Howard Goodall's music may be familiar to listeners who have never heard his name because he wrote the theme for several popular BBC comedy series, including Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. The chaste ethereality of those choral anthems stood in bizarre disjunction with shows' spectacular daftness, but somehow they managed to seem absolutely appropriate nonetheless. This album includes as a filler the gorgeously lyrical theme for The Vicar of Dibley, easily one of the finest settings of the 23rd Psalm in English. The main ...
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Howard Goodall's music may be familiar to listeners who have never heard his name because he wrote the theme for several popular BBC comedy series, including Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. The chaste ethereality of those choral anthems stood in bizarre disjunction with shows' spectacular daftness, but somehow they managed to seem absolutely appropriate nonetheless. This album includes as a filler the gorgeously lyrical theme for The Vicar of Dibley, easily one of the finest settings of the 23rd Psalm in English. The main event here, though, is Goodall's requiem, Eternal Light, written in 2008. Goodall has one foot in the classical choral tradition and one in the popular, and the requiem is probably his most ambitious classical project. The composer whose work his most closely resembles is John Rutter, in its easy melodiousness and warm harmonies. Like Rutter, Goodall is not always consistent, and while some movements are breathtakingly lovely, others sound facile and derivative. Among the finer...
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