Aylesbury Consort of Voices

Performers

Notes on the performers

Aylesbury Consort of Voices was originally founded by Charles Pope in the 1950s, initially as an evening class for the study and performance of Madrigals. Charles Pope was a former teacher at Aylesbury Grammar School and was actively involved in the Aylesbury music scene at that time, effectively establishing a whole variety of music groups including the Aylesbury Choral Society, and the Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra, which has enabled successive generations of musicians to enjoy his achievements and has greatly enriched the cultural life of the area. Aylesbury Consort of Voices has evolved into a performance choir of sixteen singers, performing music from the sixteenth century to the present day.

We are very fortunate to now have Edwin Pitt Mansfield as our Music Director. Ed is a Singing Teacher, Conductor, Baritone and Examiner – well known as an established teacher and educator, frequently leading workshops and seminars across the UK. Specialising in working with gifted teenagers and professional performers, he is Singing Teacher at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, an examiner for Trinity College London, and former and past Chair of The Association of Teachers of Singing (2022 – 2024). He also teaches out of his studio in Watford and in central London and is a deputy vocal teacher at the Royal College of Music, Junior Department.

Programme

Programme notes

Orlande de Lassus

Ave Verum

Lassus’s treatment of this familiar Eucharistic text is serene and elegiac, with imaginative use of the six-voiced texture to create expressive interplay between high and low voices, and restrained word-painting at the words ‘unda fluxit sanguine’. The motet—which would assuredly enjoy wider renown were it not for Byrd’s and Mozart’s settings of the same text—was first published in a 1582 collection issued in Munich, and reprinted in the posthumous collection of 1604.

Source: Collegium Records

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Amicus Meus

The Tenebrae Responsories by Tomás Luis de Victoria are a set of eighteen motets for four voices a cappella. The late Renaissance Spanish composer set the Responsories for Holy Week known as Tenebrae responsories. Amicus Meus is the first dedicated to Matins of Maundy Thursday.

Source: Wikipedia

William Byrd

Ave Verum Corpus

Ave verum corpus is a short Eucharistic chant that has been set to music by various composers – in this case William Byrd.

Source: Wikipedia

Tomás Luis de Victoria

O Vos Omnes

O vos omnes is a responsory, originally sung as part of Roman Catholic liturgies for Holy Week, and now often sung as a motet. The text is adapted from the Latin Vulgate translation of Lamentations 1:12. It was often set, especially in the sixteenth century, as part of the Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday.

Source: Wikipedia

Judith Weir

Like as the Hart

“Like as the hart” is a composition for unaccompanied choir by the British composer Judith Weir, setting the first seven verses of Psalm 42 from the Book of Common Prayer. It was commissioned for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, at which it was first performed by choirs conducted by James O’Donnell at Westminster Abbey on 19 September 2022.

Source: Wikipedia

John Taverner

The Lamb

The Lamb is a choral work written in 1982 by British composer John Tavener (1944–2013). It is a setting of music to the William Blake poem “The Lamb” from Blake’s collection of poems Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789). It is one of Tavener’s best known works. The music is minimalistic and combines chromaticism with more conventional harmony.

Source: Wikipedia

Ola Gjeilo

Ubi Caritas

The first time I sung in a choir was in high school; I went to a music high school in Norway and choir was obligatory. I loved it from the very first rehearsal, and the first piece we read through was Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas. It will always be one of my favorites; to me, it’s the perfect a cappella piece. ​

So when I set the same text myself a few years later, it was definitely influenced by his setting in some ways – though while Duruflé used an existing, traditional chant in his incomparable work, I used chant more as a general inspiration.

Source: Ola Gjeilo

Henry Purcell

Funeral Sentences

The Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary comprises the March and Canzona Z. 780 and the funeral sentence “Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts” Z. 58C. It was first performed at the funeral of Queen Mary II of England in March 1695. Purcell’s setting of “Thou knowest, Lord” was performed at his own funeral in November of the same year. In modern performances the March, Canzona and three funeral sentences are often combined as Purcell’s Funeral Sentences, Z. 860

Source: Wikipedia

Heinrich Schutz

Selig Sind Die Toten

Selig sind die Toten (Blessed are the dead) is the incipit of a verse from the Bible frequently used in funeral music of German-speaking composers. The most famous settings are a six-part motet by Heinrich Schütz published in his 1648 collection Geistliche Chormusik.

Source: Wikipedia

Christopher Tin

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson’s poem on the fragility of nature, as well as our own hand in its destruction, finds a elegiac tone in this original piece from Baba Yetu composer Christopher Tin. Palo Alto High School, Tin’s alma mater, commissioned this deeply melodic composition in celebration of their centennial in 2018.

Source: Wikipedia

Josef Rheinberger

Abendlied

Abendlied (Evening song), Op. 69/3, is a sacred motet by Josef Rheinberger. It has been regarded as his best-known sacred composition. He wrote the first version in 1855 at the age of 15. The text is a verse from the biblical narration of the Road to Emmaus.

Source: Wikipedia

William Byrd

Arise, O Lord

Arise O Lord, Why Sleepest Thou? is the first of two sections in William Byrd’s Arise, Lord, Into Thy Rest – printed after William Byrd’s Psalms, Sonnets and Songs of 1588.

Source: Wikipedia

Charles Villiers Stanford

Coelis Ascendit Hodie

Coelis Ascendit Hodie is one of three sacred motets based on Latin texts: Three Latin Motets, Op. 38. The works, some of Stanford’s few settings of church music in Latin, have remained in the choral repertoire internationally and are performed in liturgies and concert.

Source: Wikipedia