The choral music of mid-20th century British composer Edmund Rubbra, who, like Arvo Pärt, was influenced by the sound of bells, is not exactly unknown, and the large work here, the Missa Cantuariensis, Op. 59, had been previously recorded by the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, and by St. Margaret's Westminster Singers when this album by The Sixteen and its leader Harry Christophers appeared in 2016. That double-choir work was composed for Canterbury Cathedral in 1945, prior to Rubbra's conversion to Catholicism in ...
Read More
The choral music of mid-20th century British composer Edmund Rubbra, who, like Arvo Pärt, was influenced by the sound of bells, is not exactly unknown, and the large work here, the Missa Cantuariensis, Op. 59, had been previously recorded by the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, and by St. Margaret's Westminster Singers when this album by The Sixteen and its leader Harry Christophers appeared in 2016. That double-choir work was composed for Canterbury Cathedral in 1945, prior to Rubbra's conversion to Catholicism in 1947, and it has a wider, less personal scope than most of the smaller works on the program. Yet even in this work there is an inward quality to Rubbra's music, evident not only in its overall tone but in its neither-tonal-nor-atonal harmonic procedures, which give each piece its own set of rules and sonorities. The Sixteen (here bulked up to between 18 and 25 singers) are ideal for this music, even if some of it may have originally been written with larger choirs in mind. Sample some...
Read Less
