One of the most delicious characters from the brittle satire of the Edwardian short-story writer Saki is a Duchess who regards the Church of England with patronising affection, as if it were something that had grown up in the kitchen garden. Facetiousness aside, two CDs reveal just how much the
Anglican church music tradition resonates for many on our side of the globe.
England, My England is a generous double-set tracking 35 years of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. From a 1964 Byrd motet, we work through to recent ventures such as Lux aeterna, with the choir singing Elgar's Nimrod Variation, in the manner that Glenn Close and her fellow inmates carolled the composer's Cello Concerto in the film Paradise Road.
Much of this music is classic. Tallis' 40-part Spem in alium rings joyously around King's College Chapel while Harris' Faire is the heaven floats in the same space like the overlapping angel sighs. You could well trip the light fantastic to Purcell's Come Ye Songs of Art, although some snappy vocal turns by alto David Hansen might make you lose your step.
John Goss' chant for Psalm 23 is self-evidently a 40-year-old recording but its unaffected reverence is the perfect foil for the big closer - Parry's I Was Glad, complete with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, military band and drums, underlining the fact that this was written for Edward VII's Coronation.
A New Heaven, from The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, focuses on Anglican repertoire over the last century. I Was Glad, with organ accompaniment, catches perhaps a more telling fervour for this treatment of Psalm 122. Yet, while women's voices certainly warm up the vocal tone in anthems like Stanford's Beati Quorum Via, the singular blend of all-male groupings on the King's College disc exerts its own special appeal.
Significantly, in the five pieces the two discs share, the Cambridge choristers win scores down, even when recordings betray their age. And their new age Nimrod Anthem seems the epitome of good taste alongside The Sixteen giving us Howard Goodall's Vicar of Dibley theme transformed into a bland psalm setting.
