Choir of St. Johns College & Andrew Nethsingha - New Millennium (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Andrew Nethsingha’s tenure as Director of Music of St John’s College, Cambridge, has been transformative. Termly evensongs built round Bach cantatas, regular broadcasts (notably of the Advent Carol Service) and a series of ground-breaking CDs have enhanced the already enviable reputation of the Choir of St John’s. Most noteworthy, perhaps, has been Nethsingha’s commitment to new music. Most directors of major choral establishments regularly include premieres in their music lists but few, if any, have been more innovative in the types of music they have commissioned. Over the past fifteen years, Nethsingha has shown that combining voices and organ with instruments not typically heard in Anglican liturgy—saxophone, recorder, cello—has not brought down the walls of the temple. On the contrary, new forms of music have drawn new audiences—and, in some cases, new composers—to the Church.

So it is fitting that one of Nethsingha’s final CDs should be devoted to music of the last twenty years, much of it commissioned by and written for St John’s College. That many of the works heard here are by composers near the beginning of their career and by women—recently admitted, in another major innovation, to the Choir of St John’s—is testament to the outgoing Director of Music’s eagerness to offer opportunities to groups whose voices have not always been heard in the Anglican Church.

Sir James MacMillan’s O give thanks unto the Lord provides a festive opening to this celebration of twenty-first-century music—appropriately so, as it was commissioned by the Friends of Cathedral Music to mark their diamond jubilee in 2016. The words are taken from Psalm 105 and To Music. A Song by Robert Herrick, who matriculated at St John’s College in 1613. The combination of joyful text from the Bible with a short poem that praises music’s soothing powers allows MacMillan to create a loose ternary form: the outer psalm-based sections contain wild syncopations and repetitions—the challenging organ part marked at one point ‘obsessive’—while Herrick’s words are set as a dreamy treble rhapsody supported by soulful harmonies in the lower voices and tremolos in the organ. It has often been noted that MacMillan’s music is informed by his religious faith. Herrick’s verse, though remembered mainly for its high sensuousness, was also deeply rooted in faith. As the poet put it: ‘I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) of Heaven, and hope to have it after all’.

TRACKLIST

1. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - MacMillan: O Give Thanks unto the Lord
2. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Nunn: Sitivit anima mea
3. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Weir: Vertue: I. Vertue
4. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Betinis: Cedit, Hyems
5. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Comeau: Vanity of Vanities
6. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Connor Kennedy: O nata lux
7. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Farrington: Celebration
8. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Wheeler: Alleluia, I Heard a Voice
9. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Weir: Leaf from leaf Christ Knows
10. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Farrington: Conversations
11. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Betinis: Carmina mei cordis: I. Aeterna lux, divinitas
12. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Semple: Oriens…
13. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Westbrooke: Quiet Stream
14. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Pott: Laudes
15. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Hopkins: Salvator mundi, Domine
16. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Nunn: oh pristine example
17. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Frances-Hoad: A Blessing
18. Choir of St John's College, Cambridge & Andrew Nethsingha - Farrington: Nova, Nova



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