Thank you so much Douglas for this tremendous list. By the way, Iook out for thngs you write on Unherd and Twitter or wherever else I see them. Thank Heaven for people like you and Dr Jordan Petersen.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Oh dear – all these works appear to have been written by white composers. Where is Stormzy Daniels?
Thanks for your reflections. Especially during this sequestered season, much of the music you propose has the power to free us from our stuck-at-home sadness and blow fresh winds through our open speakers. I’m grateful that already as a child I had a chorus director who had us singing parts in German, English and Latin. It lauched me on a lifetime of choral singing that helps me appreciate the great gift we have here in Milwaukee.
Kathy Lang
3 years ago
Thank you, Douglas – some of this is music I don’t know / would not have thought of, and I so much need its solace. Perhaps you would do another article for Pentecost? My all time short favourite is Tallis “If ye love me…” which I wd normally be singing in our Church Choir on Sunday – but not this year, and the tears will fall…
menekadas
4 years ago
What an amazing playlist thank you Douglas for sharing… the Thomas Tallis piece takes me back to the mountains of India where I studied at a convent, the sister in charge would insist we sat in the chapel and educate our sinful little minds with some spirtual music that would save our souls… As a youngester choral music was the last thing I wanted but years later I am appreciating it a lot more than I did then…
Jill Mans
3 years ago
Is there no end to your talents, Douglas? What a wonderful playlist. As a choral singer of many years’ standing some of these pieces are very familiar to me, but there are some which are not, and which I will make a point of listening to during the day. No singing in church this Easter, alas, which is very sad, but we are lucky to have access to all these free recordings. Thank you!
Why is there no singing in your church, Jill? The closing of churches and the banning of music in services until quite recently was quite disgraceful. My Male Voice Choir started rehearsing again months ago, and we have already given two concerts.
rwjfoster
4 years ago
Thank you Douglas, for the introduction to some wonderful performances that had been previously UnHerd by me.
Johannes Kreisler
3 years ago
Thank you Douglas, we can always rely on you to bring on the good stuff. St. Matthew’s, St. John’s, various Stabat Maters – we spent 5 years with Pergolesi’s (with Emma Kirkby) stuck in the car CD player, as we saw no reason to change it. Until the car got replaced. Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater is excellent too.
Time to prepare the boiled smoked ham with horseraddish sauce, for Easter Morning. Happy Easter to all.
Paul Booth
3 years ago
An account of what Good Friday was like in a typical English parish church on the eve of the Reformation.
“Good Friday in the late Middle Ages was a day of deepest mourning. No Mass was celebrated, and the main liturgical celebration of the day was a solemn and penitential commemoration of the Passion. The whole of the narrative from St John’s Gospel was read, with a small dramatic embellishment: at the words ‘They parted my garments among them’ the clergy parted and removed two linen cloths which had been specially placed for the purpose on the otherwise bare altar. ….
Clergy and people then crept barefoot and on their knees to kiss the foot of the cross, held by two ministers”
Eamon Duffy, ‘The Stripping of the Altars’, p. 29
Alison Houston
4 years ago
Thanks for this Douglas, the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to look for a list of musical recommendations forHoly Week, with a few different things in it. I will spend part of today listening to a compilation of things from the various lists I have found which I haven’t heard before.
My daughter came back from University for lock down with a copy of Jaques Attali’s Noise, for a philosophy of music essay. I have been torturing myself by reading it, but the central theme about noise and power does seem very relevant in this time of state imposed silence. But buying recordings is a way of stockpiling time and death, apparently, so be careful what you encourage people to do.
pauline.k
4 years ago
Holy Week has now gone but it is still Eastertide. I already have most of this music on CD as I too adore sacred music. I often visit York and its glorious Minster. Listening to such music there is as heavenly as St.Paul’s, but then, I am a northerner.
mcmahoncm
4 years ago
Thank you for this article Douglas. I enjoyed it alot.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Thank you so much Douglas, especially for the Concertgebouw tip. I was a regular there when I lived in Amsterdam, and played many games of football on Museumplein with the Concertgebouw as a backdrop.
Sadly, Museumplein is now home to anti-lockdown protests every weekend that are brutally suppressed by the Dutch police. A very good friend of mine was arrested there last weekend.
James Wardle
3 years ago
I love music with the exception of chart pop now, but I can play Siouxsie & The Banshees or something I discovered a while back bortniansky, 18th c? Choral music. The orthodox Churches Russian choral music is something else.
At school, when you were allowed to sing hymns we did so every day of the week ie 7 days.
End of term, Stanford’s Te Deum in b flat with full choir, orchestra and 600 mixed 8 to 18 children conducted by Mr Robert Smith (no not The Cure who I love, Robert Smith is a poet and 2 late, is heartache as I remember my first true and only love and he was heavenly in body and spirit), getting angrier if we were sluggish o our tempo. He died of cancer years back but what a character.
There’s something about being part of that, whether you believe or not, because it is uplifting. It would also help with less talking about identity politics and skin colours and just singing for the pleasure of it. Jerusalem was a big thing for the 6 tv form lads … the evermore was louder and louder as they attempted a record.
I do have a favourite hymn, O Thou The Central Orb sung by Halifax Choral Society is like they taped it in a local church, rather than a big set piece and it’s more endearing. The others are far too slow tempo wise.
I’m off to listen to Big Maybelle, I heard I’ve got a feeling and she’s got a big voice and she thinks her bestie is sleeping with her husband and tries to catch her by waiting under her bed to catch them out. Ace…
Alison Houston
4 years ago
I was the first to comment, early this morning. What is the point of having a comments section and allowing comments under articles written by people who campaign for free speech, if you do not allow comments to appear?
Free speech is essential – but not necessarily unfettered speech, full of violence or hatred or even swear-words. So i support Unherd’s policy of moderation – and your helpful comment did get through!
What exactly makes you presume that Houston’s (or anyone’s) comments contained any of those things? I had many comments removed, none of them contained “violence or hatred or even swear-words.” Nor those comments made by others which i’ve read before they disappeared. So your comment was rather unhelpful here.
John Eliot Gardiner’s Pilgrimage to Santiago is truly a beautiful and amazing musical journey. It strikes me that the mics are gradually moved closer to the choir throughout the programme, which has quite an interesting psychological effect.
Must check that out, thanks for the tip! Gardiner deserves immense credit for reinstating baroque music to how it should be played, doing away with the melodramatic flourishes of postromanticism. (Was in my teens back in the eighties, slowly settling back into my childhood favourites (baroque, renaissance) after a short obligatory foray into punk – just about when Gardiner / English Baroque Soloists vinyls started to turn up, my mother hunting down each one. What a delight after the stuffy, emotised fare we had to make do with prior. The Magnificat turned up first – still haven’t heard a better one than that.)
You should, it’s worth it. I originally thought to mention it because Douglas included one track from it in his listing, but I think the whole thing needs to be listened to to really appreciate it.
I’m in agreement. Can’t beat the baroque!
Absolutely!
And not only for listening. I suck at every instrument i tried to play (fingers too clunky), but spent years trying to learn some Bach pieces on the piano – that gave a glimpse into how they are made. It’s weeping and howling with utter delight at watching perfection constructing itself (now, that was a very contorted sentence).
Found this little piece on youtube, Bach’s Crab Canon (sorta multidimensional palindrome) illustrated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU
J Bryant
3 years ago
Beautiful selection and a timely reminder of the spiritual power of music.
Thank you, Douglas Murray.
Martin Rossol
3 years ago
Douglas, Thank you for a most wonderful offering thoughts and music. Its been years since I listened to Lobo. You are so right – why did I ever stop. Well, I won’t again. Happy Easter!
Johannes Kreisler
3 years ago
The Hilliard Ensemble made it famous again some years ago in a setting with saxophone improvisation on top, but the sparseness of the original saxophone-less version remains my favourite.
That would be the Officium album with Jan Garbarek (an excellent saxist). Contains one of my oldest favourites, Procedentem Sponsum (a Christmas gregorian). Same as you, i much prefer the original version to Hilliard Ensemble’s take on it. (Not that the Hilliard / Garbarek interpretation is bad – it’s good, but the original is so much better.)
Here’s the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlwU0ughBMM – a fairly rare, “dynamic” gregorian tune.
Last edited 3 years ago by Johannes Kreisler
Carrie Wiebe
4 years ago
Thank-you for the recommendations and online musical selections. As I read your article, I thought that you might enjoy reading Charles Taylor as he discusses, “absolute music” (perhaps you already have). When i read your work here and other places, I wonder if you have considered Taylor’s understanding of “disenchantment?”
As a Benedictine educated Roman Catholic, I adore plainsong, and chant in Latin, as much as I dislike to levels of allergy, hymns, and Christmas carols are even worse… but nothing is more abhorrent than the invasion of our Church by the strumming, whistling, tamburinoid, minstrels from Hades and low church protestanism…
Thank you so much Douglas for this tremendous list. By the way, Iook out for thngs you write on Unherd and Twitter or wherever else I see them. Thank Heaven for people like you and Dr Jordan Petersen.
Oh dear – all these works appear to have been written by white composers. Where is Stormzy Daniels?
Yes thank God.
Thanks for your reflections. Especially during this sequestered season, much of the music you propose has the power to free us from our stuck-at-home sadness and blow fresh winds through our open speakers. I’m grateful that already as a child I had a chorus director who had us singing parts in German, English and Latin. It lauched me on a lifetime of choral singing that helps me appreciate the great gift we have here in Milwaukee.
Thank you, Douglas – some of this is music I don’t know / would not have thought of, and I so much need its solace. Perhaps you would do another article for Pentecost? My all time short favourite is Tallis “If ye love me…” which I wd normally be singing in our Church Choir on Sunday – but not this year, and the tears will fall…
What an amazing playlist thank you Douglas for sharing… the Thomas Tallis piece takes me back to the mountains of India where I studied at a convent, the sister in charge would insist we sat in the chapel and educate our sinful little minds with some spirtual music that would save our souls… As a youngester choral music was the last thing I wanted but years later I am appreciating it a lot more than I did then…
Is there no end to your talents, Douglas? What a wonderful playlist. As a choral singer of many years’ standing some of these pieces are very familiar to me, but there are some which are not, and which I will make a point of listening to during the day. No singing in church this Easter, alas, which is very sad, but we are lucky to have access to all these free recordings. Thank you!
Why is there no singing in your church, Jill? The closing of churches and the banning of music in services until quite recently was quite disgraceful. My Male Voice Choir started rehearsing again months ago, and we have already given two concerts.
Thank you Douglas, for the introduction to some wonderful performances that had been previously UnHerd by me.
Thank you Douglas, we can always rely on you to bring on the good stuff. St. Matthew’s, St. John’s, various Stabat Maters – we spent 5 years with Pergolesi’s (with Emma Kirkby) stuck in the car CD player, as we saw no reason to change it. Until the car got replaced. Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater is excellent too.
Time to prepare the boiled smoked ham with horseraddish sauce, for Easter Morning. Happy Easter to all.
An account of what Good Friday was like in a typical English parish church on the eve of the Reformation.
“Good Friday in the late Middle Ages was a day of deepest mourning. No Mass was celebrated, and the main liturgical celebration of the day was a solemn and penitential commemoration of the Passion. The whole of the narrative from St John’s Gospel was read, with a small dramatic embellishment: at the words ‘They parted my garments among them’ the clergy parted and removed two linen cloths which had been specially placed for the purpose on the otherwise bare altar. ….
Clergy and people then crept barefoot and on their knees to kiss the foot of the cross, held by two ministers”
Eamon Duffy, ‘The Stripping of the Altars’, p. 29
Thanks for this Douglas, the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to look for a list of musical recommendations forHoly Week, with a few different things in it. I will spend part of today listening to a compilation of things from the various lists I have found which I haven’t heard before.
My daughter came back from University for lock down with a copy of Jaques Attali’s Noise, for a philosophy of music essay. I have been torturing myself by reading it, but the central theme about noise and power does seem very relevant in this time of state imposed silence. But buying recordings is a way of stockpiling time and death, apparently, so be careful what you encourage people to do.
Holy Week has now gone but it is still Eastertide. I already have most of this music on CD as I too adore sacred music. I often visit York and its glorious Minster. Listening to such music there is as heavenly as St.Paul’s, but then, I am a northerner.
Thank you for this article Douglas. I enjoyed it alot.
Thank you so much Douglas, especially for the Concertgebouw tip. I was a regular there when I lived in Amsterdam, and played many games of football on Museumplein with the Concertgebouw as a backdrop.
Sadly, Museumplein is now home to anti-lockdown protests every weekend that are brutally suppressed by the Dutch police. A very good friend of mine was arrested there last weekend.
I love music with the exception of chart pop now, but I can play Siouxsie & The Banshees or something I discovered a while back bortniansky, 18th c? Choral music. The orthodox Churches Russian choral music is something else.
At school, when you were allowed to sing hymns we did so every day of the week ie 7 days.
End of term, Stanford’s Te Deum in b flat with full choir, orchestra and 600 mixed 8 to 18 children conducted by Mr Robert Smith (no not The Cure who I love, Robert Smith is a poet and 2 late, is heartache as I remember my first true and only love and he was heavenly in body and spirit), getting angrier if we were sluggish o our tempo. He died of cancer years back but what a character.
There’s something about being part of that, whether you believe or not, because it is uplifting. It would also help with less talking about identity politics and skin colours and just singing for the pleasure of it. Jerusalem was a big thing for the 6 tv form lads … the evermore was louder and louder as they attempted a record.
I do have a favourite hymn, O Thou The Central Orb sung by Halifax Choral Society is like they taped it in a local church, rather than a big set piece and it’s more endearing. The others are far too slow tempo wise.
I’m off to listen to Big Maybelle, I heard I’ve got a feeling and she’s got a big voice and she thinks her bestie is sleeping with her husband and tries to catch her by waiting under her bed to catch them out. Ace…
I was the first to comment, early this morning. What is the point of having a comments section and allowing comments under articles written by people who campaign for free speech, if you do not allow comments to appear?
Free speech is essential – but not necessarily unfettered speech, full of violence or hatred or even swear-words. So i support Unherd’s policy of moderation – and your helpful comment did get through!
What exactly makes you presume that Houston’s (or anyone’s) comments contained any of those things? I had many comments removed, none of them contained “violence or hatred or even swear-words.” Nor those comments made by others which i’ve read before they disappeared. So your comment was rather unhelpful here.
Happy Easter.
John Eliot Gardiner’s Pilgrimage to Santiago is truly a beautiful and amazing musical journey. It strikes me that the mics are gradually moved closer to the choir throughout the programme, which has quite an interesting psychological effect.
Must check that out, thanks for the tip! Gardiner deserves immense credit for reinstating baroque music to how it should be played, doing away with the melodramatic flourishes of postromanticism. (Was in my teens back in the eighties, slowly settling back into my childhood favourites (baroque, renaissance) after a short obligatory foray into punk – just about when Gardiner / English Baroque Soloists vinyls started to turn up, my mother hunting down each one. What a delight after the stuffy, emotised fare we had to make do with prior. The Magnificat turned up first – still haven’t heard a better one than that.)
You should, it’s worth it. I originally thought to mention it because Douglas included one track from it in his listing, but I think the whole thing needs to be listened to to really appreciate it.
I’m in agreement. Can’t beat the baroque!
Absolutely!
And not only for listening. I suck at every instrument i tried to play (fingers too clunky), but spent years trying to learn some Bach pieces on the piano – that gave a glimpse into how they are made. It’s weeping and howling with utter delight at watching perfection constructing itself (now, that was a very contorted sentence).
Found this little piece on youtube, Bach’s Crab Canon (sorta multidimensional palindrome) illustrated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU
Beautiful selection and a timely reminder of the spiritual power of music.
Thank you, Douglas Murray.
Douglas, Thank you for a most wonderful offering thoughts and music. Its been years since I listened to Lobo. You are so right – why did I ever stop. Well, I won’t again. Happy Easter!
That would be the Officium album with Jan Garbarek (an excellent saxist). Contains one of my oldest favourites, Procedentem Sponsum (a Christmas gregorian). Same as you, i much prefer the original version to Hilliard Ensemble’s take on it. (Not that the Hilliard / Garbarek interpretation is bad – it’s good, but the original is so much better.)
Here’s the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlwU0ughBMM – a fairly rare, “dynamic” gregorian tune.
Thank-you for the recommendations and online musical selections. As I read your article, I thought that you might enjoy reading Charles Taylor as he discusses, “absolute music” (perhaps you already have). When i read your work here and other places, I wonder if you have considered Taylor’s understanding of “disenchantment?”
For those who use Apple Music I’ve transposed the playlist:
https://music.apple.com/gb/…
Happy Easter to all Christians!!!
As a Benedictine educated Roman Catholic, I adore plainsong, and chant in Latin, as much as I dislike to levels of allergy, hymns, and Christmas carols are even worse… but nothing is more abhorrent than the invasion of our Church by the strumming, whistling, tamburinoid, minstrels from Hades and low church protestanism…
The Apparition is crazy beautiful.
it has to be incredible in person.