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Details
St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate Church
Bishopsgate
City of London
London
EC2M 3TL
England
Programme
Thomas Tallis – O Nata Lux
David Willcocks – O come, all ye faithful
Dietrich Buxtehude – In dulci jubilo, BuxWV 52
Elizabeth Poston – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
David Willcocks – While shepherds watched their flocks
Harold Darke – In the bleak mid-winter
Orlando Gibbons – As on the Night
Robert White – Christe Qui Lux es et Dies IV
Ralph Vaughan Williams – O little town of Bethlehem
Ralph Vaughan Williams – This is the truth sent from above
Elizabeth Poston – Sing unto the Lord
Franz Tunder – Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme
David Willcocks – Unto us is born a Son
Performers
Oliver John Ruthven – Director
Francesca Massey – organ
Orlando Chamber Choir
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
In this concert of festive music, famous names are intertwined with less well-known ones.
Elizabeth Poston, a stalwart yet unfamiliar English composer of the twentieth century, takes centre stage, with two settings of texts for Christmas. Poston studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams and had a very successful career as a composer and performer during the male-dominated era of post-war Britain.
Robert White, a prodigious talent who died young, is another unfamiliar name, especially when set against his more famous peer, Thomas Tallis. White’s Christe qui lux es et dies is his fourth setting of this text for Compline, and it must have therefore held a special appeal for him. Tallis and Gibbons, meat and drink for the singers of the Orlando Chamber Choir, provide contrasting settings of words celebrating the coming of Christ.
Franz Tunder was the father-in-law of the famous organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude, and was a talented composer and musician in his own right. Director Oliver John Ruthven has arranged Tunder's motet Wachet auf! for choir and organ - it is a blueprint for the more extended cantatas written by Johann Sebastian Bach 70 years later and it uses the Lutheran hymn as its basis, much as Robert White uses the cantus firmus plainchant as the basis for Christe qui lux es et dies.
The programme is interspersed with audience carols, and we will serve wine and mince pies during the interval.
