Saint Cecilia Singers

Saturday 20th September 2008

All Saints Church, Cheltenham at 7.00pm

Holst Birthday Concert

by kind invitation of the Trustees of The Holst Birthplace Museum

In a Tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams

Five Mystical Songs ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams

(Rise, Heart - I got me flowers - Love bade me welcome - The call - Antiphon)

James McKelvey - Baritone

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Organ Solo

Prelude on Rhosymedre ~ Vaughan Williams

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Nunc Dimittis'

Gustav Holst

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Organ Solo

Fantasia and Fugue in G ~ Parry

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Five English English Folk Songs

freely arranged for Unaccompanied Chorus by Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Dark Eyed Sailor ~ The Spring Time of the Year ~ Just as the Tide was Flowing ~ The Lover's Ghost ~ Wassail Song

Conductor

Russell Burton

Click here for a review of this concert

http://www.freewebs.com/saintceciliasingers/reviews.htm

Saturday 8th November 2008

St Mary's Church, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham at 7.30pm

'For the Fallen'

Music and Readings for Remembrancetide

Programme

Greater Love.......................................................John Ireland

Valiant-for-Truth...............................Ralph Vaughan Williams

Reading

Hear My Prayer..................................................Henry Purcell

Selig sind Toten..............................................Heinrich Schutz

Remember not Lord.........................................Henry Purcell

Reading

Lord, let me know mine end................Charles Hastings Parry

INTERVAL

Lord, Thou hast been our refuge.........Ralph Vaughan Williams

Reading

Agnus Dei.........................................................Samuel Barber

My Prayer............................................................Bob Chilcott

Song for Athene..................................................John Tavener

Reading

Bring us, O Lord................................................William Harris

For the Fallen....................................................Douglas Guest

Friday 12th December 2008

Church of St Margaret of Antioch, Alderton, Winchcombe

'From Advent to Christmas'

Music for the Festive Season

PROGRAMME

Antiphon : O Sapientia......................................................................Plainsong

Once in Royal David's City.................................................................Stephen Cleobury

What Sweeter Music...........................................................................John Rutter

READING

Antiphon : O Adonai...........................................................................Plainsong

Out of your Sleep.................................................................................Richard Rodney Bennett

Ding Dong Merrily on High................................................................arr. David Willcocks

O Come Emmanuel..............................................................................arr. David Willcocks

Radix Jesse............................................................................................Plainsong

Virga Jesse............................................................................................Anton Bruckner

O Little Town of Bethlehem...............................................................Walford Davies

READING

Antiphon : O Clavis David..................................................................Plainsong

The Angel Gabriel................................................................................Basque trad.

Videte Miraculum................................................................................Thomas Tallis

God rest ye, Merry Gentlemen..........................................................arr. David Willcocks

Antiphon : O Oriens.............................................................................Plainsong

I Wonder as I Wander.........................................................................Carl Rutti

The Shepherd Carol.............................................................................Bob Chilcott

Antiphon : O Rex Gentium...................................................................Plainsong

God so Loved the World.......................................................................John Stainer

READING

Antiphon : O Emmanuel.......................................................................Plainsong

Benedicamus Domino............................................................................Peter Warlock

Hark the Herald-Angels Sing...............................................................arr. David Willcocks

Monday 22nd December 2008

Gloucester Cathedral at 7.30pm

'Noel!'



The Saint Cecilia Singers Christmas Concert for 2008

Carols for Choir and Audience, with Works Old and New

PROGRAMME

Antiphon : O Sapientia......................................................................Plainsong

               Once in Royal David's City.................................................................Stephen Cleobury

    What Sweeter Music...........................................................................John Rutter

READING

Antiphon : O Adonai...........................................................................Plainsong

                           Out of your Sleep.................................................................................Richard Rodney Bennett

                   Ding Dong Merrily on High................................................................arr. David Willcocks

                  O Come Emmanuel..............................................................................arr. David Willcocks

Radix Jesse............................................................................................Plainsong

            Virga Jesse............................................................................................Anton Bruckner

            O Little Town of Bethlehem...............................................................Walford Davies

READING

Antiphon : O Clavis David..................................................................Plainsong

     The Angel Gabriel................................................................................Basque trad.

       Videte Miraculum................................................................................Thomas Tallis

                  God rest ye, Merry Gentlemen..........................................................arr. David Willcocks

Antiphon : O Oriens.............................................................................Plainsong

I Wonder as I Wander.........................................................................Carl Rutti

    The Shepherd Carol.............................................................................Bob Chilcott

Antiphon : O Rex Gentium...................................................................Plainsong

      God so Loved the World.......................................................................John Stainer

READING

  Antiphon : O Emmanuel.......................................................................Plainsong

           Benedicamus Domino............................................................................Peter Warlock

                     Hark the Herald-Angels Sing...............................................................arr. David Willcocks

    We Wish You a Merry Christmas.......................................................arr. Warrell

Saturday 28th February 2009

St Andrew's Church, Station Road, Churchdown, Gloucester at 7.30pm

Charity Concert in aid of the Friends of the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival

Five English Folk Songs......................Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958

READING

Hear my Prayer......................................................Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Valiant for Truth.....................................................Ralph Vaughan Williams

READING

Lord, let me know mine end....................................Ralph Vaughan Williams

READING

My Prayer...................................................................Bob Chilcott (b. 1955)

Remember not Lord.................................................................Henry Purcell

I was glad................................................................................Henry Purcell

Saturday 14th March 2009 at 7.30pm

Saint Michael and All Angels, Ledbury

Conductor ~ Ashley Grote

Organ ~ Charles Matthews

Mass for Double Choir

Frank Martin (1890 -1974)

The intimacy and intensity of Frank Martin’s Mass for double choir is such that the composer kept it locked away in a drawer for forty years after its composition, unwilling to release it to the outside world. His reason was the work’s deeply spiritual nature. Martin grew up in a fervently Christian family, the son of a Calvinist minister, and religious themes dominate the majority of his work, both choral and instrumental. Just as Fauré wrote his Requiem “for pleasure” rather than with performance in mind, Frank Martin composed his Mass as a personal offering to God not intended for public airing. Written originally in 1922, the work was only premièred in 1963 after much persuasion from Franz Brunnert, a close friend and Conductor of the Hamburg Bugenhagen Kantorei. At the time of the première, Martin wrote: “I did not want it to be performed… I considered it… as being a matter between God and myself”.

The Mass was not the only work that Martin withheld from performance. A fastidious composer, it was only after years of study of many centuries and different schools of composition that he became satisfied with his own musical voice. The result is a unique language that incorporates elements of the musical styles the influenced him most: the contrapuntal techniques of Bach, the polyphony of the Italian Renaissance and the colourful palette of the French Impressionists.

Although the Mass is not based on plainsong themes (like much of the music of his Catholic contemporary Maurice Duruflé), its freely-flowing lines were clearly in his mind at the opening of the Kyrie. The calm opening to the Gloria creates a sense of awe rather than of rapturous praise; this then gives way to a movement full of complex rhythmic activity. Like the Gloria, the Credo demonstrates Martin’s skill in setting long texts with concision and character. His love of counterpoint is brought to life in the light and dancing phrases of ‘Et Resurrexit’, the joy of the resurrection revealed through the weaving canonic lines. The gently swaying harmonies of the Sanctus are followed by an urgent and passionate setting of the Benedictus that seems appropriate as we approach Palm Sunday – Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord! The ecstatic cry of ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ is one of the only fortissimo passages in this intimate piece, and was for a while the conclusion of the whole work.

Some years later in 1926, Martin revisited the work to add the final movement, the Agnus Dei, in which each choir is musically independent of the other. The steady and relentless pulse of the second choir is the rhythmic antithesis of the first choir, whose flowing plainchant-like melody is a pleading cry for mercy. It is only in the final bars that the two are united in rhythm and harmony – ‘Lamb of God, grant us thy peace’.

Requiem

Gabriel Faure (1845 - 1924)

Gabriel Fauré wrote his Requiem not for a particular person or occasion, but in his own words purely “for the pleasure of it”. There can be little doubt however that when sketching the work in 1887 his thoughts turned to his Father who had died only two years previously, and his ailing Mother, who died just before the Requiem’s completion in 1888. Fauré stands apart from most significant composers of his time as one who rejected the musical excesses of the late Romantic age, preferring the intimacy of chamber music and the solo song to the noise and grandeur of the large-scale symphonies and operas that dominated. In the same way, Fauré’s response to the Requiem text was at odds with many of his contemporaries. Berlioz and Verdi’s vast settings both focused on the drama of the Last Judgement, employing huge musical forces to strike awe and terror into the listener. Fauré, a religious sceptic, had no interest in this melodrama, and for him the Requiem was a work of quiet contemplation, a glimpse of Paradise and eternal rest: "Everything I managed to entertain in the way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

Fauré was Organist of the Madeleine Church in Paris, where the Requiem was first performed in 1888 with very modest forces, the organ joined only by a small string ensemble, harp and timpani. Only five short movements were set – the Introit and Kyrie, Sanctus, the famous solo Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei and finally the In Paradisum, a text taken from the Burial Service. The Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum made famous in settings by other composers were left out, Fauré actively choosing to omit such references to the terrors of Judgement. Fauré expanded the work in 1893, adding the Offertory and including the Libera Me which he had written as a stand-alone work in 1877. Passages for solo Baritone were incorporated and the instrumentation broadened to include Bassoons, French Horns and Trumpets. Publishers later persuaded Fauré, much to his reluctance, that a further expansion for large orchestra would increase the work’s popularity as a concert piece: this was premièred in 1900 and succeeded in taking the work out of the Church and into the Concert Hall. There is no doubt that this was a departure from Fauré’s intentions and the work’s original conception, and so it is that the smaller scale version of 1893 is most widely performed today.

Programme notes by Ashley Grote

Saturday 4th April 2009

Gloucester Cathedral

'Palms and Passion'

Music for Lent and Holy Week

To include one of the greatest a capella works of the last century together with a much loved setting of the Requiem Mass

Mass for Double Choir...........................Frank Martin (1845 - 1974)

Requiem, op.48...............................Gabriel Faure (1845 - 1924)

Gloucester's Foremost Chamber Choir