"THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN"

ENGLAND'S 20TH CENTURY MUSICAL RENAISSANCE

We spread our cloths under your feet - 'but tread softly because you tread on our dreams...'

Cantores are thrilled for their 2012 Spring concert season to be performing some of the most inspiring works from England's magnificent 20th century musical renaissance, and in the splendour of two of the country'st most beautiful Parish Churches - the Church of the Holy Innocents in Highnam, just outside Gloucester, and John the Baptist in Cirencester. 

For centuries, English composers would take foreign names in the hope of making an impact in Europe, where their country was known, as the Germans put it in the century before last, as "Das Land ohne Musik" - the Land Without Music.

The truth is, of course, that our islands have been awash with music all the time, and no more so than during the past 100 years, when our world of choral music founded on traditions going back to the time of the first Elizabeth prospered as never before.

Our March programme, much of it reflecting a sacred cathedral tradition that is the musical envy of the world, begins with Charles Villiers Stanford, an Irishman steeped in the 19th century European traditions who transformed English cathedral music with his anthems and settings of the canticles.

Via Vaughan Williams, Holst and Walton we travel the century to composers of our own time, John Tavener, James Macmillan, Jonathan Dove and Howard Skempton.

All these composers have given our choirs works of outstanding brilliance and sensitivity to the texts, not just the King James Bible but John Bunyan, Edward Spenser, W.B.Yeats and Greek liturgies.

The programme in detail: 

Benjamin Britten: Jubilate

Charles V. Stanford: Magnificat in A major

William Harris Faire: is the Heaven

Vaughan Williams: Valiant for Truth

John Tavener: Funeral Ikos

Patrick Hadley: My Beloved Spake

Gerald Finzi: God is gone up

Gustav Holst: Nunc Dimittis

William Walton: Set me as a Seal

Charles Wood: Hail Gladdening Light

Jonathan Dove: Ecce Beatam Lucem

James Macmillan: Christus Vincit

James Macmillan: The Gallant Weaver

Howard Skempton: He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven