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Track(s) taken from CDA67507

O Holy of Holies

composer
Antony Pitts (b1969)
1995
author of text
Anonymous - liturgical
Additional Advent Antiphon (France, 18th century)

Tonus Peregrinus, Antony Pitts (conductor)
Recording details: September 2000
St Peter and St Paul, Wadhust, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Produced by Martin Cotton
Engineered by Geoff Miles
Release date: June 2005
Total duration: 4 minutes 16 seconds

Cover artwork: Finale (detail). David Jenks
Private Collection / Reproduced by kind permission of the artist
 

Reviews

‘Tonus Peregrinus is a double quartet of expert singers brought together by the composer. With firm, fresh voices and precise intonation … they sound as ideal a group for fulfilling his intentions as he is likely to find on this side of the Heaven to which so much of his music aspires’ (Gramophone)

‘Seven shorter pieces complete the programme, the best of which are Adoro te and Amen, both of which make striking use of dynamic and spatial effects. The performances are excellent’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Heatedly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)
O Holy of Holies represents a sidestep into a highly expressionistic soundworld, with echoes from the preceding Advent antiphons of the refrain ‘Come, Lord Jesu’. All the familiar elements of Pitts’s cross-relational and added-note harmony are present within a slow-moving harmonic framework, but the dissonance treatment in this short antiphon is particularly uncompromising – a feature which continues right up to the unresolved final chord. The effect of the piece, in keeping with the text, is of something which awaits a conclusion.

from notes by Jeremy Summerly © 2005

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