Nonsuch Singers, Tom Bullard

Join Nonsuch Singers and their conductor Tom Bullard for a programme that includes some of the finest 20th century English music written for a cappella choir.

Parry’s Songs of Farewell, written in his last years, set a selection of six texts that develop majestically through four-part writing to the rich double choir sonorities in the final setting, Psalm 34 - Lord, Let Me Know Mine End.

Howells’s Requiem was written for King's College Cambridge in 1932/3 but the score was never sent to the college and remained forgotten and unpublished until released for performance in 1980, just three years before the composer's death.

The delay is cited in the score as 'for personal reasons'. He went on to compose Take him, earth, for cherishing in 1961 for the memorial service for President Kennedy, setting a text that had preoccupied him for many years.

Settings by Harris and Vaughan Williams using words by some of our finest poets, complete the programme.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Valiant-for-truth (1941)
Herbert Howells, Requiem (1936)
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rest (1902)
William H Harris, Bring us, O Lord God (1959)
Herbert Howells, Take him, earth, for cherishing (1964)
Hubert Parry, Songs of Farewell (1916-18)