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Track(s) taken from CDA68013

Let all mortal flesh keep silence – Picardy

First line:
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
composer
17-th century French carol
composer
verse 4 arrangement
author of text
translated from the Liturgy of St James

Westminster Abbey Choir, James O'Donnell (conductor), Robert Quinney (organ)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
Recording details: January 2013
Westminster Abbey, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Adrian Peacock
Engineered by David Hinitt
Release date: January 2014
Total duration: 2 minutes 47 seconds

Cover artwork: Westminster Bridge (detail). Samuel Scott (c1702-1772)
Private Collection / © Agnew's, London / Bridgeman Images
 

Reviews

‘The recording is first class. Engineer David Hinitt and producer Adrian Peacock have successfully captured the rich acoustics and yet achieved a clear reproduction of the voices and the mighty organ. Anyone who has ever been in Westminster Abbey should be overwhelmed by the lifelike sound picture. The generous programme is also finely contrasted … the quality of the singing is on a high level and Robert Quinney negotiates the organ accompaniments excellently’ (MusicWeb International)» More
The Tractarian priest and poet Gerard Moultrie (1829–1885), was ordained in 1858, and contributed an appendix to John Mason Neale’s Essays on Liturgiology and Church History of 1863. He was principally a liturgical historian and textual archaeologist. Moultrie’s verse is almost entirely religious; he published a book of hymns for saints’ days and seasons in 1867, and translated a variety of hymns from Greek, Latin and German. Let all mortal flesh keep silence is a translation of a Greek cherubic hymn from the fourth-century Syriac Liturgy of St James, widely acknowledged to be the oldest Christian liturgy with roots possibly in the mid- to late first century.

The tune Picardy is a French folk melody and was first published in the 1848 Chansons populaires des provinces de France. Ralph Vaughan Williams also used an arrangement of it in the 1906 edition of The English Hymnal. The strong, rich modality is perhaps evocative of the perceived mysticism of the Christian East.

from notes by The Revd Dr James Hawkey © 2014

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