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Specially recorded by the BBC Singers (the BBC's own full-time professional choir, and one of the world's great vocal ensembles) conducted by their Conductor Laureate Stephen Cleobury, the timeline gives a bird's eye view of some of the peaks of the choral repertoire, of the developments in choral writing over the centuries, and of the music of some of the modern-day composers.
Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695)
Perhaps the greatest of all England's composers, Purcell may well have been writing music when he was only 8 years old, and developed a mature compositional style very early on.
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Remembered particularly for his consummate skill in the fields of theatre music and opera (he composed one of the earliest surviving examples of opera in the English language), he began his musical life as a chorister in the Chapel Royal. Appointed Organist of Westminster Abbey at the age of only 19 (where, legend has it, his predecessor John Blow resigned in order to make way for what he considered a greater talent), by his mid-twenties he was a prominent figure at the Chapel Royal, in the London theatre, and at court.
Hear my prayer, O Lord is one of nearly 70 anthems and services - many of them for the Chapel Royal - which Purcell composed over a 15-year period from 1679 until his death.
Hear my prayer is probably just the surviving fragment of a larger piece, but it packs into only 30-odd bars an extraordinary and sustained intensity, powerful dissonances, and captures the great Anglican musical qualities of control, dignity and simplicity.
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- Available to listenDeborah Bull explores ballet music in late Victorian London, at the music hall theatres.
- Available to listenSara Mohr-Pietsch explores Britten's choral works.
- Available to listenAndrew McGregor explores Mahler's Das klagende Lied.
- Available to listenSarah Walker explores Rachmaninov's choral works.
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