Washington Cathedral Choir Men & Boys at Westminster Abbey, Easter Festival 1966

$

25

The Washington Cathedral Choir at Westminster Abbey
20th Century Easter Festival music for choir, organ, brass instruments, and timpani

CS 7189

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Condition of jacket: Excellent, still in original shrink wrap that has been slit open along edge.

Condition of record: Excellent, just a few light surface marks but appears pretty well unused.

Side One:
EASTER TRIUMPH — Ronald Arnatt
CHRISTIANS, TO THE PASCHAL VICTIM — Leo Sowerby
ALL GLORIOUS GOD — Ned Rorem
SING WE MERRILY — Cecil Effinger
CHRIST OUR PASSOVER IS SACRIFICED FOR US - Richard Dirksen

Side Two:
FUNDAMENTUM EJUS — David Koehring
JUBILATE DEO — Richard Dirksen
NUNC DIMITTIS — Leo Sowerby
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO — Richard Dirksen
THE STRIFE IS O'ER — G. P. Sante da Palestrina
COME RISEN LORD — Leo Sowerby
JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY — Lyra Davidica

From the back of the jacket:

The Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys
PAUL CALLAWAY, Organist and Choirmaster
DAVID KOEHRING, Assistant Organist and Choirmaster.
Easter Festival Music by Contemporary Composers Selected from the Repertory of the Westminster Abbey Services
Recorded in the Great choir of Washington Cathedral

SIDE ONE

EASTER TRIUMPH is a brilliant setting of the Easter Canticle, "Christ Our Passover is Sacrificed for Us," composed by Ronald Arnatt in 1954. Arnatt born in London, England in 1930, began his musical study at Westminster Abbey and Kings College Chapel as a chorister, and Trent College, Nottingham on an organ scholarship. He moved to America in 1947 and continued his education with Dr. Callaway at the Cathedral. He has achieved the degrees of Fellow of Trinity College, London; Fellow of the American Guild of Organist and Bachelor of Music, Durham University, England. For the past 12 years he has been Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral and Director of Music at Mary Institute, St. Louis, Missouri. Ronald Arnatt, already much in demand as a lecturer and teacher in every important church music seminar offered in America, continues to develop major talents as a conductor, composer and organist.

CHRISTIANS, TO THE PASCHAL VICTIM was composed by Leo Sowerby for performance in Westminster Abbey during the Spring of 1966, on the occasion of the Cathedral Choir's three week residence at the Abbey during its 900th Anniversary Year. Dr. Sowerby retired from The Cathedral of St. James, Chicago, in 1962 to found the College of Church Musicians at the Washington Cathedral. His compositions are often sung in the Cathedral. The text is from Hymn 97 in the Hymnal 1940, the official hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.

ALL GLORIOUS GOD is the second of Three Hymns composed in 1955 by Ned Rorem. Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana in 1923. He studied at Northwestern, the Curtis Institute, Berkshire Music Center, and Juilliard, after which he spent eight years in France. He has won the Gershwin and Lili Boulanger Awards, has held Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, is the recipient of three Ford Foundation grants, and has been Professor of Composition at Buffalo and Utah Universities. He is also the author of two books: "The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem" and the forthcoming "Music From Inside Out", both published by Brazil-ler. His many compositions embrace all forms, from such short and expressive anthems as this, through some 300 songs and larger orchestral works, to the exciting "Miss Julie", his opera of 1965 which received a highly acclaimed premier at City Center.

SING WE MERRILY, an exciting setting by Cecil Effinger from Psalm 131, was composed in 1946. The effective organ accompaniment drives skillfully contrived choral lines before and above it, with high melodic interest and great rhythmic energy.
Mr. Effinger, born in Colorado Springs in 1914, studied at Colorado College in Mathematics, and with Frederick Booth-rcyd, Bernard Wagenaar, and Nadia Boulager in composition. His "Little Symphony No. 1" has been recorded by the Columbia Symphony under Zoltan Rosznyai. Of his larger sacred works, "The Invisible Fire" and the "St. Luke Christmas Story" are widely and regularly performed. Dr. Effinger is head of the Theory and Composition Department, College of Music, University of Colorado.

CHRIST OUR PASSOVER IS SACRIFICED FOR US was first performed in the Cathedral on Easter Sunday, 1949. Richard Dirksen, at that time Associate Organist and Choirmaster of the Cathedral, is its composer. Trumpets, trombones and timpani combined with the great organ are brilliantly displayed in dialogue with the choir. In its final passages, the severe dissonances created awaken the full reverberation of the Cathedral so that great bells seem to ring in the high, distant vaulting.
Now the Cathedral's Director of Advance Program, Mr. Dirksen continues a creative career which began at the Wash-ington Cathedral in 1942, when he was appointed Assistant Organist and Choirmaster while a student at Peabody Con-servatory. Among his many new responsibilities, as a producer of the performing arts in the Cathedral, was the creation and supervision of this recording.

SIDE TWO

FUNDAMENTUM EJUS was composed by David Koehring, the Assistant Organist and Choirmaster, for the visit to the Washington Cathedral in 1965 of Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret. She and her husband, Lord Snowdon, were received at the South Transept by the Dean, then ushered into the War Memorial Chapel for Evensong, during which this glorious setting of Psalm 87, verses 1, 2, 6 and 7, was first performed. The trompette-en-chamade, newly installed in 1965 on the triforium level above the reredos, sounds the fanfarades Which punctuate the intense and sustained excitement of the music. Mr. Koehring came to the Cathedral in 1962 as one of the first appointments to the College of Church Musicians. He graduated as a Fellow in 1964 and was appointed Assistant Organist and Choirmaster. Born in Richmond, Indiana, he studied at Butler University and Indiana University.

JUBILATE DEO by Richard Dirksen was composed during the summer of 1958. The great organ console was being replaced, and for two months a small, positive organ was used for accompanying the choir. The organ accompaniment, therefore necessarily light, contributes to the gay dance-like character of this two-voice setting of Psalm One Hundred.

NUNC DIMITTIS by Leo Sowerby is from his D major Evening Service written in 1930. It has been performed often in the Cathedral, perhaps because of the flowing beauty of the opening solo when sung by all the boys. The sure mastery of song and the marvelous balance in form and of sonorities are combined with the descriptive simplicity that hallmarks the greatest talent.

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO from the Easter Festival Communion by Richard Dirksen combines brass quartette and timpani, organ and choir in a blazing anthem of praise. The racing irregular measures spring the rhythm freely throughout, excepting "thou only art Holy", which is a quotation from the CHRIST OUR PASSOVER concluding side one. The service was composed in 1956 and first performed on Easter Sunday.
THE STRIFE IS O'ER
COME RISEN LORD
JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY
Of these three hymns, the first by Palestrina and the third from Lyra Davidica are so well known as to require no description. These are included because of the rich brass accompaniment which enhances the Easter Sunday Music in the Cathedral.

COME RISEN LORD (Hymn 207 in The Hymnal 1940) a poem by George Wallace Briggs, written in 1933, was given a new tune for the dedication of the Gloria in Excelsis Tower, May 7, 1964. The genius of its creator, Leo Sowerby, is evident in this marvel of a hymn tune. It was recorded for the limited edition of the Tower Dedication Recording, but is here made more widely available. It is certain to gain a place in hymnals and remain as long as man's unceasing praise and petitions are addressed to his Creator through Our Lord Jesus Christ. It sets forth the beauty of the first two stanzas with simple and gentle loveliness. An elegant, regal interlude for brass introduces the third stanza in which a majestic descant ennobles the melody and newly illumines the poetic idea.

THE WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL CHOIR IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
In the fall of 1965, a transatlantic phone call was made by the Dean of Westminster Abbey to the Dean of Washington Cathedral. It was an invitation for the Washington Cathedral Choir to sing in the Abbey as part of its 900th Anniversary Celebration. The following year on Easter night, thirty boys and twenty men of the Washington Choir boarded a chartered Boeing 707 for London.

While the Abbey singers were on holiday, the Washington Choir sang for three weeks, as many as three services in one day. The church where Henry Purcell was once organist, thronged with English musicians to hear an American choir in Westminster Abbey, the first time in the history of the church.

The BBC carried a live broadcast of the Washington Choir at Evensong; CBS television presented an hour-long color documentary of the historic trip.

The choir made short trips to Cambridge, Canterbury and Salisbury, and sang at the Cathedrals in Chichester and Coventry.

The music on this recording is part of the music performed in London and recorded in Washington Cathedral shortly before the trip.

It is the purpose of the Washington Cathedral Choir to present a wide variety of sacred music drawn from every important period of liturgical music, and from all of the differing traditions of music within each period. The choir's repertoire ranges from medieval plain chant to contemporary anthems.

PAUL CALLAWAY
Paul Callaway's acclaim as an organist and conductor is nationwide. He became organist and choirmaster at the Washington Cathedral on September 1, 1939.
In addition to directing the Cathedral Choir, he conducts the Cathedral Choral Society, and has served as musical director of the Opera Society of Washington since its inception. His sure instinct for the best in new music has long established him as the worthy champion of contemporary composers. He has conducted or performed many premiers of works by such outstanding men as Menotti, Dallapiccola, Sowerby, La Montaine, Barber and Rorem. In 1959 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by Westminster College. He is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, and a founder of the College of Church Musicians at the Cathedral.

ABOUT THE RECORDING
Mirrosonic Records of New York City accomplished the recording in three sessions. Kenneth Mapes was the engineer.
Music for both the monophonic and stereophonic recordings was recorded in the massive gothic Washington Cathedral under conditions ideally suited to the performance. While presenting an audio-engineering challenge, recording in the Cathedral made it possible to reproduce the authentic spaciousness and natural reverberations which so enhance the music of Great Festival occasions.

THE PARISH OF THE AIR
This is the third recording of music by the Washington Cathedral Choir to be released jointly by the Cathedral and The Parish of the Air of the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation. The two previous albums are "Sing My Soul" and "Alleluia".
Since 1945, The Parish of the Air of the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation has been strengthening the moral and spiritual fiber of the nation through radio and television programs and sacred music recordings of significance and quality. The work is supported by membership contributions to The Parish of the Air which is headquartered at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia.