George Herbert
George Herbert’s sacred lyrics speak with plain force and metaphysical wit to the soul’s traffic with God. Shaped as altars and wings on the page, they have drawn composers for centuries and still ring out as hymns and art songs of rare intimacy.
The English poems of The Temple are heart-work and heaven-work at once: direct address to the divine, sharpened by conceits that turn glass, collars, flowers and bitter-sweet taste into theology. Formal ingenuity serves meaning, never display. Set again and again for choir and solo voice, lines such as “Let all the world in every corner sing” and “Virtue” (“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright”) move easily from parish hymnody to Vaughan Williams and contemporary song. On these recordings his words meet jazz-tinged church music, cathedral brass and a cappella warmth, proof that verse written for a rural Wiltshire parish still carries devotion, conflict and quiet joy into the ear.
Compositions by George Herbert appear on
Laughing
The internationally acclaimed Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, turns to the lighter side of a cappella singing across jazz, madrigal and spiritual repertoire.
Bards of Faith and Passion
Jim Minchin sets poems by writers at play or at odds with eternity: soul-poet lyrics across the centuries, from anonymous Latin verse and the metaphysicals to Yeats, Shakespeare and living voices.
Hymns For All Seasons
Sixteen further hymns from Cantus Choro, recorded in the grand acoustic of St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. The programme opens with Advent and follows the great events of the Christian year, with Norman Kaye at the organ and the Melbourne Brass Ensemble.
Seven Whole Days: Music for the Contemporary Church
Seven Whole Days is Jim Minchin’s second Move album of contemporary church song, recorded across Melbourne and Singapore in 1969 with singers and instrumentalists from both places.