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Track(s) taken from CDA67483

Libera nos, salva nos I

composer
author of text
Sixth Antiphon at Matins on Trinity Sunday

St Paul's Cathedral Choir, John Scott (conductor)
Recording details: March 2004
St Paul's Cathedral, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: January 2005
Total duration: 2 minutes 43 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Westminster Abbey Choir, James O'Donnell (conductor)
The Gesualdo Six, Owain Park (director)

Reviews

‘The performances are excellent, as are William McVicker's booklet-notes, and the great echo's presence is felt as friend, not foe’ (Gramophone)

‘If this is Scott's swan song with the St Paul's Choir, it is a brilliant one. The choral tone and discipline are outstanding … the Hyperion engineers demonstrate that they know how to record a choir in a highly reverberant setting. The tone is always clear but sumptuous, giving the listener a feel for the immense space involved yet never obscuring the musical textures. The audible reverberation at the pauses in Parry's Lord, let me know mine end is nothing short of breathtaking’ (American Record Guide)

‘Each piece in this collection—those considered first-rate, those considered perhaps less than first-rate, and those perhaps scarcely considered at all—is given added quality through the pedigree of the performers and the performances; thus many find a stature which would surprise the cynic. If this CD enables some standard works to receive reference performances, and some lesser works to receive a fresh popularity, then it will have done more than most such collections. Warmly recommended’ (Organists' Review)
Sheppard’s first setting of Libera nos, salva nos takes as its text the sixth antiphon at Matins on Trinity Sunday. Its liturgical position was thus about half way through the chief morning Office, as celebrated in its festal form with three nocturns. The text, a petition to the Holy Trinity for freedom, redemption and absolution, is sufficiently general to allow the possibility that Sheppard’s setting was used at other Offices, in the place where votive antiphons had once been sung (and where in Anglican Offices the choir sings the anthem); it is likely that the piece was composed during Sheppard’s time at Magdalen College, Oxford, among whose statutes is the ordinance that this very text be recited twice a day. Unusually, and unlike Sheppard’s Office hymns and responds, the chant cantus firmus is placed in the lowest voice. The rate of harmonic change is consequently very slow; this, and the mode’s tonal stability, accounts for the serenity with which the music unfolds.

from notes by Robert Quinney © 2008

Other albums featuring this work

English Motets
Studio Master: CDA68256Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Mary and Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey
CDA67704
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