Notes and Editorial Reviews
"A crowning glory of our civilisation" -- Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
"I would happily sit in King’s College Chapel listening to this choir sing for the rest of my days." -- Richard Morrison, The Times
The Choir of King’s College Cambridge is arguably the world’s most famous choral group. This new album is a tour of the ecclesiastical year from Advent through to Ascension. The paired ancient and modern settings represented on the album showcase the vast range of music that the choir performs each season reflecting Christ’s birth, death and resurrection through the festivals of Advent, Christmas, Candlemas, Lent, Easter and Ascension. The rest of the year, known as Ordinary time, is focused more
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on Christ’s ministry on earth.
A Year at King’s includes such favourites as Allegri’s Miserere and Barber’s Agnus Dei, an arrangement of his famous Adagio for Strings, as well as the first recording of Tavener’s Away in a Manger, written for King’s College Choir’s 2004 ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols’. The rest of the programme comprises works composed between the 15th and 20th centuries by Palestrina, Pärt and Poulenc, Lassus, Holst, Guerrero, Eccard, Peter Philips and Stanford. The disc is rounded off with a spectacular performance of Tallis’s Spem in alium. On this, as on many previous King’s College Choir recordings, the conductor is Stephen Cleobury, organist and Director of Music at King’s since 1982.
King Henry VI founded King’s College in 1441. Six centuries later, these daily services in the magnificent chapel that is one of the jewels of Britain’s cultural and architectural heritage are the raison d’être for, and a central part in, the lives of the Choir’s 16 choristers, 14 choral scholars and two organ scholars.
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Works on This Recording
3.
Canite tuba in Sion by Francisco Guerrero
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Renaissance
Written: 1570; Spain
4.
Hodie Christus natus est by Giovanni Palestrina
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Renaissance
Written: 16th Century; Italy
5.
Away in a manger by William James Kirkpatrick
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: 20th Century
Written: USA
Notes: Arranger: Tavener.
7.
Videntes stellam magi by Orlando de Lassus
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Renaissance
Written: by 1562; Munich, Germany
9.
Nunc dimittis, H 127 by Gustav Holst
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1915; England
10.
Miserere mei Deus: Miserere mei by Gregorio Allegri
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Baroque
Written: 17th Century; Italy
11.
Agnus Dei, Op. 11 by Samuel Barber
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1967; USA
13.
Tis the day of resurrection by Charles Wood
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Romantic
Written: England
14.
Missa "Ascendens Christus" by Tomás Luis de Victoria
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Renaissance
Written: by 1592; Spain
15.
Coelis ascendit hodie by Charles Villiers Stanford
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Romantic
16.
Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis
Conductor:
Stephen Cleobury
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Cambridge King's College Choir
Period: Renaissance
Written: after 1559; England
Sound Samples
Magnificat - Antiphons: O Weisheit
Magnificat - Antiphons: O Immanuel
'Tis the day of Resurrection
Ascendus Christus in altum
Coelos ascendit hodie Op.38
Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui
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