Malcolm Keeler has looked back across 450 years and selected a half-dozen anniversaries associated with choral music to celebrate alongside the programme’s main feature, the centenary of the death of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: Robert White (d. 1574), John Wilbye (baptised1574), Giacomo Carissimi (d. 1674), Anton Bruckner (b. 1824), Edward Bairstow (b. 1874) and Giacomo Puccini who, like Stanford, died in 1924.
Singers need no reminders about the quality of Stanford's choral music: The Blue Bird remains one of the most celebrated of all partsongs. The programme inludes works from the pre-war period: Song of Peace and Wisdom of Wisdom from Bible Songs (1909), 3 Latin Motets (1905), For Lo, I raise up (1914), Te Deum in B flat (1898), Postlude in D minor (1908), Glorious and powerful God (1913).
The obvious companions to the Stanford motets are those by Bruckner: Locus iste, Christus factus est, Os justi and the rarely heard Pange lingua.
Our programme opens with the fourth of Robert White's settings of the Compline hymn Christe qui lux es et dies. Sally Dunkley wrote: “Nowhere is White’s art better displayed than in this exquisite miniature”.
Baptised in 1574, John Wilbye’s emotionally charged madrigals are also firm choir favourites, especially Draw on, sweet night.
Giacomo Carissimi established the characteristics of the Latin oratorio that passed on to Handel. Dramatic energy abounds in his setting of the words of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus.
Puccini’s very short Requiem (1905) commemorated the 4th anniversary of the death of Verdi and uses the same ‘enigmatic scale’ used by Verdi in his 4 Sacred Pieces.
The mystical favour of Bairstow’s I sat down under his shadow from 1925 suggests an affinity with Bairstow’s contemporary, Gustav Holst.
Anniversaries benefit cultural recognition, engaging community and media interest. They also help sustain and sometimes rekindle a composer's legacy.
