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A Knight’s Progress
Various composers

The Temple Church Choir / Greg Morris

A Knight’s Progress

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212041024
Catnr: SIGCD 410
Release date: 27 March 2015
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212041024
Catalogue number
SIGCD 410
Release date
27 March 2015
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
NL

About the album

The Temple Church Choir gives the world premiere recording of Nico Muhly’s Our Present Charter – a brand new four-movement work commissioned by the choir to celebrate 800 years since the sealing of the Magna Carta. Directed by Roger Sayer and featuring organist Greg Morris, the recording also features choral works by Parry, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bairstow, Tavener and Haydn. The Temple Church Choir, founded 1841, consists of eighteen boy choristers and twelve professional choirmen. It is still considered to be one of the finest choirs in London, a reputation it quickly gained after its founding. The American composer Nico Muhly (b. 1981) received his Masters in Music from the Juilliard School where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. HE also spent several years working for Phillip Glass as a MIDI programmer and editor. His wide scope of work for soloists, ensembles, and organizations covers multiple genres, including music for film, opera, choral
De wereldpremière van Our Present Charter
The Temple Church Choir heeft het prestige weer teruggewonnen waarvan het genoot toen Sir George Thalben-Ball en Ernest Lough in 1926 hun wereldberoemde opname van Mendelssohns Hear my Prayer/O, for the Wings of a Dove maakten. Dit is mede te danken aan hun première van Taveners avondvullende meesterwerk The Veil of the Temple. Een opname van de verkorte versie van dit werk werd toegejuicht door de critici.

Op dit album voert The Temple Church Choir de wereldpremiere van Nico Muhly’s Our Present Charter uit, een vierdelig werk ter gelegenheid van de achthonderdjarig jubileum van de ondertekening van de Magna Carta, een oorkonde die de macht van de Engelse koning beperkte en de rechten van zijn onderdanen beschermde. De hoekdelen van het werk zijn toonzettingen van teksten uit de Magna Carta. Het album bevat daarnaast werken van Parry, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bairstow, Tavener en Haydn. Het koor staat onder leiding van Roger Sayer en wordt op orgel begeleid door Greg Morris.

Artist(s)

Greg Morris

Greg Morris is Associate Organist of the Temple Church in London, a position he has held since 2006. He accompanies the acclaimed Temple Church Choir, and has appeared with them on broadcasts and CD recordings. In addition, Greg takes a major role in the training of the choristers, and regularly directs the Choir, recently completing a term as Acting Director of Music. As an organ recitalist, he performs at major venues throughout the UK and Europe. In 2005 he gave the world premiere of David Briggs’s Organ Concerto, which he has also recorded with the Northern Chamber Orchestra. He has released two solo CDs to critical acclaim, and his playing on the recently released Missa de Gloria, a CD devoted...
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Greg Morris is Associate Organist of the Temple Church in London, a position he has held since 2006. He accompanies the acclaimed Temple Church Choir, and has appeared with them on broadcasts and CD recordings. In addition, Greg takes a major role in the training of the choristers, and regularly directs the Choir, recently completing a term as Acting Director of Music. As an organ recitalist, he performs at major venues throughout the UK and Europe. In 2005 he gave the world premiere of David Briggs’s Organ Concerto, which he has also recorded with the Northern Chamber Orchestra. He has released two solo CDs to critical acclaim, and his playing on the recently released Missa de Gloria, a CD devoted to the organ music of Kenneth Leighton, has been described as ‘authoritative and more than equal to Leighton’s virtuosic demands.’ Born and educated in Manchester, Greg studied the organ with Paul Stubbings, John Kitchen and Thomas Trotter. He held scholarships at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, St Martin-in-theFields, and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he directed the Chapel Choir. Greg won the prize for overall performance in the FRCO examinations, for which he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. From 2000-6, he held the post of Assistant Director of Music at Blackburn Cathedral
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Roger Sayer (conductor)

Composer(s)

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer and folk song collector. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–08 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music. Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to...
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Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer and folk song collector. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.
He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–08 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music.
Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.

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John Taverner

John Taverner was amongst the most important and most influential English composers of his generation. Only little is known about his life. He was apparently born somewhere in Lincolnshire, and served as organist and master of the choristers in Christ Church, Oxford. Taverner composed primarily sacred vocal works with florid polyphony, extended climaxes for accomplished soloists and room for innovation. He is mainly known for his masses and Magnificats, amongst others the Western Wynde Mass and the Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas. The latter mass gave origin to an instrumental genre known as In nomine, named after the mass section of which an instrumental arrangement appeared that gave rise to the composition of similar works. This genre remained popular within English music until the time of Purcell.
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John Taverner was amongst the most important and most influential English composers of his generation. Only little is known about his life. He was apparently born somewhere in Lincolnshire, and served as organist and master of the choristers in Christ Church, Oxford.
Taverner composed primarily sacred vocal works with florid polyphony, extended climaxes for accomplished soloists and room for innovation. He is mainly known for his masses and Magnificats, amongst others the Western Wynde Mass and the Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas.
The latter mass gave origin to an instrumental genre known as In nomine, named after the mass section of which an instrumental arrangement appeared that gave rise to the composition of similar works. This genre remained popular within English music until the time of Purcell.

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William Walton

Sir William Walton, in full Sir William Turner Walton, (born March 29, 1902, Oldham, Lancashire, Eng.—died March 8, 1983, Ischia, Italy), English composer especially known for his orchestral music. His early work made him one of England’s most important composers between the time of Vaughan Williams and that of Benjamin Britten. Walton, the son of a choirmaster father and a vocalist mother, studied violin and piano desultorily as a boy and also sang, with somewhat better results, in his father’s choir. He taught himself composition, although he received advice from both Ernest Ansermet and Ferruccio Busoni. In 1912 he entered the University of Oxford, where he sang in the choir of Christ Church. He put in the requisite four years of study but failed by one examination (Responsonions) to win a bachelor of music degree....
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Sir William Walton, in full Sir William Turner Walton, (born March 29, 1902, Oldham, Lancashire, Eng.—died March 8, 1983, Ischia, Italy), English composer especially known for his orchestral music. His early work made him one of England’s most important composers between the time of Vaughan Williams and that of Benjamin Britten.

Walton, the son of a choirmaster father and a vocalist mother, studied violin and piano desultorily as a boy and also sang, with somewhat better results, in his father’s choir. He taught himself composition, although he received advice from both Ernest Ansermet and Ferruccio Busoni. In 1912 he entered the University of Oxford, where he sang in the choir of Christ Church. He put in the requisite four years of study but failed by one examination (Responsonions) to win a bachelor of music degree. At Oxford he had met the Sitwell brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, by whom he was virtually adopted, and he spent most of the next decade traveling with them or living with them at Chelsea. During this period he composed Façade (1923)—a set of pieces for chamber ensemble, to accompany the Sitwells’ sister Edith in a recitation of her poetry—as well as Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1928; revised 1943) and Portsmouth Point (1926), which established his reputation as an orchestral composer.

Walton was influenced by some of his older contemporaries, notably Edward Elgar, Igor Stravinsky, and Paul Hindemith. Hindemith was soloist in the first performance of one of Walton’s finest works, his Viola Concerto (1929). Walton also composed a number of scores for motion pictures, including Major Barbara (1941), Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1947), and Richard III (1954). His vocal music includes the oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast (1931) and the operas Troilus and Cressida (1954) and The Bear (one act; 1967). The composer received a knighthood in 1951.


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Charles Hubert Parry

Sir Charles Hubert Parry was an English composer and historian of music. Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song 'Jerusalem', his 1902 setting for the coronation anthem 'I was glad', the choral and orchestral ode Blest Pair of Sirens, and the hymn tune 'Repton', which sets the words 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind'. His orchestral works include five symphonies and a set of Symphonic Variations. After early attempts to work in insurance, at his father's behest, Parry was taken up by George Grove, first as a contributor to Grove's massive Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the 1870s and 80s, and then in 1883 as professor of composition and...
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Sir Charles Hubert Parry was an English composer and historian of music. Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", his 1902 setting for the coronation anthem "I was glad", the choral and orchestral ode Blest Pair of Sirens, and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". His orchestral works include five symphonies and a set of Symphonic Variations.
After early attempts to work in insurance, at his father's behest, Parry was taken up by George Grove, first as a contributor to Grove's massive Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the 1870s and 80s, and then in 1883 as professor of composition and musical history at the Royal College of Music, of which Grove was the first head. In 1895 Parry succeeded Grove as head of the College, remaining in the post for the rest of his life. He was concurrently Heather Professor of Music at the University of Oxford from 1900 to 1908. He wrote several books about music and music history, the best-known of which is probably his 1909 study of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Both in his lifetime and afterwards, Parry's reputation and critical standing have varied. His academic duties were considerable, and prevented him from devoting all his energies to composition, but some contemporaries such as Charles Villiers Stanford rated him as the finest English composer since Henry Purcell; others, such as Frederick Delius, did not. Parry's influence on later composers, by contrast, is widely recognised. Edward Elgar learned much of his craft from Parry's articles in Grove's Dictionary, and among those who studied under Parry at the Royal College were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and John Ireland.

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Joseph Haydn

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets 'Father of the Symphony' and 'Father of the String Quartet'.   Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, 'forced to become original'. Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.   He was a friend and mentor of Mozart,...
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(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, with whom he formed the First Viennese School. He was also the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

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