This disc demonstrates the music that one might hear on Michelmas
- The Feast of St Michael and All Angels (29 September) at Westminster
Abbey. The book of Revelations depicts the battle that
raged in heaven between St Michael, with all his angels, and the
Dragon (Satan) and his evil angels. Michael defeated the forces
of evil, sending them plummeting down to earth. Michael is also
known as the Archangel, a recurrent feature in any service of
The Feast of St Michael and All Angels.
The disc is divided into the three major choral
services of a Feast Day – Matins, Eucharist and Evensong. It
opens with Factum est Silentium, from Richard Dering’s
collection of Cantica Sacra of 1618, and describes the
silence in heaven as Michael fought the dragon. The ensuing
Preces, and later Responses are by Kenneth Leighton,
and introduce a more astringent and modern sound. Psalm 148
follows, in a surprisingly unexciting setting by Stanford. The
ensuing Vaughan Williams – Te Deum in G, a strong, fine
work – has more interest, as does Britten’s joyful and characterful
Jubilate in C. The Eucharist is here represented by the
Messe Solennelle of 1951 by the blind French composer
and organist Jean Langlais - regarded by many as his greatest
sacred work – and by Tippett’s Plebs Angelica. This,
along with two works later on the disc, comprise the bulk of
the little liturgical music that Tippett composed. In Evensong,
after the lovely, wonderfully gentle and tonal Psalm 91 by Sir
Walter Galpin Alcock (an organist of Salisbury Cathedral), comes
Tippett’s Collegium Sancti Johannis Cantabrigiense, the
Magnificat, with its manic organ part, and the more serene
Nunc Dimittis for a smaller chorus - here a quartet of
voices. Herbert Howells’ A Sequence for St Michael sets
words by Alcuin, in Helen Waddell’s translation, from Mediaeval
Latin Lyrics. It is a prayer to St Michael, in which his
great deed of war is recalled. It is profound, deeply felt music
– its intensity probably testament to the agonized grief that
Howells carried with him life-long following the death of Michael,
his son. The disc concludes with the Messiaen-esque Laus
Deo. The composer, Jonathan Harvey, had a dream, in which
this music was played by a “shimmering” angel on the organ.
It is frenzied, almost infernal music, that leads one to wonder
whether it was an angel of St Michael’s that featured in Harvey’s
dream, or one of the dragon’s …!
This is an incredibly varied, demanding and ambitious
programme - this is not light listening! Few pieces really stand
out (the Vaughan Williams, Howells and Britten), and it must
have been quite a challenge for the performers. Yet the Choir
of Westminster Abbey under their conductor James O’Donnell,
and organist Robert Quinney, rose to the occasion in extremely
well disciplined performances of the very highest quality.
Em Marshall
