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Track(s) taken from CDA67020

Spirit, leave thine house of clay!

composer
A Funeral Piece; The Harp of Zion, London, 1840
author of text

Claire Tomlin (soprano), Jennie Cassidy (alto), Adrian Peacock (bass), Psalmody, The Parley of Instruments, Peter Holman (conductor)
Recording details: September 1997
St Mary the Virgin, Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Compton
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: March 1998
Total duration: 2 minutes 45 seconds

Cover artwork: The Ancient of Days. William Blake (1757-1827)
The Whitworth Gallery, The University of Manchester
 

Reviews

‘Once again Peter Holman's scholarship offers a fascinating glimpse of a neglected repertoire’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘An infectious CD bringing to life a neglected period and its forgotten music. What fun parish music must have been for the likes of Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Blake or Thackeray’ (Classic CD)
The anthems by John Fawcett represent the moment when psalmody began to merge with, and be replaced by, the Victorian choral society movement. Fawcett was originally a Kendal shoemaker, and was self-taught as a musician. His early works belong to the North of England psalmody tradition, but he gradually became more assured and ambitious as, presumably, he came into contact with the choral works of Handel, Haydn and perhaps even Mozart. Spirit, leave thine house of clay! was probably written for a public funeral and begins with choruses that recall the serene simplicity of Mozart’s Ave verum corpus. However, the last chorus, with its Hallelujahs, returns to more familiar Handelian territory. The text is by the Sheffield journalist James Montgomery, the author of ‘Angels from the realms of glory’.

from notes by Peter Holman © 1998

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