"Make a joyful
noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve
the Lord with gladness: come before
his presence with singing." In
one form or another, these words have
inspired countless composers and innumerable
choirs and vocalists through the last
several millennia. This CD is a collection
of pieces for largely unaccompanied
male chorus, with twelve adult and eighteen
boy choristers performing sacred music
from a rather diverse collection of
traditions and epochs. The two things
which tie this music together are the
focus on the divine inspiration of the
texts and the largely unaccompanied
choral tradition designed to highlight
the texts from which all of the music
is derived. Where any instrumental accompaniment
enters into the compositions, it is
by nature almost exclusively in support
of the vocals, and intended to augment
and give more body to the choir rather
than to contrast or ornament the arrangements.
Thus this is a sacred choral album in
the purest sense, recorded by a church
choir in a cathedral, intended to inspire
the faithful and echo the choirs of
angels in the most literal sense.
By selecting vocal
works from different languages, times,
and lands, this collection does a good
job of appealing to many tastes. However
the variety is limited due to the constrained
nature of the performing group and the
intended audience. Church audiences
are notoriously conservative, even in
the realm of musical accompaniment to
worship. Thus the Walton and Finzi have
no difficulty coexisting beside the
Allegri and da Palestrina works, nearly
four centuries their senior.
The works from the
16th century are the unaccompanied,
openly chorded, nearly unmetered sounds
so indicative of Renaissance church
music all set for the Mass. The Gregorio
Allegri work Miserere mei, Deus
includes sections of plainchant alternating
with harmonized choral work and stratospheric
treble melodies, and the Versa est
in luctum contains some of the most
luscious harmonizations written in the
era. The ways of Sion do mourn
is a duet also hearkens to the same
tradition with open sounds and free
flowing rhythms, but includes a simple
organ part, probably written for the
portative organ rather than a choral
backing.
The other works tend
to make use of the organ, though generally
in a very restrained way. The Franck
work Panis Angelicus, for instance,
uses the organ to supplement the boys’
choir singing in unison rather than
adding an adult choir for support the
way that William Walton does in A
Litany. The concluding work, Lo,
the full, final sacrifice is the
only work on the album with an extended
organ section, and even here it is used
mostly to introduce and transition between
different material.
As far as the individual
performances, there are a couple of
places in Hear My Prayer where
the soloist seems to falter and fall
below pitch, but otherwise each song
on the album is excellent. The choir
blends well and the soloists tend toward
a vocal purity that is truly outstanding.
The selections presented are very representative
of music that has stood out as true
masterworks of church literature through
the ages. The choir does a very nice
job of performing, and it is doubtless
that one could see how such music would
make a listener feel closer to heaven.
The performances give one a sense of
calm and serenity. A very nice set of
performances, this is an album that
Truro Cathedral Choir should truly take
pride in and be proud of.
Patrick Gary
Truro Cathedral Choir/Robert Sharpe 