SKU: HL.49018012

ISBN 9790001157704. UPC: 884088512194. 7.5x10.75x0.01 inches. English.

During his second American tour (1938) Paul Hindemith wrote numerous songs for musical amateurs, including traditional children's songs for American schoolbooks, amongst others. With a text by Cecil Roberts, this short, easy-to-sing choral setting is a valuable addition to the repertoire.

SKU: HL.48024388

9.0x12.0x0.086 inches.

Ilse Weber (1903-1944) played these songs composed and composed by her with children in ghetto Theresienstadt to the guitar. She went to the infirmary with children of the infirmary in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prisoners testify that she tried to console the children in the gas chamber with their lullaby Wiegala. Winfried Radeke has already presented Ilse Weber's song collection Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt in 2008 in an edition for voice and piano. It is now also making choirs available in versions for three-part women's choir and four-part mixed choir in German and English editions. In her simplicity and intimacy Ilse Weber's songs are among the most touching testimonies from Theresienstadt. They keep the memory of the Nazi-persecuted author sounding alive.

SKU: HL.48024386

9.0x12.0x0.102 inches.

Ilse Weber (1903-1944) played these songs composed and composed by her with children in ghetto Theresienstadt to the guitar. She went to the infirmary with children of the infirmary in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prisoners testify that she tried to console the children in the gas chamber with their lullaby Wiegala. Winfried Radeke has already presented Ilse Weber's song collection Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt in 2008 in an edition for voice and piano. It is now also making choirs available in versions for three-part women's choir and four-part mixed choir in German and English editions. In her simplicity and intimacy Ilse Weber's songs are among the most touching testimonies from Theresienstadt. They keep the memory of the Nazi-persecuted author sounding alive.

SKU: HL.48022495

ISBN 9781476871486. UPC: 884088669676. 6.75x10.5 inches.

Texts: Latin and English

Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes

Difficulty level: 3

The Ceremony of Carols is one of Britten's best-known and most-performed works. It is a brilliantly conceived and dramatic concert work which sees the voices process to their places singing unaccompanied plainsong and, at the end, processing out again to the same chant. These movements can also be accompanied but strictly only if the voices do not process. The final Alleluia can be repeated as many times as necessary to get the singers to and from their destination.The carols are for three-part children's voices (though, of course they can be sung by female adults as well) and they form a two-part work around a central Interlude for harp which is based on the plainsong from the Procession. Variety is the key word here as all the carols have such individual identities. The forthright Wolcum Yole!, the deliciously lyrical There is no Rose, the swinging Balulalow, the fiery and dramatic This little Babe all contribute to a work which is a feast of discovery throughout. Lovely solos and duos add further colour and the harp part, an inspired choice of accompaniment, enriches, colours and surrounds the voices with its pictorial musical imagery. If anything shows Britten's genius for writing for voices it must be this work.

The challenges here are in creating a real equality between voice parts, fielding a confident pair of soloists, and making the most of the wonderfully colourful poems Britten has chosen to set. Pronunciation is not really an issue, but when I recorded this work with the Finzi Singers I decided to follow the example of Sacred and Profane and use authentic medieval pronunciation for which an expert coach was necessary. It brings an added element of colour to a familiar aural experience.

Durati on: 22 minutes

Paul Spicer, Lichfield, 2011.

SKU: HL.277282

UPC: 840126915006. 6.75x10.5 inches.

Program note:

Looking Up is a piece for large chorus and orchestra, and is in three sections, played without pause. In the 16th century, a variety of psalters in meter were printed in England, with the idea of making psalm-singing something that could happen easily at home, with the rhyming meter being an aid to memorization. These translations are wonderful exercises in brevity and sometimes clumsy rhymemaking, and were usually prefaced by a lengthy explanation as to their merits; the title of one of the first such volumes in English is: The Psalter of Dauid newely translated into Englysh metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the mynde, be reade and songe of al men. I thought it would be appropriate to set one of these introductions, and the first section of Looking Up sets the preface to Thomas Ravenscroft's psalter (1621), in which he writes: “The singing of Psalmes (assay the Doctors) comforteth the sorrowfull, pacifieth the angry, strengtheneth the weake, humbleth the proud, gladdeth the humble, stirres up the slow, reconcileth enemies, lifteth up the heart to heavenly things, and uniteth the Creature to his Creator.”

It begins meditatively, but eventually grows agitated and fervent, with a vision of the “quire of Angels and Saints” “redoubling anddescanting” - an ecstatic and terrifying vision of the skies opening up. Ravenscroft then encourages the use of instrumental musicfor worship, at which point, a long, acrobatic orchestral interlude with jagged edges antagonizes the choir, who sing a kind of private, anxious meditation on two pitches.

One of the most delicious biblical texts is an Apocryphal prayer known as the Benedicite or the Prayer of the Three Children (the same who were rescued by an angel after King Nebuchadnezzar tried to have them burnt in an oven for not bowing to his image). The text is repetitive, obsessive, and a gift to composers - each line is an invocation of an element of the natural world, followed by the phrase, “blesse ye the Lord, praise him & magnify him for ever.” In Looking Up, the setting begins with three solo voices, and then grows to include the whole choir, itemizing the whole of creation. The idea that these boys are spared from the furnace and then five minutes later are saying, “O ye the fire and warming heate, blesse ye the Lord...” has always felt very loaded to me, and the orchestra plays with this conflict between joyful praise and a more terrible (in the 16th-century sense) awefor the divine.

The text for the third, and shortest, section is taken from Christopher Smart's (1722-1771) A Song to David, purportedly written during his confinement in a mental asylum. This ode to King David points out how David, as the author of some of the Psalms, observes the whole world from the “clustering spheres” to the “nosegay in the vale.&rdquo.