Choir of St Johns College, Cambridge, George Herbert, Andrew Nethsingha - Magnificat 4 (2024) [Hi-Res]
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BAND/ARTIST: Choir of St Johns College, Cambridge, George Herbert, Andrew Nethsingha
- Title: Magnificat 4
- Year Of Release: 2024
- Label: Signum
- Genre: Classical
- Quality: flac lossless (tracks) / flac 24bits - 192.0kHz +Booklet
- Total Time: 01:19:32
- Total Size: 322 mb / 2.24 gb
- WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist
01. Nunc Dimittis
02. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
03. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
04. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
05. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
06. Te Deum
07. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
08. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
09. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
10. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
11. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major (1935) for Tenors & Basses: Magnificat
12. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major (1935) for Tenors & Basses: Nunc Dimittis
13. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in G Major: Magnificat
14. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in G Major: Nunc Dimittis
15. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major: Magnificat
16. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major: Nunc Dimittis
17. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
18. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
If the psalms are the arteries of Evensong, the canticles are the lungs. This is not an image to be laboured, but it is a vital reminder that the daily liturgy of the Church has a dynamic life. It is not a static, fixed thing, whatever the intentions of Cranmer and his Elizabethan successors. The structure may be fixed—and in a rigorously simple way. Cranmer snarled wittily in the Prologue to the Book of Common Prayer about the Catholic edifice of daily prayer: 'Many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.; But what his structure allows is scripture to do what it does. It allows it because it is almost wholly built on biblical texts, used directly or by inspiration. And scripture being scripture, it will not be hemmed in or held back by any human imposition or artifice, even when constructed by an Archbishop of Cranmer’s literary genius. Those who experience the beauty and discipline of established liturgies are immersing themselves in the full spectrum of the Bible’s power: there is encouragement and challenge, joy and fear, conviction and mystery, story and poetry. There is very limited scope for choosing your favourite bits to suit your theological predilections: and especially when the canticles are simply compulsory!
Indeed, at Evening Prayer—‘Evensong’ when sung—while the psalms and Bible readings vary daily, usually according to a pre-determined order or ‘lectionary’, the canticles remain, unchanging. Cranmer re-worked the older services (or ‘offices’, as they are known in Church terminology) of Vespers and Compline (the evening and night offices) combining them into one. The Magnificat and Nunc dimittis were the principal canticles at Vespers and Compline, respectively. Bringing them together in one service of Evening Prayer providentially gave a particular critical mass to the new office. They are ‘gospel canticles’, Bible texts rendered into liturgical song-form and with the pre-eminence of being from the gospels. That is why we customarily stand up for them.
There were canticles aplenty in the traditional daily offices, drawn from across the Old and New Testaments, and they were used in sequence with the daily provision of psalms. But the gospel canticles—the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in the evening—remained constant. Cranmer retained these, though with alternatives. In the Evening those are the Cantate Domino (Psalm 98) and Deus misereatur (Psalm 67), which have lived on in said Evening Prayer rather than in composed settings for Evensong. At Morning Prayer, as well as the Benedictus there are three other canticles: the Benedicite, the Te Deum laudamus and the Jubilate. Of these the Benedicite is perhaps the least often said or sung, if only because of its length and repetitive text. Interestingly the Benedictus has not achieved the sine qua non status of the evening gospel canticles.
A setting of the Te Deum is included on this recording. The Te Deum is an emphatically powerful song of praise, and not a biblical text. It is a Christian hymn from no later than the fourth century of the Church, and so began its life in Latin. Over the centuries it has been used not just in the daily office, but as a stand-alone central text of any special liturgy of praise and thanksgiving: say in response to a victory in war or a royal birth. Something of this kind is happening at the end of Act 1 of Puccini’s Tosca, for example. It has inspired many musical settings, some as concert pieces of considerable magnitude.
Essays written for the previous St John’s Choir ‘Magnificat’ recordings by Rowan Williams, Mark Oakley and Lucy Winkett all give fascinating interpretive insights into the texts of the two canticles. You can find them online if you do not have the recordings—yet! Among other things they note in the two canticles the beautiful contrasts between a holy woman and a holy man, between a very young, pregnant country-woman and a very old priest of the Jewish Temple. They also note the very different characteristics of the two canticles: the Magnificat with its clarion, revolutionary passion and the Nunc dimittis with its gently content relinquishing of this life. A shout and a sigh, perhaps.
For Christians you might also say that the canticles tell us something about how to live and how to die. Both stories are from the earliest chapters of Luke’s gospel; but their resonance, their meaning, their application reaches through the succeeding narrative and into the life of the Church and of every individual Christian. Mary’s song moves from astonishment at the privilege which has come upon her, to a clear-eyed vision of what that tells us about God’s demands of human living. It harks back to the prophets’ denunciations of hard-hearted, legalistic religious observance: no amount of sacrifices can make up for disregarding the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. And it harks forward to a similar prophetic challenge in Jesus’ teaching.
Then Simeon’s song, with crystalline brevity, recognises what this tiny child will mean: a light for the whole world, and glory for the Israel who gave him to the world. That light and glory are only achieved at the other end of Jesus’ earthly story, in his death and resurrection, his glorification. It is in the light of that glory that we can live well enough to die well. At every Evensong we wait to hear that climactic word ‘glory’, sung with whatever coruscation of colours the composer’s twist on the kaleidoscope has yielded.
01. Nunc Dimittis
02. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
03. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
04. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
05. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
06. Te Deum
07. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
08. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
09. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
10. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
11. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major (1935) for Tenors & Basses: Magnificat
12. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major (1935) for Tenors & Basses: Nunc Dimittis
13. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in G Major: Magnificat
14. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in G Major: Nunc Dimittis
15. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major: Magnificat
16. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in E Major: Nunc Dimittis
17. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Magnificat
18. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: Nunc Dimittis
If the psalms are the arteries of Evensong, the canticles are the lungs. This is not an image to be laboured, but it is a vital reminder that the daily liturgy of the Church has a dynamic life. It is not a static, fixed thing, whatever the intentions of Cranmer and his Elizabethan successors. The structure may be fixed—and in a rigorously simple way. Cranmer snarled wittily in the Prologue to the Book of Common Prayer about the Catholic edifice of daily prayer: 'Many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.; But what his structure allows is scripture to do what it does. It allows it because it is almost wholly built on biblical texts, used directly or by inspiration. And scripture being scripture, it will not be hemmed in or held back by any human imposition or artifice, even when constructed by an Archbishop of Cranmer’s literary genius. Those who experience the beauty and discipline of established liturgies are immersing themselves in the full spectrum of the Bible’s power: there is encouragement and challenge, joy and fear, conviction and mystery, story and poetry. There is very limited scope for choosing your favourite bits to suit your theological predilections: and especially when the canticles are simply compulsory!
Indeed, at Evening Prayer—‘Evensong’ when sung—while the psalms and Bible readings vary daily, usually according to a pre-determined order or ‘lectionary’, the canticles remain, unchanging. Cranmer re-worked the older services (or ‘offices’, as they are known in Church terminology) of Vespers and Compline (the evening and night offices) combining them into one. The Magnificat and Nunc dimittis were the principal canticles at Vespers and Compline, respectively. Bringing them together in one service of Evening Prayer providentially gave a particular critical mass to the new office. They are ‘gospel canticles’, Bible texts rendered into liturgical song-form and with the pre-eminence of being from the gospels. That is why we customarily stand up for them.
There were canticles aplenty in the traditional daily offices, drawn from across the Old and New Testaments, and they were used in sequence with the daily provision of psalms. But the gospel canticles—the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in the evening—remained constant. Cranmer retained these, though with alternatives. In the Evening those are the Cantate Domino (Psalm 98) and Deus misereatur (Psalm 67), which have lived on in said Evening Prayer rather than in composed settings for Evensong. At Morning Prayer, as well as the Benedictus there are three other canticles: the Benedicite, the Te Deum laudamus and the Jubilate. Of these the Benedicite is perhaps the least often said or sung, if only because of its length and repetitive text. Interestingly the Benedictus has not achieved the sine qua non status of the evening gospel canticles.
A setting of the Te Deum is included on this recording. The Te Deum is an emphatically powerful song of praise, and not a biblical text. It is a Christian hymn from no later than the fourth century of the Church, and so began its life in Latin. Over the centuries it has been used not just in the daily office, but as a stand-alone central text of any special liturgy of praise and thanksgiving: say in response to a victory in war or a royal birth. Something of this kind is happening at the end of Act 1 of Puccini’s Tosca, for example. It has inspired many musical settings, some as concert pieces of considerable magnitude.
Essays written for the previous St John’s Choir ‘Magnificat’ recordings by Rowan Williams, Mark Oakley and Lucy Winkett all give fascinating interpretive insights into the texts of the two canticles. You can find them online if you do not have the recordings—yet! Among other things they note in the two canticles the beautiful contrasts between a holy woman and a holy man, between a very young, pregnant country-woman and a very old priest of the Jewish Temple. They also note the very different characteristics of the two canticles: the Magnificat with its clarion, revolutionary passion and the Nunc dimittis with its gently content relinquishing of this life. A shout and a sigh, perhaps.
For Christians you might also say that the canticles tell us something about how to live and how to die. Both stories are from the earliest chapters of Luke’s gospel; but their resonance, their meaning, their application reaches through the succeeding narrative and into the life of the Church and of every individual Christian. Mary’s song moves from astonishment at the privilege which has come upon her, to a clear-eyed vision of what that tells us about God’s demands of human living. It harks back to the prophets’ denunciations of hard-hearted, legalistic religious observance: no amount of sacrifices can make up for disregarding the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. And it harks forward to a similar prophetic challenge in Jesus’ teaching.
Then Simeon’s song, with crystalline brevity, recognises what this tiny child will mean: a light for the whole world, and glory for the Israel who gave him to the world. That light and glory are only achieved at the other end of Jesus’ earthly story, in his death and resurrection, his glorification. It is in the light of that glory that we can live well enough to die well. At every Evensong we wait to hear that climactic word ‘glory’, sung with whatever coruscation of colours the composer’s twist on the kaleidoscope has yielded.
Year 2024 | Classical | FLAC / APE | HD & Vinyl
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