly, of course, it’s an opportunity for a choir to demonstrate what it does, and the music that it sings, in the daily, weekly and annual round of services – the Opus Dei. Paradoxically, it can also provide the chance to perform music that, by virtue of its length, or particular liturgical place in the seasons of the church year, seldom gets an airing in the normal pattern of events.
But whatever the attractions for the performers, there’s little doubt that such recordings are also (of course) attractive to listeners – and it’s interesting to speculate on why that should be. Such a recording may partly be an aural souvenir of a fine choir who may have been heard –perhaps distantly – in practice or a service during a visit to some magnificent cathedral, church or chapel. Partly, that must be a consequence of the ordinary listener’s fascination with the highwire act of choral singing in general: that amazing feat of coordination, discipline, tuning, blend and ensemble by which a well-drilled group of singers create a musical entity greater than the individual voices from which it’s constituted.
But also – surely? – recordings of well-known and well-loved works from the sacred repertoire help satisfy that yearning for the spiritual felt by so many visitors to the impressive but often mysterious spaces which are our great religious buildings. In an age when (despite the general decline in formal religious observance and church attendance) congregations in ‘Quires and Places where they sing’ (as the Book of Common Prayer has it) are on the increase, liturgical music is plainly reaching out, and speaking, to the ordinary man and woman in the pew more strongly than ever.
But that’s not to say that the phenomenon of a ‘favourite repertoire’ in sacred music is a modern one. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, disseminating scores was largely a matter of painstakingly copying choir-parts by hand, and a cathedral or chapel choir’s repertoire would consist largely of works composed by its own musicians, accumulated over the years. Yet nonetheless, sources and partbooks, wherever they are from, show certain favourite pieces cropping up time and time again.
The growth of music-printing in the sixteenth century was, of course, an important step towards the wider circulation of individual pieces of music: Thomas Tallis’s little anthem If ye love me must have been composed in the late 1540s but first came into print in
John Day’s 1560 publication Certaine notes set forthe in foure and three partes, after which it rapidly entered the repertoire of cathedrals and other singing foundations and has remained a much-loved gem of clear but expressive choralwriting ever since.
But the expensive business of going into print in the sixteenth century was commercially risky and success could not always be guaranteed. Tallis and his friend and pupil William Byrd found this when they published their magnificent collection of Latin motets Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur in 1575. Handsomely produced and intended as a showpiece manifesto for English sacred music, the publication nonetheless failed to sell. It was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I in gratitude for her patronage of the two composers (the Queen had granted Tallis and Byrd a monopoly of music-printing in England) and to celebrate the seventeenth year of her reign. To that end, each composer contributed seventeen pieces, and the range of styles and techniques they display is impressively varied. Tallis’ O nata lux, for example, setting words for the Feast of the Transfiguration, is modest and serene, the five-part texture moving mostly in simple chords. By comparison, Byrd’s Diliges Dominum, laid out for two choirs in four parts, and setting Christ’s famous charge to his disciples from St Matthew’s Gospel, is as intricate a piece of musical clockwork as can be imagined: at the halfway point the music
turns back on itself, the second half of the piece being a mirror image of the first. In the hands of a lesser composer this extraordinarily ingenious technique might have been a recipe for disaster (or, at least, dullness) but it is a tribute to Byrd’s contrapuntal skill that the piece instead sounds rich and euphonious, betraying no hint of the method by which it is put together.
Not that Byrd was incapable of producing simply-constructed (and still euphonious) music if he wished. The motet Ave verum corpus, from the 1605 collection Gradualia, sets words appropriate for the Feast of Corpus Christi in simple chordal style – though with subtleties of harmony and expression (for example, the chord-shift between the first two words, and the sighing phrases at ‘O dulcis! O pie!’) which show the hand of a mastercomposer, and have made this piece a firm favourite of the sacred repertoire ever since.
Thomas Morley, a London musician in the late sixteenth century, combined the post of Organist of St Paul’s Cathedral with work at the city’s theatres (he composed settings of some of the songs from Shakespeare’s plays) and a busy career writing madrigals and other secular forms of vocal music. A handful of sacred pieces by him survive, the best-known of which, Nolo mortem peccatoris, is still often sung today. The text comes from a manuscript collection of
poems and songs entitled Tristitiae remedium (that is, ‘A remedy for sadness’) and compiled by Stephen Miriell, rector of a London church. The words, though, are by John Redford, one of Morley’s predecessors as Organist of St Paul’s, and, in the voice of Christ himself, dwell on the sufferings of the Saviour of mankind. The poignant and gentle character of this straightforward little piece have made it a Lenten favourite with listeners and choirs alike.
The craftsmanship, and sheer singability, of much sacred repertoire from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can no doubt be attributed to the fact that most of its composers were singers themselves – rather than, as is usually the case in cathedrals and choral foundations these days, primarily organists. But this CD also includes two pieces by twentieth-century English composers who, while not singers, were very much interested in English song. Roger Quilter and Gerald Finzi are best known for their works for solo voice, and both were essentially miniaturists,with a discerning knowledge and profound love of poetry and the voice. Here, though, we see them working on a larger canvas – in Finzi’s case, a much larger one: Lo, the full, final sacrifice is an extended setting of words by Thomas Traherne, one of the seventeenthcentury ‘metaphysical’ poets who long interested Finzi. Commissioned in 1946 by that twentieth-century Maecenas of the
sacred arts, the Revd Walter Hussey, for his church, St Matthew’s, Northampton, this ‘Festival Anthem’ is a meditation on the nature of the Eucharist and laid out on the largest scale: the choral writing is sophisticated and demanding, extending into eight parts at times, and the piece requires an extremely dexterous organist to play the accompaniment, which treats the instrument in a highly orchestral way. A work much admired by enthusiasts for the cathedral repertoire of our own times, its challenging musical requirements and lengthy duration mean that it’s infrequently heard as part of the liturgy.
Two other large-scale favourite anthems are included in this Merton recording. Sir Edward Elgar’s Give unto the Lord was composed in 1914 for the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, an annual service held in St Paul’s Cathedral to benefit the charitable foundation established in 1655 to provide financial assistance to clergymen deprived of their livings during the Commonwealth. Elgar’s setting of words from Psalm 29, dedicated to his friend Sir George C. Martin (another Organist of St Paul’s), contains all the hallmarks of the mature Elgar’s compositional style – confidence, grandeur, and soaring melodies: the very first bar is inscribed with that classic Elgarian indication ‘nobilmente ’.
was the piece which put Parry on the map as a composer of merit in Victorian England. Written in 1887 for The Bach Choir, at the behest of that other great figure of late Victorian British music, Sir Charles Stanford (who also conducted its first performance), the piece was an immediate hit and has been a favourite of large church choirs and choral societies ever since.
lasting at least sixty minutes, it’s unsurprising to discover that the duration of the whole liturgy often exceeded three hours.
Sir Hubert Parry’s Blest pair of sirens sets words in praise of music by John Milton and
On a rather more modest scale, Roger Quilter’s
Lead us, heavenly Father – using words more familiar from congregational singing – sets out in apparently hymn-like vein, with block chords supporting a neatly memorable melody. But in the second verse a more harmonically sophisticated organ part accompanies a solo tenor voice, and the forces combine for the concluding section.
So, we may ask, what makes a good piece of sacred music? Certainly concision helps –modern liturgies, even fully-sung ones, are rarely long enough to allow a composer the luxury of writing at excessive length. Compare this with, say, the position in Lutheran Germany when J.S. Bach was Cantor of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche in the 1720s: the main Sunday morning service began at 7 a.m., and would feature a twenty-tothirty-minute cantata (for chorus, soloists and orchestra) as the principal musical contribution, but also included extended polyphonic motets and other items performed by the choir, as well as congregational chorales. With a sermon
So the large-scale offerings of composers such as Parry, Elgar and Finzi, loved though they may be, are rather exceptional. Nowadays, a good piece of liturgical music, whether lively or pensive, jubilant or penitential, must – much like a film score – make its presence felt, and its character clear, quickly, effectively and without outstaying its welcome. In Bach’s day, the cantata was usually constructed in two halves, performed either side of the sermon: the intention was that each should be the musical counterpart of what the pastor would preach in words. But, in our own day, a three-minute anthem for Evensong can, with a carefully chosen text and thoughtfully crafted music, still be an inspiring sermon-in-music.
Faire is the heaven, an elegantly constructed motet for double choir by Sir William Harris (composed while Harris was Organist of New College, Oxford and dedicated to Sir Hugh Allen, then Professor of Music at the University) packs into its five-minute span a musical journey arguably the equal of many a larger piece, the dreamy, seraphic opening succeeded by faster-moving music as angels and archangels compete in praise of the Almighty, and crowned by a swooning shift of tonality at the words ‘God’s owne person’.
The church music of John Rutter has, in recent years, become the staple fare of choirs from the smallest parish church to the mightiest cathedral. The Lord bless you and keep you –effortlessly tuneful, carefully crafted, responding beautifully to the words and using a musical language which speaks powerfully and directly to ‘all sorts and conditions of men’ (to quote the Book of Common Prayer again) – shows why this should be so, and why so many of his sacred works have become favourite anthems.
And so, perhaps, to the favourite anthems of the future. In the two works represented on this disc, Patrick Gowers and Jonathan Dove write dramatic, large-scale pieces that exploit their choral and instrumental forces to the maximum, and are plainly designed to be heard in large spaces. Viri Galilaei, a setting of words for the Feast of the Ascension, even calls for two organs in its accompaniment (though in this recording Merton's Dobson organ stands in for both), and moves stealthily from a dreamy and mystical opening, in which it seems barely possible properly to understand the mystery of Christ’s return to heaven, to a thrilling central climax in which ‘God is gone up with a merry noise’ indeed.
Jonathan Dove’s setting of the Te Deum was commissioned by Merton College for the Merton Choirbook, a collection of new sacred music created by the College to mark and celebrate the 750th anniversary of its foundation in 2014. The direction ‘dancing’, which appears at the beginning of the score and several times thereafter, sets the tone for this celebratory setting of the Prayer Book text. And the Merton Choirbook, an extensive anthology that collects together a variety of contemporary works, many of them specially commissioned by the College, will – like the great choirbooks of centuries past – hopefully be the source of many of the favourite anthems of generations to come.
© 2016 Michael Emery
Michael Emery was Organ Scholar of Merton College from 1978 to 1981. Since 1992 he has been Senior Producer to the BBC Singers at BBC Radio 3, and in 2016 he takes up the post of Artistic Director and Manager of the Danish Radio Choirs in Copenhagen.
1 Te Deum
We praise thee, O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee: the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud: the heavens, and all the powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim: continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty: of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles: praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets: praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs: praise thee. The holy Church throughout all the world: doth acknowledge thee; The Father: of an infinite Majesty; Thine honourable, true: and only Son; Also the Holy Ghost: the Comforter. Thou art the King of Glory: O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son: of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death: thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God: in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come: to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints: in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people: and bless thine heritage.
Govern them: and lift them up for ever.
Day by day: we magnify thee; And we worship thy Name: ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord: to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us: have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us: as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded.
Book of Common Prayer
2 If ye love me
If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may bide with you for ever, ev’n the spirit of truth.
John 14: 15-17 (King James Bible)
3 Give unto the Lord
Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth:
It is the Lord that ruleth the sea: the voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars: yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
Yea, the voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire;
Yea, the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness and strippeth the forests bare.
In his temple doth every one speak of his glory.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The Lord sitteth above the water-flood; and the Lord remaineth a King for ever;
The Lord shall give strength unto his people; the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace.
Psalm 29: 1-5, 7-10/11; Psalm 96:9 (King James Bible/Book of Common Prayer, adapted)
4 Nolo mortem peccatoris
Nolo mortem peccatoris: haec sunt verba Salvatoris.*
Father, I am thine only son, Sent down from heaven mankind to save! Father, all things fulfilled and done According to thy will I have; Father, now all my will is this: Nolo mortem peccatoris.
Father, behold my painful smart, Taken for man on every side, E’en from my birth to death most tart; No kind of pain I have denied, But suffered all, and all for this: Nolo mortem peccatoris.
Behold my birth, in what degree Into this wretched world I came, Taking man’s vile nature on me, With all the mis’ries of the same Save only sin; and all for this: Nolo mortem peccatoris.
John Redford (d. 1547) [spellings modernised]
* I do not desire the death of a sinner: these are the words of our Saviour.
5 The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord bless you and keep you: the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you: the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Numbers 6: 24
6 Blest pair of sirens
Blest pair of sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy, Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ, Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised phantasy present That undisturbed song of pure consent, Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne To Him that sits thereon, With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee, Where the bright Seraphim in burning row Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow, And the Cherubic host in thousand quires Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms, Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly:
That we on earth with undiscording voice May rightly answer that melodious noise; As once we did, till disproportioned sin Jarred against nature’s chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that song, And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long
To His celestial concert us unite, To live with Him, and sing in endless morn of light.
John Milton (1608–1674), ‘At a Solemn Musick’ [spellings modernised]
7 Diliges Dominum
Diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et in tota anima tua, et in tota mente tua: diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum.
Matthew 22: 37, 39 (Vulgate)
You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, and in your whole soul, and in your whole mind: you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
8 Lead us, heavenly Father
Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us O’er the world’s tempestuous sea; Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us, For we have no help but thee; Yet possessing every blessing, If our god our father be.
Saviour, breathe forgiveness o’er us; All our weakness thou dost know; Thou didst tread this earth before us; Thou didst feel its keenest woe; Lone and dreary, faint and weary Through the desert thou didst go.
Spirit of our God, descending, Fill our hearts with heavenly joy; Love with every passion blending, Pleasure that can never cloy; Thus provided, pardoned, guided, Nothing can our peace destroy.
James Edmeston (1791–1867)
9 O nata lux
O nata lux de lumine, Jesu redemptor saeculi, dignare clemens supplicum laudes precesque sumere.
Qui carne quondam contegi dignatus es pro perditis,
nos membra confer effici tui beati corporis.
Hymn at Lauds on the Feast of the Transfiguration [vv. 1 & 2]
O light born of light, Jesus, redeemer of the world, mercifully deign to accept the praise and prayers of those who entreat you.
You who once deigned to clothe yourself in flesh for lost humanity, grant that we may become members of your blessed body.
10 Lo, the full, final sacrifice
Lo, the full, final sacrifice
On which all figures fix’t their eyes. The ransomed Isaac, and his ram; The Manna, and the Paschal Lamb. Jesu Master, just and true!
Our Food, and faithful Shepherd too!
O let that love which thus makes thee Mix with our low Mortality, Lift our lean Souls, and set us up Convictors of thine own full cup, Coheirs of Saints. That so all may Drink the same wine; and the same way. Nor change the Pasture, but the Place
To feed of thee in thine own Face.
O dear Memorial of that Death
Which lives still, and allows us breath! Rich, Royal food! Bountiful Bread! Whose use denies us to the dead!
Live ever Bread of loves, and be My life, my soul, my surer self to me. Help Lord, my Faith, my Hope increase; And fill my portion in thy peace. Give love for life; nor let my days Grow, but in new powers to thy name and praise.
Rise, Royal Sion! rise and sing
Thy soul’s kind shepherd, thy heart’s King. Stretch all thy powers; call if you can Harps of heaven to hands of man. This sovereign subject sits above The best ambition of thy love.
Lo the Bread of Life, this day’s Triumphant Text provokes thy praise. The living and life-giving bread, To the great twelve distributed When Life, himself, at point to die Of love, was his own Legacy.
O soft self-wounding Pelican!
Whose breast weeps Balm for wounded man. All this way bend thy benign flood
To a bleeding Heart that gasps for blood. That blood, whose least drops sovereign be To wash my worlds of sins from me. Come love! Come Lord! and that long day For which I languish, come away. When this dry soul those eyes shall see, And drink the unseal’d source of thee. When Glory’s sun faith’s shades shall chase, And for thy veil give me thy Face. Amen.
Richard Crashaw (c.1613–1649) after St Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274); words adapted (with modernised spellings) from Crashaw’s ‘Adoro te’ and ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’
11 Faire is the heaven
Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie; Whence they do still behold the glorious face Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;
Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins Which all with golden wings are overdight. And those eternall burning Seraphins Which from their faces dart out fiery light;
Yet fairer than they both and much more bright Be the Angels and Archangels which attend On God’s owne person without rest or end. These then in faire each other farre excelling As to the Highest they approach more neare, Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling
Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were; How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
Edmund Spenser (1552/3–1599), from ‘An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie’
12 Ave verum corpus
Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine, vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine: cuius latus perforatum unda fluxit sanguine. Esto nobis praegustatum, in mortis examine.
O dulcis, O pie, O Jesu, fili Mariae. Miserere mei. Amen.
Latin, 14th century
Hail true body born of the Virgin Mary, that truly suffered sacrifice on the cross for mankind: whose side when struck flowed with a wave of blood. Let it be for us to taste in the trial of death.
O sweet, O loving, O Jesus, son of Mary, have mercy on me. Amen.
13 Viri Galilaei
Alleluia.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which said unto them: Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up to heaven? In like manner as ye have seen him going up into heaven, so shall he come again. God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. Christ to highest heaven ascending, led captivity captive. Sing ye to the Lord who ascended to the heaven of heavens to the sun rising.
Adapted from the propers at Mass on Ascension Day
See the Conqueror mounts in triumph, See the King in royal state, Riding on the clouds his chariot To his heavenly palace gate; Hark! The choirs of angel voices Joyful Alleluias sing, And the portals high are lifted To receive their heav’nly King.
Christopher Wordsworth (1807–1885)
Biographies
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, 2011 and 2015), the USA (2011 and 2014) and Sweden (2013). Recent performances have included Duruflé’s Requiem in the Cheltenham Music Festival, Tallis’s Spem in alium in the Beaujolais Festival, Mozart’s Requiem in Saint-Germain-des-
Prés, 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 services in the College’s thirteenth-century chapel. In addition to daily Evensong during term-time, 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, which has included performances of Bach’s St John and St Matthew Passions and Mass in B minor, Handel’s Messiah and, in 2013, Arvo Pärt’s Passio. The 2014 festival included the premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The choir’s debut CD, In the Beginning (Delphian DCD34072), features music by Gombert, Weelkes, Holst, Copland and Jackson and was named Editor’s Choice in the December 2011 edition of Gramophone magazine. Advent at Merton (DCD34122) was released in 2012 and spent six weeks in the Specialist Classical Chart. The Merton Collection (DCD34134) –
a programme of old and new works specially designed to mark the College’s 750th anniversary – followed a year later, and in 2014 The Marian Collection (DCD34144) marked the addition of a statue of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, by the renowned English sculptor Peter Eugene Ball, to Merton College Chapel’s fourteenthcentury south transept. In addition to its ongoing recording relationship with Delphian, the choir has broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and in February 2013 was filmed for the BBC television series David Starkey’s Music and Monarchy.
In the last few years Merton College Choir has given first performances of new choral works by Judith Weir, John Tavener, James MacMillan, Jonathan Dove, Ēriks Ešenvalds and Cecilia McDowall, and in November 2014 gave the premiere of a new motet by Harrison Birtwistle. The choir spent 2014 in a ‘new music’ partnership with Choir & Organ magazine, and enjoys a relationship with Faber Music as Choir-in-Association. www.facebook.com/MertonCollegeChoir
Choir of Merton College, Oxford
Reed Rubin Organist & Director of Music
Benjamin Nicholas
Reed Rubin
Director of Music
Peter Phillips
Organ Scholars
Charles Warren
Peter Shepherd
Sopranos
Amelia Brown
Jennifer Cearns
Katherine Coleman
Polly Gamble
Naomi Gardom
Emma Hall
Eleanor Hicks
Georgina Hildick-Smith
Bridget McNulty
Daisy Syme-Taylor
Emily Tann
Jemimah Taylor
Altos
Frances Buist
Lila Chrisp
Jeremy Kenyon
Elizabeth Leather
Olivia Williams
Tenors
Harry George
Oliver Kelham
Laurence Kilsby
Aaron King
Francis Shepherd
Basses
Alistair Clark
Thomas Herring
Alexander Ho
Stephen Hyde
Patrick Keefe
Jacob Swindells
Benjamin Nicholas is a former pupil of David Sanger for organ and Denise Ham for conducting. He held the organ scholarships at Chichester Cathedral, Lincoln College, Oxford and St Paul’s Cathedral before moving to Tewkesbury Abbey, where he directed the Abbey School Choir and oversaw its transformation into Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum of Dean Close Preparatory School. He has directed the Choir at Merton College, Oxford since 2008, and in 2012 became the first full-time Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music at Merton.
During Benjamin’s time at Merton, the College has established the annual ‘Passiontide at Merton’ festival, and in 2013 the new Dobson organ was installed, a project with which he was closely involved. He made the instrument’s first solo recording (The Merton Organ, DCD34142) in 2014, and a disc of Elgar organ works (DCD34162) is forthcoming in April 2016. With Merton College Choir,
Benjamin has toured internationally, given concerts in the Cadogan Hall and the Temple Church, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television. As the founding director of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum he recorded extensively for Delphian, including discs of Weelkes, Mozart, Stanford and Rutter. Other recent performances as a conductor have included Holst’s Sˉavitri in the Cheltenham Music Festival, Mozart’s Requiem in SaintGermain-des-Prés, and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Oxford Philomusica.
Benjamin Nicholas has collaborated with numerous composers, and is partly responsible for the Merton Choirbook, commissioned to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the College in 2014. Significant projects have included the first performances of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ in Oxford and New York, and the premieres of new choral works by Birtwistle, Dove, MacMillan, Saxton and Weir.
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 2000 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 Évora, 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.
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
The Merton Collection: Merton College at 750 Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips
DCD34134
In 2014, the University of Oxford’s Merton College celebrates its 750th year. Benjamin Nicholas and Peter Phillips’ specially conceived journey through seven centuries of choral repertoire provides a bird’s-eye view of some important moments in musical history, and features two composers personally associated with the College – John Dunstaple and Lennox Berkeley – as well as three new works commissioned for the anniversary celebrations. The choir, a relatively recent addition to this illustrious college’s complement of treasures, gives stylish and committed performances in the famous acoustic of Merton’s thirteenth-century chapel.
‘fine musicianship, commitment and versatility’
— Choir & Organ, January/February 2014
The Marian Collection Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips DCD34144
Benjamin Nicholas again draws from the landmark collection of more than fifty-five works written in celebration of the College’s 750th anniversary. Here, a new work by Judith Weir (newly appointed Master of the Queen’s Music) heads a set of the four Marian antiphons, all specially commissioned from female composers, while two further premiere recordings represent the work of regular Merton collaborators Gabriel Jackson and Matthew Martin. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, Peter Phillips’ expert direction of Byrd’s rarely performed Salve Regina, a bold statement of Catholic faith from Reformation England, and of John Nesbett’s late 15th-century Magnificat, a piece whose neglect on disc is astonishing, completes this portrait in sound of a woman who is at once virgin and mother, human and God-bearer, suppliant and Queen of Heaven.
‘astonishing versatility’ — Gramophone, December 2014
The Merton Organ: the new Dobson organ of Merton College, Oxford
Benjamin Nicholas organ DCD34142
In a golden age of organ-building, Merton College’s new Dobson instrument stands out as exceptional. It is only the third Americanbuilt organ sent to the UK since the Second World War, a bold commissioning choice by Benjamin Nicholas and his colleagues in Merton’s recently established choral foundation. From Bach and Stanley to Messiaen and Dupré Nicholas combines flair and intelligence as he presents the stunning instrument he helped mastermind.
‘lithe, supple and pleasingly nuanced performances … Delphian’s characteristically clear, focused and framed recording’
— Choir & Organ, May/June 2014
Elgar: Organ Works
Benjamin Nicholas organ DCD34162
The first recording of Merton’s new Dobson organ – a mixed recital spanning repertoire from Bach and Stanley to Dupré and Messiaen – was designed to demonstrate the instrument’s considerable versatility. But behind the contemporary sophistication of its construction and design, this is essentially an English Romantic organ with a big, warm-hearted personality, securely grounded in the aesthetic traditions of the late nineteenth century, and this second recording highlights those qualities in music by the composer who pre-eminently shares them: Edward Elgar.
Benjamin Nicholas, Merton’s Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music, here proves himself a fine Elgarian and an inventive programmer, coupling Elgar’s two original major works for the organ with three transcriptions –including a first outing on CD for the superb arrangement of the Prelude to The Kingdom made by Herbert Brewer, Elgar’s contemporary and the long-serving organist of Gloucester Cathedral.
John Rutter: The Tewkesbury Collection
Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum / Benjamin Nicholas
DCD34107
For his final recording with the men and boys of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, Benjamin Nicholas chose to celebrate Britain’s best-loved living composer. Rather than simply sticking to familiar classics, this programme explores the full range of Rutter’s output, from The Lord is my shepherd and Lord, thou hast been our refuge to his most recent piece, This is the day, written for the wedding of Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
‘beautifully scented performances from the boys and men … augmented variously by gorgeous solo contributions on oboe, cello and trumpet, and from organist Carleton Etherington’ — The Scotsman, August 2012
Judith Weir: Choral Music
Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber DCD34095
This first recording devoted entirely to Judith Weir’s choral music comprises her complete works to date for unaccompanied choir or choir with one instrument – trombone and marimba as well as the more usual organ. Tracking her evolving relationship with the medium from her earliest liturgical commission to the most recent, premiered in 2009, it also includes several secular pieces and her two solo organ works, which are now established classics of the repertoire. The athleticism, intensity and clarity that mark out Geoffrey Webber’s choir are ideally suited to Weir’s strikingly original, approachable and fascinating music.
‘The freshness and precision of Weir’s writing is perfectly matched by the well tuned, clearly articulated singing’
— BBC Music Magazine, December 2011, CHORAL & SONG CHOICE
