The first of my two November concerts was in Gloucester Cathedral and brought in a brass ensemble to accompany us as well as the organ.<\/p>\n
The single largest piece was Joseph Jongen’s Mass of the Blessed Sacrament. Jongen is known to me (and then only rather dimly) as a composer of organ music, but was quite prolific as a choral composer. My hire copy of the Mass was well-thumbed from several performances, and OUP clearly thought it worthwhile to publish it. <\/p>\n
As usual when singing a work by a composer I’d never performed before, I had to get used to their turns of phrase and favourite harmonic progressions. One part of the Mass, the setting of the words et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum<\/i>, had me racking my brains to locate the other piece it really reminded me of, until I identified it as a few bars from A Child of our Time<\/i>. But in general Jongen was distinctive and varied enough to keep my interest.<\/p>\n
The second part of the concert paid tribute to the Bruckner anniversary with Locus iste<\/i>, Ave Maria<\/i> and Ecce Sacerdos<\/i>, the last bringing in our brass ensemble. The concert ended with a sequence of polychoral music by Giovanni Gabrieli, where the brass replaced some vocal lines. We started with that Erleigh Cantors standard Jubilate Deo<\/i>, then the more sober Passiontide O Domine Jesu Christe<\/i> and finally a strenuous setting of the opening of the Easter Exultet<\/i>.<\/p>\n
There was an experimental early start which had some advantages for me: easier to fill in time before the concert and enabling me to go there by train. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first of my two November concerts was in Gloucester Cathedral and brought in a brass ensemble to accompany us as well as the organ. The single largest piece was Joseph Jongen’s Mass of the Blessed Sacrament. Jongen is known … Continue reading