Ralph Vaughan Williams confidently asserted that there was no reason an atheist couldn't write a good mass, and he backed up his words with the Mass in G minor, dedicated to Gustav Holst and first performed in 1923. The work stands at the center of this disc, the first recording by the famed Atlanta Symphony Chorus without the backing of the Atlanta Symphony, a famed partnership going back to the days of conductor Robert Shaw. Vaughan Williams, like him or not, thought quite profoundly about the nature of English musical ...
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Ralph Vaughan Williams confidently asserted that there was no reason an atheist couldn't write a good mass, and he backed up his words with the Mass in G minor, dedicated to Gustav Holst and first performed in 1923. The work stands at the center of this disc, the first recording by the famed Atlanta Symphony Chorus without the backing of the Atlanta Symphony, a famed partnership going back to the days of conductor Robert Shaw. Vaughan Williams, like him or not, thought quite profoundly about the nature of English musical tradition and how it could be carried forward. His mass effectively alludes to centuries' worth of English choral music while still speaking a contemporary language; its G minor tonality is really more often G Dorian mode, giving it a Renaissance sound while Vaughan Williams builds structural tension with irregular phrases in a modern and entirely distinctive way. The composer knew his way around a compositional tradition well enough to connect with it and make a personal statement...
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