Search - Choir of New College Oxford :: Parry: Songs of Farewell & Other Choral Works

Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) was a dominant force in British music-making. His music, with that of his contemporary Charles Villiers Stanford, brought his native land into the European musical mainstream, through its assimilation of continentalspecifically Germanmodels. This release situates Parrys music in its European context. Parry was a social and political liberal, and cruciallylike all the leading British musicians of his timehis horizons extended beyond the island of his birth. His late set of six motets, Songs of Farewell, are among his greatest achievements in any musical genre, demonstrating his capacity for deeply affecting introspection. In this recording, they are prefaced by another sextet: the pithy Sechs Spruche by Mendelssohn, which make clear the debt Parry owed to his continental forebears and contemporaries. Moreover, this recording presents, for the first time, an early version of There is an old belief, edited by Robert Quinney from the autograph manuscripts in Oxfords Bodleian Library and a printed proof copy. The compositional history of the motet is unclear, but the evidence suggests Parry vacillated between two strikingly different versions of the section serene in changeless prime until shortly before publication.