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In Excelsis
Choral music across five centuries
Label: Erato
Year: 2002
Performers:
The Choir of New College, Oxford
Edward Higginbottom - conductor
This recording celebrates the affinities bridging nearly 500 years of English music, and by placing works from the last years of the pre-Reformation side by side with those from the late-20th-century flowering of liturgical music, invites the listener to make connections across half a millennium.
Recorded in Merton College Chapel, Oxford
April 2001
" Higginbottom sets out to celebrate affinities between the last years of the pre-Reformation period and the late-20th-century blooming of devotional music. His programme works well as an illustration of this premise and, perhaps more importantly, as a coherent musical unit."
" The rich tone favoured by New College Choir here works exceptionally well with such liturgical showpieces as Giles Swayne's Magnificat and Jonathan Harvey's Come, Holy Ghost. This disc conveys spiritual values without a trace of soporific monotony. Unmissable."
" Following the tremendous success of the Gramophone award-winning Agnus Dei album, the Choir of New College Oxford under the musical direction of Edward Higginbottom...celebrate English choral polyphony over the last 500 years. In Excelsis is a deeply moving record that bridges the gap between ritualistic 16th-century composers like John Taverner and 20th-century minimalists like John Tavener and Giles Swayne"
Tracklist:
01. Giles Swayne - Magnificat
02. Richard Pygott - Quid petis, o fili?
03. John Tavener - The Lamb
04. Jonathan Harvey - Come, Holy Ghost
05. John Taverner - Gloria (from 'The Western Wynde" mass)
06. John Tavener - A Hymn to the Mother of God
07. Nicholas Ludford - Ave cuius conceptio
08. William Cornysh - Woefully arrayed
09. Jonathan Harvey - I love the Lord
10. John Sheppard - Libera nos
11. John Tavener - God is with us
12. Thomas Tallis - Audivi vocem de caelo
13. John Tavener - The Tyger
MORE INFO:
Erato

