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Details
Christchurch Priory
Quay Road
Christchurch
Dorset
BH23 1BU
England
Programme
Edward Elgar – Give unto the Lord, Op.74
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs
Ralph Vaughan Williams – A Sea Symphony (Symphony no.1)
Performers
Simon Earl – Conductor
Grange Choral Society (Christchurch)
Programme Note
Elgar (1857-1934) Give unto the Lord.
One of his most beloved works, this was composed during early 1914. The setting of psalm XXIX is Elgar at his most effusive, reverent, tuneful and extravagant.
Vaughan Williams. Five Mystical Songs.
Composed between 1906 -11, these haunting songs are settings of the poetry of George Herbert (1593-1633). Herbert was an Anglican priest who spent the last four years of his life as vicar of Bemerton, just outside Salisbury, Wiltshire. The words come from his work “The Temple” Sacred Poems. Vaughan Williams himself was an atheist at the time he composed the music, though this did not prevent his setting of verse of an overtly religious inspiration.
Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). The Sea Symphony.
Written between 1903 -1909, this evocative music captures the sounds of the winds and the sea in all their fulsome power, with images of brave seafarers as they explore the vast oceans. The first of his nine symphonies, Vaughan Williams’s setting of the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is also a depiction of the journey of the human soul, ending with the ship of life sailing over the horizon towards the unknown.
