In Praise Of St Columba

Catalogue no: DCD34137  

Price: £13.00 (including postage and packaging)

This ground-breaking programme seeks to recreate three distinct sound-worlds: 7th-century hymns from Iona, 10th-century chants from Celtic foundations in Switzerland, and 14th-century Columban antiphons from the Inchcolm libellus. As well as the evidence of early notation and of drawings and other indications of instrumentation, the performance styles – developed in an exciting extended collaboration with scholar and piper Barnaby Brown – are informed by oral traditions from as far afield as Sardinia and the Outer Hebrides.

'Gonville and Caius College Choir produces a full sound, and contains some fine soloists. Chants, psalms, antiphons and hymns receive performances of grace: melodies float and weave with clarity, precision and feeling.' BBC Music Magazine

'My gut reaction to this 76-minute programme is that they must have been inspired by what they found: the results are spellbinding. That judgement is partly based on the atmosphere of heady spiritual celebration on numerous tracks, starting with two Columba-related hymns from the mid-14th century Incholm Antiphoner ("Carne solutus pater Columba" and "Cantemus in omni die"), in the second of which a crotal player sets a dancing rhythm against a triplepipe ground bass. What all this adds up to is a "new" choral repertoire - a sound world liberated from the drab modern conception of plainsong.' The Financial Times

 

1 Os mutorum, lux cecorum
2 Loquebar de testimoniis tuis
3 River Erne horn duet
4 Adiutor laborantium
5 Sanctorum piissime Columba
6 Lauda anima mea Dominum
7 Noli Pater
8 Carne solutus pater columba
9 Amen dico vobis
10 Liberasti nos Domine
11 Cantemus in omni die
12 Altus prosator
13 Volens lhesus linire
14 Laudate Dominum
15 The Desperate Battle of the Birds