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Track(s) taken from CDH55228

O clap your hands

composer
author of text
Psalm 47, omitting verse 9a; 1549 Book of Common Prayer

Winchester Cathedral Choir, David Hill (conductor)
Recording details: April 1999
Winchester Cathedral, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: April 2000
Total duration: 5 minutes 32 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Westminster Abbey Choir, James O'Donnell (conductor)
The Cambridge Singers, John Rutter (conductor)
Voces 8
Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh (conductor)

Reviews

‘Hill breathes new life into Gibbons' musical and spoken rhetoric, using tempo and dynamics to set up conflicts between vocal lines. Perfectly complemented by Robin Blaze … the choral sound is exemplary―clean, but edged with an appealing English softness … a glorious sound’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘This recording is a well-balanced introduction to Gibbons' obvious musical talent’ (Scotland on Sunday)
Orlando Gibbons is acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of his period; he wrote some 40 anthems, a variety of other church music, a book of madrigals, and a large quantity of keyboard and instrumental consort music. He was born in Oxford of a musical family, and sang as a boy in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where later, in 1599, he became a student. In about 1603 he moved to London to become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. By the time of his death he was senior organist there, and also organist of Westminster Abbey. O clap your hands is one of the largest and most festive of Gibbons’ anthems, making vivid use of its eight-voice double choir layout. It was first performed in 1622 at a ceremony in Oxford when Gibbons and his friend William Heyther received the degree of Doctor of Music; one source states that Gibbons wrote the piece as a qualifying exercise for the degree. The music certainly offers convincing evidence of Gibbons’ impressive compositional skill, and it contains examples of such ‘learned devices’ as canon which would no doubt have gratified the examiners.

from notes by Collegium Records © 1988

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