Romantic love, with its often irrational sea of complex emotions, has long been a rich source of inspiration in music. With Valentines Day just around the corner, let’s listen to a selection of love songs from the Renaissance to the present day. Most of these songs would have been considered popular music when they were first written. Sampling this list, I was struck by how many great love songs are tinged with …
Here is Jan Sandström’s atmospheric setting of Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming, performed live by the choir of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, England on Christmas Eve, 2009. Sandström is a contemporary Swedish composer and for me there is something about this music which captures the bleak, desolate Scandinavian landscape in December. It also has a unique flow. When the sun sets at 3:00 in the afternoon for part of the year, do you develop a different …
Take a break from the holiday hubbub and spend a few minutes listening to In Terra Pax (“And on earth, peace”), the beautiful Christmas cantata by English composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956). You might be reminded of the lush, layered string writing of Ralph Vaughan Williams. There are also moments in the piece which may have influenced John Rutter. Get a detailed introduction of the piece here and here. Written in 1954, this was one …
English composer John Tavener passed away yesterday. Born in 1944, Tavener was known for meditative choral music, influenced by minimalism and Gregorian chant. Here is the Winchester Cathedral Choir singing, As One Who Has Slept: Here is Lament of the Mother of God: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/john-tavener/id201609509″]Find on iTunes http://www.amazon.com/John-Tavener-Innocence-J/dp/B000002AUN”]Find on Amazon
In celebration of the holiday season, here is music by the twentieth century English composer Benjamin Britten. A Ceremony of Carols is scored for three part treble chorus, solo voices and harp. The text, from Gerald Bullett’s The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems is Middle English. Listen to the uniquely pure timbre produced by the boys’ choirs in these recordings. This is a sound that has been heard for centuries in cathedrals across England. …