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The Cappella Singers and their Conductor Philip Colls returned to Holy Trinity on Friday 19th December to give their annual Christmas Concert.
For the Christmas concert this year, the choir was joined by Ashley Grote, the highly talented Assistant Director of Music at Gloucester Cathedral, who both accompanied the choir and played some organ solos.
The programme fell into two distinct sections: the first half was devoted almost exclusively to the work of Michael Praetorius, one of the most influential musicians of the early 17th century, who worked in Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. His setting of the Magnificat, based on a six-note scale, is an excitingly varied work in six parts.
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Full list of choral works in the first half: |
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Michael Praetorius |
Wachet auf |
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Michael Praetorius |
Magnificat super ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la |
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Samuel Scheidt |
O Jesulein suss! |
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Michael Praetorius |
Es ist ein Roess entsprungen |
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Michael Praetorius |
Joseph lieber, Joseph mein |
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Michael Praetorius |
Quem pastores laudavere |
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Michael Praetorius |
In dulci jubilo |
Philip confesses that the second half of the concert was a kind of personal trip down Memory Lane, including Pearsall‘s famous arrangement of In dulci jubilo, Howells‘ A Spotless Rose, Britten‘s A Boy was Born and music by both Lennox Berkeley and Edmund Rubbra.
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Full list of choral works in the second half: |
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Robert Lucas de Pearsall |
In dulci jubilo |
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arr. Edgar Pettman |
I saw a maiden |
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Herbert Howells |
A spotless rose |
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Stanley Vann |
Sweet was the song |
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Lennox Berkeley |
I sing of a maiden |
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Benjamin Britten |
A boy was born |
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Edmund Rubbra |
The Virgin's Cradle hymn |
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Ralph Vaughan Williams |
The blessed son of God |
The Cappella Singers: Registered Charity no 262530