Magdalena Consort - In Chains of Gold, Vol. 3 (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Described by Early Music Review as ‘an impressive master-class in how these texts should be declaimed’, the third volume in the Magdalena Consort’s revelatory series brings us a further eleven of these most English of English anthems—by composers John Ward, John Amner, William Stonnard, Thomas Ravenscroft, Richard Nicholson, Thomas Tomkins, William Pysing and Simon Stubbs—with accompaniment variously from Fretwork and His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts.

Consort anthem is early Stuart verse anthem, in quintessence: voices backed by a full instrumental ensemble, in counterpoint of 5-8 parts, no watery organ reduction. The Jacobean Chapel Royal at Greenwich Palace employed cornetts and sackbuts for this twopence-coloured version. It threw in organ (why not?), and other unspecified forces, more than doubling one’s staff. But kings reck cost little when impressing the odd foreign ambassador, or even one’s subjects. Anthem texts range correspondingly wide, expansively splendid to confessional-intimate, from cathedral to domestic level. Continuo-backed declamation took over under Charles I, at times decked with ritornelli; an innovatory episode possibly lost on Frenchified composers of his son, Charles II. Samuel Pepys (for one) hailed 14th September 1662 as an utter novelty for the Whitehall Chapel: ‘the first day of having Vialls and other Instruments to play a Symphony between every verse of the Anthem … very fine’. Older, sager, John Evelyn deprecated how ‘a Consort of 24 Violins’ was ousting ‘the antient grave and solemn wind musique accompanying the Organ’. History, if not quite repeating itself, still rhymed in fits. Full anthem survived civil war and puritan Commonwealth (1642-59) in concealed part-sets; it adapted to Restoration taste. So did verse anthem, discursive and pliant; one retrospective part-set even reached print, but organ-accompanied, a step down from its vanished consort origins. The Great Fire in 1666 ravaged any remains at Saint Paul’s, or in City households; Whitehall Palace and its Chapel followed suit, succumbing to flame on 4 January 1698.

TRACKLIST

1. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Ward: This is a joyful, happy holy day
2. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Amner: Consider, all ye passers by
3. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Stonnard: Hearken, all ye people
4. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Ravenscroft: All laud and praise
5. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: Voluntary (28)
6. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Ravenscroft: In thee, O Lord
7. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Nicholson: When Jesus sat at meat
8. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: Voluntary (24)
9. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: O God, the heathen are come
10. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: Verse of 3 parts (26)
11. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Pysinge: The Lord hear thee
12. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: Pavan in A Minor
13. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Stubbs: Have mercy upon me, O Lord
14. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Ward: Let God arise
15. Magdalena Consort, Fretwork & William Hunt - Tomkins: Know you not



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