MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
AmazonUK

 

 

A Candle to the Glorious Sun
John MILTON (c.1563-1647)
O woe is me for thee [5.02]; If ye love me [3.13]; Psalm 27 (York tune – first setting) [2.28]; I am the resurrection and the life [2.05]; O had I wings like a dove [7.43]; If that a sinner’s sighs [7.51]; Thou God of Might [4.08]; O Lord behold my miseries [4.37] Psalm 138 (York Tune - second setting) [1.49]; How doth the holy city [3.31]; She weepeth continually [5.36]; Psalm 102 (Norwich Tune) [1.37]; When David heard [3.43]
Martin PEERSON (c.1572-1651)
O God, that no time dost despise [6.29]; Psalm 134 (Southwell Tune) [1.23]; Lord, ever bridle my desires [4.23]; Who will rise up with me [2.05]; But when I said [2.04]
Choir of Selwyn College/Sarah MacDonald
rec. St. George’s Church, Chesterton, Cambridge, 2007?
REGENT REGCD268 [68.12] 

 

Experience Classicsonline


In the same way that we have in recent times come to realize that the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre is not just Shakespeare we are now gradually understanding that the music of that period is not just Byrd and Dowland. Other composers, fine ones but little known, were very active and two such were John Milton, father of the great poet and Martin Peerson. Although contemporaries they are also contrasting figures as we shall see.
 

Until now I had only known John Milton through a rather dull madrigal he had submitted to Thomas Morley for the collection ‘The Triumphs of Oriana’. Peerson curiously did not contribute although some pieces by him can be found in the slightly later ‘FitzWilliam Virginal Book’. 

John Milton has never featured so strongly before on a CD but Martin Peerson has had his moments in the sun with two discs I shall mention. It is therefore good that Milton has the bulk of the playing time on the present CD. There is a good reason for this as Richard Rastall explains in his very interesting booklet notes. Peerson obviously preferred “to write for voices and viols in a verse style … his ‘full’ vocal music being only a small proportion of his total output”. Rastall goes on “Milton only wrote one consort song, his output otherwise being ‘full’”. He sums things up by saying that the recording “presents the entire corpus of ‘full’ sacred songs by Milton and Peerson, but is numerically unrepresentative of the two composers, Peerson being by far the more prolific but in the verse style”. 

Peerson was quite a versatile composer. As well as the keyboard pieces mentioned above there is a series of fifteen unpublished Latin motets. They were recorded in 2004 by Ex Cathedra under Jeremy Skidmore (Hyperion CDA67490 – see review). There are also some consort songs. The source of the music on the disc under review is mostly from Sir William Leighton’s ‘The Teares and Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul’, published in 1614. This was a collection of settings of metrical psalm texts and verse paraphrases by twenty-one composers. Some like Gibbons and John Bull are well-known; others like Robert Kindersley are unknown. Other sources include Myrell’s ‘Trinitiae Remedium’ and Ravenscroft’s ‘Whole Book of Psalms’. 

It may surprise you to know that three pieces on this new disc have been recorded before and that on a now unavailable Collins Classics disc performed by the Wren Baroque Soloists ’Martin Peerson Private Musicke’ (14372). The pieces in question are “Who let me at thy footstool fall”, ‘O God, that no time dost despise’ and (a typical Protestant poem this) ‘Lord, bridle my desires’. On the Collins disc there are only five performers. In his most useful notes for this new disc Richard Rastall who is responsible for the editions and reconstructions of all of these pieces comments: “The vocal music of Milton and Peerson was probably all for domestic use … all metrical Psalters were, and its primary purpose was certainly for devotional use in the household”. Later he adds “Both composers evidently wrote mainly or exclusively for the household market”. The problem is that the Selwyn College Choir consist of almost thirty singers so the idea of domestic music-making is lost. Also it should be remembered that these pieces were neither performed nor meant as anthems for cathedral use - although they may be so used nowadays. 

I love the fresh-voiced sound of this choir very much but I am very pleased that the booklet contains all of the texts as their diction is far from always clear. They are not helped, especially by Milton, whose ‘old-fashioned imitative counterpoint’ rather clogs the textures … and size of the choir, also does not help. This is not such a problem however in the more homophonic metrical psalms. Incidentally these originally often ran to more than twelve or so verses. You will be relieved to know that here we have only a handful, just to offer a taste. For example in Psalm 102 we are given verses 1, 8 and 12. 

I would have liked more dynamic shading between the verses or dynamics built into the lines and their rising and falling. Surely Sarah MacDonald has missed a trick here. There are occasions when the unrelenting mezzo-forte becomes wearing. 

Still, you might think, these are minor gripes. It is after all fantastic to have this very rare repertoire made available to us and performed better than one can ever imagine it was at the time. The recording in a fine medieval church captures the acoustic well and offers an accurate balance - realistic and clear.

Gary Higginson

 


 




 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.