Following on from the canticle and anthem ‘World Cups’, Twitter has recently been enlivened by a similar venture to find the setting of the best setting of the word Amen. I followed this from the start and indeed nominated a couple of my favourites. The zippy one from Monteverdi’s setting of Lauda Jerusalem wasn’t used, and the more subtle charms of the third Amen from Philip Moore’s second setting of the Responses didn’t make it past the qualifying rounds, so I was left with deciding between other people’s choices.
I think the Amen from Finzi’s Lo the Full Final Sacrifice was a worthy winner (I voted for it, anyway) and made up for the poor showing of the whole in the World Cup of Anthems. But I wouldn’t have been sorry if the other finalist. Brahms’ Geistliches Lied, had won. What was noticeable was the strong showing of Renaissance music in this competition. Its last representative, Parsons’ Ave Maria made it to the semi-finals along with the Amen from Messiah (whose MS is reproduced on a poster which hangs in our music room).
I hope at some time we might get the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany anthem competition, as anthems for those seasons were excluded from the other.