Walter Hussey, Vicar of St Matthew’s Northampton and Dean of Chichester, made an enormous contribution to the Arts through his commissioning of music, poetry, sculpture and stained glass. I have written about him in Volume 2, in connection with Walton’s Chichester Service (1974). A decade earlier, for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival held at Chichester, Hussey’s commissions included Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Kelly’s Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, the first of six settings Kelly was to write. What a festival that must have been! Bernstein had managed to perform his work in New York beforehand, but the Chichester performance was the official premiere. Bernstein also published a reduced scoring for choir, organ, harp and percussion. Kelly’s work is generally heard, as here, in the version with organ accompaniment. However, perhaps inspired by Bernstein’s example, Novello published Kelly’s alternative version with timpani, percussion, harp and organ in the same year.

The work bears a dedication to its first conductor, John Birch, Organist of Chichester Cathedral. The title has an asterisk leading to a footnote: 'This work is based on Latin-American rhythms'. It was the Sixties, but the Church of England is not always at the vanguard of cultural change. It is hard to understate the boldness and daring of this composition within the service of Evensong sixty years ago. That is backed up by the composer’s recollection:

When I first showed Herbert Howells the manuscript of ‘Kelly in C’ at the RCM he went through it, turned to me and said “My dear, I will tell you one thing about your setting. After each performance the church will have to be re-consecrated!”

Bryan Kelly was a chorister at Worcester College, Oxford. He studied composition with Howells and Gordon Jacob at the RCM. He received practical help and encouragement from Sydney Watson, whose setting was heard in the second volume of this series. Like Lennox Berkeley, whose canticles for Chichester also appeared in Magnificat 2, Kelly went on to study privately with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. By the time of Kelly in C, he was back at the RCM as a Professor of Theory and Composition. In his varied life he has later taught in Washington DC, Rome and Cairo. He now lives in Somerset. Kelly has worked as composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. His compositions include both light and serious orchestral music, educational works, as well as music for brass band, solo instrumentalists and choirs.

Anyone who helps to prevent the Anglican choral tradition from becoming stuffy and antiquated should be thanked. Kelly in C is a beautifully crafted, concise product of its time. It put a contemporary slant on the historic service of Evensong, just as the Cripps building at St John’s, completed two years later, reimagined the ancient tradition of Cambridge courts and staircases.

The composer has explained that the work started life a tone higher—in D—but the publishers pointed out that he was stretching things! As in the Moore and in Howells Collegium Regale, Kelly starts a new paragraph for 'He hath shewed strength'. Following the example of Stanford in B flat, Kelly’s Gloria provides an opportunity for musical recapitulation. Like Dyson he makes the canticle into a single movement. Presaging Swayne’s work on Magnificat 2, Kelly’s music is propelled by rhythmic ostinati. The final section 'He remembering his mercy' begins a thrilling build-up which propels us headlong into the Gloria. In giving musical form to the Magnificat, composers search out parallels in different parts of the text. Kelly uses the same music for 'all generations shall call me blessed' and 'and the rich he hath sent empty away'—one a long distance in time, one a long distance in space. I can’t think of another Magnificat that joyfully highlights the words 'He hath filled the hungry' as the principal moment of reprise; I applaud Kelly’s political instincts in this decision.

Nunc dimittis also makes use of a rhythmic ostinato. The canticle starts in the tonic minor key, underpinning a sort of funeral march for the old man Simeon, which calls to mind Stanford in A on our first volume. At the end of the movement the same ostinato is given the new function of building tension as we approach the Gloria. The dark shadows of the opening are replaced by major tonality celebrating the hope of 'To be a light'. A series of rising pedal points spanning a major sixth leads to the final dominant, further heightening the tension whilst leading into a reprise of the Gloria. In the central part of the canticle’s tripartite musical structure the choir is liberated from the organ ostinati; Simeon’s soul breaks free to meet God—'For mine eyes have seen thy salvation'. Simeon has come face to face with God in the person of the baby Jesus, but Christians believe he will imminently continue to enjoy such proximity after his own death.

The work continues to divide opinion. I can think of one distinguished former Cathedral Organist—a relation of mine, in fact—who refused ever to perform the work. Writing about Jackson in G for Magnificat 2 I mentioned the way Boris Ord 'noticeably winced at the […] jazz-influenced chromatics, and his stern injunction that there should be no such thing'. Like Jackson to a lesser extent in the previous decade, Kelly presaged the incorporation of popular idioms into mainstream music. Sixty years on there has been a blurring of the boundaries between classical and non-classical.

from notes by Andrew Nethsingha © 2023