Christopher Fox - A Glimpse Of Sion's Glory
Exaudi, James Weeks (director)
Christopher Fox is 50 this year, and it is hard to think of a better birthday present than this marvellous disc of his choral music from Exaudi. Exaudi traverse the demands of this music with...
Christopher Fox - A Glimpse Of Sion's Glory
Exaudi, James Weeks (director)
Purchase product
Christopher Fox is 50 this year, and it is hard to think of a better birthday present than this marvellous disc of his choral music from Exaudi. Exaudi traverse the demands of this music with...
About
Vocal ensemble EXAUDI's second recording for NMC features choral works by Christopher Fox with the common theme of Puritanism, Liberty and dissent. American Choruses is one of the composer's earliest works, exploring his relationship to an American tradition which includes Ives, Cage and the poetry of Walt Whitman. In A Glimpse of Sion's Glory, conflicting lines voice the idealisms of protestors including the histoical Levellers' movement and John Milton; and the monolithic Missouri Harmony for solo organ evokes the meditative aspect of Shaker worship. Rendered Account, setting Ian Duhig's lively political verse on the nature of walls and boundaries, and Open the Gate, with its basis of plainsong, complete the disc. 'Christopher Fox is 50 this year, and it is hard to think of a better birthday present than this marvellous disc... Exaudi traverse the demands of this music with ease. Recommended' BBC Music Magazine ?????
Contents and tracklist
- Benjamin Bayl
- Exaudi Chamber Choir
- James Weeks
- Exaudi Chamber Choir
- James Weeks
- Benjamin Bayl
- Exaudi Chamber Choir
- James Weeks
- Benjamin Bayl
- Exaudi Chamber Choir
- James Weeks
Awards and reviews
December 2005
Christopher Fox is 50 this year, and it is hard to think of a better birthday present than this marvellous disc of his choral music from Exaudi. Exaudi traverse the demands of this music with ease, and Benjamin Bayl is equally assured in the sustained unpredictability of the one organ work in the mix, The Missouri Harmony.
March 2006
Open the Gate, a setting of a 16th-century manuscript of O clavis David in which the Israelite King is appealed to as a gatekeeper with the power to admit sinners to salvation, inhabits the mainstream of English choral tradition, with the kind of fundamentally consonant but nonetheless sour harmonies common in post-Great War compositions. We're in a different sound world with the earlier works... Americal Choruses, part of Fox's DPhil submission, pays homage to Charles Ives, Christian Wolff, John Cage and Terry Riley. I found these works warmer and more accommodating, with the Riley-influenced 'Transcription' rather magical.
