Choir of New College Oxford

Martin Hallows

For Unto Us a Child is Born

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing: Hark, the Herald Angels Sing

For Unto Us a Child Is Born: For Unto Us a Child Is Born

Silent Night, Holy Night: Silent Night, Holy Night

O magnum mysterium: O magnum misterium

Angelus ad virginem: Angelus ad virginem

O magnum mysterium: O magnum mysterium

Hodie Christus natus est: Hodie Christus natus est

This Is the Truth from Above: This Is the Truth from Above

Quem vidistes: Quem vidistes

Nöel X

Quem vidistis: Quem vidistis

Videntes stellam: Videntes stellam

Sing Lullaby: Sing Lullaby

Puer natus: Puer natus

Lute-Book Carol: Lute-Book Carol

Of the Father's Heart begotten: Of the Father's Heart begotten

Emma Kirkby

Anthony Rolfe Johnson

Michael George

Haydn: The Creation

Mass Text

Christopher Borrett

Edward Higginbottom

The main attraction is the six-voice Missa Benedicta et Venerabilis, which (like other English Renaissance masses) lacks a Kyrie and is sung with appropriate office chants between the polyphonic choral movements. What is most startling is the sheer expressivity of a good deal of the music. The Incarnatus, Crucifixus, and the almost abrupt, exuberant Et Resurrexit and conclusion of the Credo (track 6) are good places to start. Ludford reduces the texture to three or four voices and seems to focus on specific passages of text in a way that brings to mind no one as much as Josquin; this in a compositional world thought to be dominated by monumental, abstract polyphony. The music employs rhythmic shifts and some striking vertical sonorities, all again seemingly linked with the text, and the text-setting has some really outlandish details: Ludford likes, for instance, to kick off a cadential drive with the last syllable of the penultimate phrase of text rather than with the final phrase or "Amen." Oddly enough, the two votive anthems surrounding the mass are more conventional in style. The venerable New College Choir Oxford (men and boys), which was around when this music was composed, delivers a strong reading, with the boy trebles getting into the meaty spirit of the work and more than making up for occasional slips to the flat side of the tone in what is certainly quite difficult music to sing, and the recording ambiance of a church in the northeastern French town of Sarrebourg is ideal.

For Unto Us a Child is Born

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