Goldsmiths Choral Union
THE PASSING OF THE YEAR
Lauridsen: Sure on This Shining Night
Stanford: Songs of the Fleet
Dove: The Passing of the Year
Stanford: Three Motets
Rheinberger: Mass in E-flat major
Goldsmiths Choral Union
Jack Apperley Conductor
Alex Bower-Brown Baritone
Moses Torto Tenor
Stephen Jones Piano
Benjamin Frost Piano
Holy Trinity Church
146 Sloane Street, London SW1X 9BZ 20th June 2025 at 7.30 pm
We hope you enjoy this evening’s concert. You will find more information about Goldsmiths Choral Union on the website via this QR code.
WELCOME TO THIS EVENING’S CONCERT
We are showcasing Goldsmiths Choral Union as a versatile and nimble ensemble, presenting music from two composers who appreciate harmonic rules and conventions, contrasting with the music of two contemporary composers who focus on colour and sensualism. The programme also explores how these composers have used imaginative, complementary and contrasting textures for double choir over the past 150 years. The moods captured span from humorous, light and witty, to consoling and mournful, to pulsating and energetic, to lyrical and sweet.
Jack Apperley is conducting tonight’s concert. Goldsmiths’ Music Director since 2022, he is also the Associate Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus, Music Director of Concordia Voices and Conductor of the Epsom Chamber Choir.
Having studied music with Simon Halsey CBE at Birmingham University, Jack obtained a masters at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Patrick Russill. Recently he was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Alex Bower-Brown received an early education in music as a chorister at St John’s College, Cambridge. He is studying with a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, under professors Glenville Hargreaves and Iain Ledingham.
Alex has a wealth of experience singing both as a baritone soloist and in choirs, performing in some of the most illustrious venues in the world. He has sung Pilate in Bach’s St John Passion conducted by Philippe Herreweghe and performed the title role in Michael Finnissy’s new opera Mankind in a series of première performances around Norfolk. He is performing at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival this season.
Moses Torto graduated in Environmental Science in Ghana, and gained a place to study at the Guildhall school of Music and Drama in 2023. He loves Bel Canto music and enjoys romantic composers, with aspirations of becoming a professional opera and concert singer. He is a GCU choral scholar.
Stephen Jones has been Accompanist of Goldsmiths since 1978, Founder Director and Conductor of City Chamber Choir, and Musical Director of the Aeolian Singers. He sang in London’s cathedrals, and was a member of the Queen’s Parish Church and a founder member of the close harmony quartet Original Blend.
Benjamin Frost studied music at Exeter University, graduating with Distinction in performance. He was Organ Scholar at Exeter Cathedral and became an associate of the Royal College of Organists. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where his tutors included Gordon Back and Graham Johnson, and he trained as a repetiteur at the National Opera Studio.
He has worked with the BBC, English National Opera and The Opera Group. In 2017 he was appointed Chorus Accompanist of the London Symphony Chorus. Benjamin played with The Epiphoni Consort for a gala concert ‘Vast Ocean of Light’ celebrating Jonathan Dove’s 60th Birthday. The programme featured Dove’s recent choral works culminating in The Passing of the Year.
Sure
on this Shining Night (2005)
Morten Lauridsen (1943 - present)
James Agee’s enigmatic poem provides the inspiration for Lauridsen, who reaches deep inside himself to compose wonderful sweeping vocal harmonies underpinned by simple flowing movement in the piano.‘ I set the verse very much like a song from the American musical theater stage and it should be sung in that manner.’
In the company of seagulls, eagles and lapping waves Lauridsen discovered the tranquility and simplicity of Waldron Island, off the coast of the state of Washington, where he retreated with his $50 piano to his rustic cabin, dubbed ‘Crum’s Castle’. Many summers were spent there, reading poetry every day.
Lauridsen is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. In 2007 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest artistic award in the United States.
Three
Motets, Op. 38 (1887/1890)
Songs of the Fleet, Op. 117 (1910)
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 - 1924)
It was when Stanford was organist at Trinity College, Cambridge that he wrote his Three Motets for the College Choir, among the finest of his choral compositions. Taking the words of Henry Newbolt’s poem, Stanford set Songs of the Fleet to music, which was first performed at the Leeds Festival.
Stanford was Professor of Music at Cambridge and Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music simultanteously for nearly 40 years. He helped bring about the English musical renaissance. He was a prolific composer of symphonies, concertos, piano pieces, organ works, oratorios, choral works for church performance, operas, and songs. Stanford’s fame was eclipsed by many of his students who owed much to his teaching and technical mastery (Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells, Bliss) although
some wished to break free from his intense conservatism and enthusiasm for Brahms. In recognition of Stanford’s contribution to English music, he was knighted in 1902 and his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey.
The Passing of the Year (2000)
Jonathan Dove, CBE (1959 - present)
Dove grew up in Blackheath, London. He played the piano, organ and viola from an early age, composing music on the piano and taking a great interest in making model theatres. He went to Cambridge University and studied composition under Robin Holloway.
Dove is a contemporary composer, working closely with singers and actors. Regularly commissioned by Glyndebourne, LSO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, he has written more than thirty operas. Winner of many awards, Dove was the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival 2001 - 2006, and Festival Director of the Salisbury Festival in 2019. He was awarded a CBE in 2019.
Mass in E-flat major, Cantus Missae, Op. 109 (1878)
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839 - 1901)
This is one of fourteen masses composed by Rheinberger, a glorious affirmation of his faith, radiating joy. Composed for an unaccompanied double choir, he wrote it in only a few days early in his tenure as Bavarian court composer in Munich. He dedicated the Mass to Pope Leo XIII, which earned him the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
When the second (and present) Munich Conservatorium was founded, Rheinberger was appointed Royal Professor of Organ and Composition, a post he held for the rest of his life. Today, Rheinberger is remembered above all for his elaborate and challenging organ compositions. He is Liechtenstein’s most famous composer.
Lauridsen:
Sure On This Shining Night
James Agee
Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars.
Stanford: Songs of the Fleet
Henry Newbolt
1 - Sailing at Dawn
One by one the pale stars die before the day now, One by one the great ships are stirring from their sleep, Cables all are rumbling, anchors all aweigh now, Now the fleet’s a fleet again, gliding towards the deep.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways, Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray; Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways! Souls of all the sea dogs, lead the line today!
Far away behind us town and tower are dwindling, Home becomes a fair dream faded long ago; Infinitely glorious the height of heaven is kindling, Infinitely desolate the shoreless sea below.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways, etc.
Once again with proud hearts we make the old surrender, Once again with high hearts serve the age to be, Not for us the warm life of Earth, secure and tender, Ours th’eternal wandering and warfare of the sea.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways, etc
2 - The Song of the Sou’Wester
The sun was lost in a leaden sky, And the shore lay under our lee; When a great Sou’Wester hurricane high Came rollicking up the sea. He played with the fleet as a boy with boats Till out for the Downs we ran, And he laugh’d with the roar of a thousand throats At the militant ways of man.
O, I am the enemy most of might, The other be who you please! Gunner and guns may all be right, Flags a-flying and armour tight, But I am the fellow you’ve first to fight The giant that swings the seas.
A dozen of middies were down below Chasing the X they love, While the table curtseyed long and slow And the lamps were giddy above. The lesson was all of a ship and a shot, And some of it may have been true, But the word they heard and never forgot Was the word of the wind that blew.
O, I am the enemy most of might, etc
The Middy with luck is a Captain soon, With luck he may hear one day His own big guns a-humming the tune “’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay.”
But wherever he goes, with friends or foes, And whatever may there befall, He’ll hear for ever a voice he knows For ever defying them all.
O, I am the enemy most of might, etc
3 - The Middle Watch
In a blue dusk the ship astern Uplifts her slender spars, With golden lights that seem to burn Among the silver stars. Like fleets along a cloudy shore The constellations creep Like planets on the ocean floor Our silent course we keep.
And over the endless plain, Out of the night forlorn Rises a faint refrain A song of the day to be born Watch, O watch, till ye find again Life and the land of morn.
From a dim West to a dark East Our lines unwavering head, As if their motion long had ceased And Time itself were dead. Vainly we watch the deep below, Vainly the void above; They died a thousand years ago, Life and the land we love.
But over the endless plain,etc
4 - The Little Admiral
Stand by to reckon up your battleships
Ten twenty thirty there they go. Brag about your cruisers like Leviathans
A thousand men a-piece down below.
But here’s just one little Admiral, We’re all of us his brothers and his sons, And he’s worth O he’s worth at the very least Double all your tons and all your guns.
Stand by to reckon up your battleships, etc
See them on the forebridge signalling
A score of men a hauling hand to hand, And the whole fleet flying like the wild geese
Moved by some mysterious command.
Where’s the mighty will that shows the way to them, The mind that sees a-head so quick and clear?
He’s there, Sir, walking all along there
The little man whose voice you never hear.
Stand by to reckon up your battleships, etc
There are queer things that only come to sailor-men, They’re true, but they’re never understood; And I know one thing about the Admiral, That I can’t tell rightly as I should.
I’ve been with him when hope sank under us
He hardly seemed a mortal like the rest, I could swear that he had stars upon his uniform, And one sleeve pinned across his breast.
Stand by to reckon up your battleships, etc
Some day we’re bound to sight the enemy, He’s coming, tho’ he hasn’t yet a name Keel to keel and gun to gun he’ll challenge us
To meet him at the Great Armada game. None knows what may be the end of it, But we’ll all give our bodies and our souls
To see the little Admiral a-playing him
A rubber of the old Long Bowls!
Stand by to reckon up your battleships, etc
5 - Fare Well
Mother, with unbowed head
Hear thou across the sea
The fare-well of the dead, The dead who died for thee.
Greet them again with tender words and grave, For, saving thee, themselves they could not save.
To keep the house unharmed
Their fathers built so fair, Deeming endurance armed
Better then brute despair, They found the secret of the word that saith, “Service is sweet, for all true life is death.”
So greet thou well thy dead
Across the homeless sea, And be thou comforted
Because they died for thee.
Far off they served, but now their deed is done. For evermore their life and thine are one.
TENOR SOLO by Moses Torto
Ben Moore: The Lake Isle of Innisfree words by W. B. Yeats
Dove: The Passing of the Year
1 - William Blake
O Earth, O Earth, return!
2 - William Blake
The narrow bud opens her beauties to The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins; Blossoms hang round the brows of morning, and Flourish down the bright cheek of modest eve, Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing, And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.
The spirits of the air live on the smells Of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.
Summer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu
3 - Emily Dickinson
Answer JulyWhere is the BeeWhere is the BlushWhere is the Hay?
Ah, said JulyWhere is the SeedWhere is the BudWhere is the MayAnswer Thee - Me -
Nay - said the MayShow me the SnowShow me the BellsShow me the Jay!
Quibbled the JayWhere be the MaizeWhere be the HazeWhere be the Bur? Here - said the Year -
4 - George Peele
Hot sun, cool fire, temper’d with sweet air, Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair: Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me; Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me: Shadow, my sweet nurse keep me from burning, Make not my glad cause, cause of (my) mourning.
Let not my beauty’s fire Enflame unstaid desire, Nor pierce any bright eye That wand’reth lightly.
5 - William Blake
Ah, Sun-flower! Weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
6 - Thomas Nashe
Adieu! Farewell earth’s bliss! This world uncertain is: Fond are life’s lustful joys, Death proves them all but toys. None from his darts can fly: I am sick, I must dieLord, have mercy on us!
Rich men, trust not in wealth, Gold cannot buy you health; Physic himself must fade; All things to end are made; The plague full swift goes by: I am sick, I must dieLord, have mercy on us!
Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour: Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair Dust hath closed Helen’s eye: I am sick, I must dieLord, have mercy on us!
6 - Alfred Lord Tennyson
O Earth, O Earth, return!
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the time; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.
I N T E R V A L
Stanford: Three Motets
1 - Justorum animæ Wisdom, 3
Justorum animæ in manu Dei sunt, Et non tanget illos tormentum malitiæ Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori, Illi autem sunt in pace.
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 in peace.
2 - Cœlos ascendit hodie Mediaeval hymn celebrating Christ’s ascension
Cœlos ascendit hodie Jesus Christus Rex gloriæ, Sedet ad Patris dexteram, Gubernat cœlum et terram. Iam finem habent omnia, Patris Davidis carmina. Iam Dominus cum Domino. Sedet in Dei solio. In hoc triumpho maximo, Benedicamus Domino. Laudatur Sancta Trinitas Deo dicamus gratias, Alleluia! Amen.
Today, into the heavens has ascended Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, He sits at the Father’s right hand, And rules Heaven and Earth. Now have been fulfilled all of Father David’s songs. Now God is with God. He sits upon the royal throne of God In this his greatest triumph, Let us bless the Lord. Let the Holy Trinity be praised Let us give thanks to the Lord, Alleluia! Amen.
3 - Beati quorum via Psalm 119, 1
Beati quorum via integra est, Qui ambulant in lege Domini.
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, Who walk in the law of the Lord.
BARITONE SOLO by Alex Bower-Brown
John Ireland: Sea Fever
words by John Masefield
Rheinberger: Mass in E-flat major
Kyrie
Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.
Gloria
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Et in terra pax, Pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis, Laudamus te, benedicimus te, Adoramus te, Gratias agimus tibi, Propter magnam gloriam tuam.
Domine Deus, Rex coelestis
Deus pater omnipotens
Domine fili unigenite Jesu Christe.
Domine Deus agnus Dei, filius patris, Qui tollis peccata mundi
Miserere nobis.
Suscipe, deprecationem nostram, Qui sedes ad dexteram patris. Quoniam tu solus sanctus,
Tu solus Dominus, Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe.
Cum sancto spiritu in gloria Dei patris, Amen.
We gratefully acknowledge the following for their support:
HONORARY LIFE FRIENDS
Sarah Dorin, William Gould, David Hayes, Dinah Nichols, Mike Lock, Jan Lowy, Sue Peacock
FRIENDS
Anonymous, Anonymous, Andrew Calvert, John Dempster, Hamish Donaldson, Caroline Green, Elizabeth Grimsey, Joanna Kenny, Carole Lewis, The late Godfrey Rock, Jane Sawyer, Mrs Marylin Smith, The late Duncan Stuart, Tony Stuart, Deb Tanner, Clive Tucker, Charles Thomson, David Willingham
Credo
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem coeli et terræ
Visibilium omnium et invisibilium.
Et in unum dominum, Jesum Christum.
Filium Dei unigenitum
Et ex patre natum ante omnia sæcula Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum non factum, Consubstantialem patri
Per quem omnia facta sunt
Qui propter nos homines
Et propter nostram salutem
Descendit de coelis.
Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto, Ex Maria virgine et homo factus est, Crucifixus, etiam pro nobis, Sub Pontio Pilato passus, Et sepultus est.
Et resurrexit tertia die, Secundum scripturas, Et ascendit in coelum, Sedet ad dexteram Patris.
Et iterum venturus est, Cum gloria, judicare Vivos et mortuos, cujus regni non erit finis.
Et in spiritum sactum, dominum
Et vivificantem
Qui ex patre filioque procedit.
Qui cum patre et filio simul adoratur
Et conglorificatur
Qui locutus est per prophetas.
Et unam sanctam catholicam
Et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma
In remissionem peccatorum.
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
Et vitam venturi sæculi, Amen
Sanctus
Sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua, Osanna in excelsis. Osanna.
Benedictus
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, Osanna in excelsis.
Agnes Dei
Agnes Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem.
FUTURE EVENTS
SUMMER SINGS - 1
BACH Mass in B Minor
Wednesday 25 June 2025
SUMMER SINGS - 2
BRAHMS Ein Deutsches Requiem
Wednesday 2 July 2025
Both at Queen’s Gate House
65-67 Queen’s Gate, SW7 5JS
All are welcome 6.30 - 9.00 pm
Tickets and all information on our website goldsmithschoralunion.org
FANFARES & FLOURISHES
RUTTER Gloria
WALTON Coronation Te Deum
MACMILLAN Tu es Petrus
POULENC Gloria
FINZI God is Gone Up
GABRIELI Canzon Primi Tori A8
GABRIELI Sonata Pian E Forte
Fanfares by COPLAND & TOWER
Smith Square Hall, Westminster
Friday 14 November 2025 at 7.30 pm
Tickets available from choir members, or from Smith Square Hall (booking fees apply)
GOLDSMITHS CHRISTMAS
CELEBRATION - Christmas music and carols with audience participation
Holy Trinity Sloane Square
Friday 19 December 2025 at 7.30 pm
Tickets available from choir members, ordered from tickets.gcu@gmail.com on the door, or via Eventbrite (booking fees apply)
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