STANFORD
Anthems and Services
St. John's College Choir, Cambridge
Christopher Robinson
Total Playing Time: 01:11:10
Physical Release: 05/2003
NAXOS
Stan : użuwana, 1 ryska + niewiele powierzchownych mikro rysek, bez wpływu na odtwarzanie.
Odsłuch:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanford-Anthems-Services-Christopher-Whitton/dp/B001LZKF3U
Michael White
Gramophone, January 2015
GRAMOPHONE SPECIALIST’S GUIDE TO… Music for Choral Evensong # 8
A key issue from the Naxos choral series, recorded in 2002 when the choir was on a serious high (with Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton and Andrew Staples among its choral scholars). Stanford’s sturdily Edwardian idiom is softened by a sensitivity and warmth in the C major Evening Service. And the G major Service, with its bubbling organ line and treble solo, has the clear, bright delicacy that it should for something so distinctly ‘school of Fauré’. © 2015 Gramophone
Penguin Guide, January 2009
The church music of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford stands at the very heart of the Anglican tradition, and Christopher Robinson with his splendid, fresh-voiced choir of St John’s, Cambridge, offers an ideal cross-section. When Stanford tended to concentrate on setting the Magnificat and Nund dimittis of the Evening Service it is good to have two examples represented, the G major with its opening treble solo more intimate and less dramatic than the C major . Having the C major Morning Service (but without the Jubilate) as well as the Communion Service gives a broader perspective, with the traditional Cranmer words fro the Mass ending with the Gloria, where nowadays Anglo-Catholic follows the Roman order in their devotions. As in other issues in the excellent Naxos series, the chapel acoustic is warmly atmospheric, while allowing lightness and transparency in the choral textures, with words commendably clear.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford is considered the father of English choral music and played a major role in the English musical renaissance through his legacy of teaching and composing. Almost every major 20th Century English composer benefited from his strict tuition: Holst, Moeran, Bliss, Vaughan Williams, Howells and Bridge all studied under him. In his compositions he re-shaped and enriched the repertoire with finely-wrought anthems and services, many of which are still performed every day in Anglican cathedrals around the world.
By Bernard Davison 5 February 2008Format: Audio CDThis CD is in Naxos' English Choral Music series, one of their highest quality projects so far, utilising the skills of the Choir of St John's College Cambridge.
Stanford is the 19th century Ireland born father of 20th century English Choral music. His Services and Anthems are as English as cricket played on a village green. This is music born of Victorian confidence. Assured, serene settings for a world that had yet to experience the horrors of the First World War. Some of it is perhaps just a little too sweet sounding for our ears today.
The standout works are the Three Latin Motets. Though they were composed in the 1880's they sound more modern. Compared with his other church music their melodies are tauter and their harmonies are drier. Their back-to-the-future uses of English 16th century choral music influences also make them more 20th century in their conception. They are, quite simply, beautiful.
The idea that Stanford was an old dog who couldn't learn new musical tricks is brought into question by his Communion Service in C from around 1909. Written several years after Ralph Vaughan Williams had edited The English Hymnal and put his then novel style all over it, Stanford can be heard responding to the new breeze blowing through English church music.
For many people Stanford's church music remains worth hearing in it's own right. The one area of his music that did not go out of fashion after the First World War. This music is also worth hearing as a background to 20th Century British church composition. He both taught the next two generations of British composers and influenced their church music, as this disc shows. The CD is worth hearing in its own right. The Choir of St John's College Cambridge are never less than very good, and when they tackle more demanding works (just listen to the Rubbra disc in this series) the music inspires them to new heights. Here too, the more original the music, the more magical the performance.
All in all an excellent disc.
About this Recording
8.555794 - STANFORD: Anthems and Services
English German
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was one of the seminal figures of the British musical renaissance in the late nineteenth century. Born in Dublin, he demonstrated talents as a composer from his teens and won an organ scholarship to Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1870. During 1874 and 1875 he also studied with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig and Friedrich Kiel in Berlin. From 1874 to 1892 he was organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, and his skills as a conductor led to appointments that included CUMS (Cambridge University Musical Society) and the Bach Choir. His two principal academic appointments were as professor of music at Cambridge from 1887 to 1924 and as professor of composition at the Royal College of Music from 1883 to 1924. He taught two generations of British composers including Vaughan Williams, Holst, Ireland, Moeran and Howells, and was knighted in 1902. Brahms was Stanford’s musical ‘god’, and his own music reflects his influence. During his life his compositions were highly successful at home and abroad. His legacy includes seven symphonies, of which the Third, the ‘Irish’ (1887), is best known, choral works large and small, ranging from the Requiem (1896) and Songs of the Fleet (1910), to the exquisite part-song The Bluebird (1910), and operas such as Shamus O’Brien (1894-5).
It is for his contribution to Anglican church music, however, that Stanford is principally remembered. This included major settings of the canticles as well as anthems, hymns and organ works. In his first important setting of the Services, in B flat (1879), it is clear that he is sweeping away the moribund approach of earlier Victorian composers and is establishing new expressive means through applying Brahmsian procedures in cyclical unity, thematic transformation and symphonic structure. The rôle of the accompanying organ is also heightened to superb effect. These tenets, subsequently enriched and developed with maturity, mark all the Services that followed.
Stanford’s last important setting of the Morning, Communion and Evening Services, in C major, was composed in 1909. It is arguably his grandest and the one in which the thematic ideas are most closely knit together to provide a unifying force. The opening of the Te Deum is sonorous and expansive, its curvaceous melodic line, like the arches of a great cathedral, permeates the settings. So too the theme introduced by the basses at ‘The glorious company of the Apostles’, and the organ’s accompaniment figure at the section beginning ‘When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man’. At the end the opening idea returns to sweep the music to its resplendent climax at ‘O Lord in thee have I trusted’. Superficially the music of the lilting Benedictus is unrelated to the Te Deum, but links are present in the key scheme underlying its two principal ideas, and in the Gloria, when the opening phrase of the Te Deum returns in the glorious, affirmatory ‘Amen’.
The unaccompanied Three Latin Motets have justly remained among the most enduring of Stanford’s sacred works. Although published in 1905, they were composed earlier in 1887-8. The words of Justorum animae derive from the third chapter of the Book of Wisdom. Cast in ternary form, the calm of the first section is contrasted by a more animated middle part with the voices entering in imitation. Coelos ascendit hodie is a setting of a medieval hymn whose words describe the glory of the ascended Christ. Conceived for double choir, the music is exultant throughout, and utilises antiphonal effects such as the pervasive crisp, fanfare-like call on the words ‘Alleluia’ which is tossed exuberantly between the choirs. Psalm 119 provides the words for the Beati quorum via which is scored in six parts. Particularly beautiful is the still moment when the upper and lower voices in turn hover between major and minor chords on the word ‘Beati’, and the tender, arched phrase at ‘quorum via’ near to the end.
For his Evening Service in C major Stanford wrote an Allegro moderato movement around sonata-form principles with the verses of the canticle divided into four short sections. It begins with a majestic, ecstatic statement of praise; notable too is the contrast of textures at the start of the fourth section (‘He hath filled the hungry’), when the full choir is pared down to trebles, then tenors and basses at the words ‘the rich he hath sent empty away’. The Nunc dimittis is conceived in one span and builds resplendently to its final climax on the phrase ‘and to be the glory of thy people Israel’ which is a variant of the opening of the Te Deum. Both canticles end with the Gloria from the Benedictus thus achieving further thematic integrity.
In the late nineteenth century it was not standard practice to set the whole of the Communion Service so that in the Communion Service in C the principal sections are the Credo, Sanctus and Gloria. During Stanford’s lifetime, however, choirs began to sing the Benedictus and Agnus Dei. In 1909 he added these to his earlier Service in F, but tonally they match the C major and B flat settings as well. A complementary Kyrie eleison was arranged by C.S. Phillips and C.E.S. Littlejohn in 1935 from Stanford’s Responses to the Commandments of his Communion Service in G. By this, a complete version of the Mass is achieved as is heard on this recording. In the Credo, Sanctus and Gloria the clarity of the words are emphasized for the communicant by vocal writing in which all parts move together, whilst in the Kyrie, Agnus Dei and Benedictus the lines are more independent. The latter begins with a melody of serene beauty for the basses which is marked by an expressive fall at the repetition of the word ‘Blessed’.
The Prelude in G major and Postlude in D minor for organ that frame this recording of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in G were composed in 1907. Within the G major Services composed in 1902, the evening canticles have remained the most popular. This is partly owing to the composer’s striking use of the solo treble and bass voices, emphasizing that the texts are the ‘songs’ of the Virgin and Simeon respectively. The fleet Magnificat has a weaving arpeggiated accompaniment, which Sir Edward Bairstow perceptively likened to the image of the spinning-wheel that is invariably present in Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation. Throughout soloist and choir are interwoven in a seamless weft, with the soloist soaring high as if reflecting the Virgin’s heart leaping with joy at the angel’s news. By contrast the Nunc dimittis is solemn, growing from the organ’s introductory bars to which the crucial words ‘depart in peace’ are later set. The Glorias of both canticles are for choir alone and in Stanford’s customary manner utilise the same music but to entirely different effect.
For lo, I will raise up is one of Stanford’s most powerful utterances: an anthem that in its scope is akin to an operatic scena with contrasting emotions, tempos and choral colours. It was composed in 1914, and Stanford’s choice of words from the Book of Habakkuk is significant, given the onset of hostilities and his abhorrence of war. The opening section is ominous, restless, with an agitated accompaniment that seems to set in motion implacable and relentless forces of destruction. Vivid musical images arise from the words, for instance the sound of the galloping horses’ hooves at ‘Their horses also are swifter than leopards’. An emphatic unison at ‘whose might is his God’, halts the terror, and leads to a reflective section, and a change to the major key, in which the oppressed place their hope in God and affirm their belief in his powers at ‘We shall not die’. Solos for treble and tenor lead to God’s promise that the foes will ultimately be vanquished. The tempo quickens and leads to a blazing, radiant treble phrase mirroring the words ‘earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God’, followed by a triumphant organ passage which ends with a dramatic harmonic jolt on the climactic chord. A brief, masterly conceived coda concludes the anthem, as the Lord in his holy temple is evoked by hushed music suffused with awe.
Andrew Burn
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