Music On Music

When music holds a mirror up to itself, new resonances are revealed. From the purity of Josquin, Byrd and Palestrina to the humanity of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb and the sheer delight of Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn, this program of music about music takes us deep inside the mysterious beauty of melody, harmony and the human voice.

Palestrina starts from first principles with his Mass based on the scale ‘Ut re mi fa so la’; Elliott Gyger takes us back a step earlier with his setting of Ut queant laxis, the poem which gave us those note names.

Josquin des Prez calls upon the finest singers of the world, both human and divine, to mourn the loss of his teacher, the great Johannes Ockeghem; Paul Stanhope calls on the angelic choirs to take us into heavenly realms; Herbert Howells turns to the patron saint of music in his ecstatic Hymn for St Cecilia, and Michael Tippett commands nature itself to burst forth in songs of joy in Dance, Clarion Air. Scottish composer James MacMillan brings the timeless beauty of Gaelic melody to his meditation A New Song, while the ‘new song’ celebrated in Bach’s double-choir motet Singet dem Herrn fills the air with sheer delight.

Four centuries apart, Elizabethan master William Byrd and Australian Joseph Twist explore the place of music in defining our identity with Quomodo cantabimus/How Shall We Sing in a Strange Land?. Elliott Carter revels in the eccentricity of Emily Dickinson’s poem Musicians Wrestle Everywhere. And Benjamin Britten’s transcendent Rejoice in the Lamb reveals the power of music to bring healing and hope.