Listen & tracks
2 of 19 tracks have a preview · 9 works · 77:53
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1 Te Deum Benjamin Britten 6:05
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2 St. John Passion, BWV 245 Johann Sebastian Bach Opening chorus 9:13
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Requiem Op. 48Gabriel Fauré 7 movements32:11
- 3 Introït et Kyrie 5:10
- 4 Offertoire 7:30
- 5 Sanctus 3:35
- 6 Pie Jesu 3:27
- 7 Agnus Dei 4:59
- 8 Libera me 4:19
- 9 In Paradisum 3:11
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10 Let all mortal flesh keep silence Edward Bairstow 3:12
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Missa Christi muneraGiovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 2 movements8:22
- 11 Sanctus 3:42
- 12 Agnus Dei 4:40
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13 Fugue in G minor, BWV 578 Johann Sebastian Bach 3:04
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14 Plenty Good Room Traditional 3:01
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GloriaFrancis Poulenc 2 movements5:58
- 15 Gloria in excelsis 2:58
- 16 Laudamus te 3:00
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17 Mass in B minor, BWV 232 Johann Sebastian Bach Gloria in excelsis 6:47
Ormond College is the largest residential college for The University of Melbourne and its very own choir, the Choir of Ormond College, turned 21 in 2002. The choir has also toured internationally every two years, visiting New Zealand, Japan, Britain and most of Europe.
The repertoire includes Benjamin Britten’s ambitious and rarely heard Festival Te Deum. Concert recordings from 1985 to 2000, never previously released, range from Fauré’s Requiem and Palestrina to Bach, Poulenc, and spirited encores.
The disc includes a special 20-page colour retrospective booklet complete with photos from the choir’s many tours and special comments from Melbourne critic Clive O’Connell and the Chaplain of Ormond College.
In the artist’s words
It is my hope that this choir will endure as long as there is an Ormond College at The University of Melbourne.
There is only a small number of real personalities in the world of Australian music, and few of these are actually good at what they do. Douglas Lawrence has been delighting us and expanding our expectations of him since the 1960s when he burst upon the Melbourne scene; Kenneth Hince wrote at the time, ‘Lawrence plays better with his feet than most organists do with their hands’.
Ambitious for his singers and hyper-vigilant for their standards, maintaining amicable relationships even with tenors long since gone from the Ormond ranks, guiding his young charges’ faltering steps on their whirlwind tours from Scandinavia to Italy, he is the very model of a modern-day entrepreneur-kapellmeister.
And always in the background, there is the barely repressed larrikin, ready to burst out from academic or ecclesiastical garb!
Long may you flourish, Doug, to fly the banner of unaccompanied Bach motets and the cause of vigorous, scholarly performance.
Few clergy have the opportunity to work with a musician like Douglas Lawrence. When both have strong views on both music and liturgy, it can be a disaster. When I first became Chaplain there was no choir; Douglas got one together for special occasions, consisting of his friends (including my relatives). Only after I left for the UK in 1980 was a more permanent choir set up.
All I can say is that over more than twenty years, from the first scratch choir which sang in Chapel in 1977 to the justly famed Choir of Ormond College, working with Douglas has been an extraordinary experience. He has, of course, a free and sometimes mad spirit, which is why so many love him. This mixture has continually produced magnificent music which touches both heart and soul.
Reviews
a musical delight … the vocal tone is warm … a rich and sonorous CD
a world-class choir at the height of its powers …
The singing is excellent … as we have come to expect.
Artists
The Choir of Ormond College
choir
The Choir of Ormond College has, since its founding in 1982 under Douglas Lawrence, become the first Australian choir to earn ongoing international recognition for its concert and recorded work.
Douglas Lawrence
director
Melbourne organist Douglas Lawrence is Director of Music at The Scots' Church and Teacher of the Organ at the University of Melbourne. He founded the Choir of Ormond College and directed it from 1982 to 2006.
Johann Sebastian Bach
composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer and organist of the late Baroque. His sacred and secular music for choir, orchestra, organ and solo instruments remains among the foundations of the Western concert and church repertory.
Edward Bairstow
composer
Edward Bairstow (1874–1946) was an English organist and composer in the Anglican church music tradition. He served as Organist of York Minster from 1913 until his death.
Benjamin Britten
composer
Edward Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. His operas are firmly established in the international repertoire, and more of them are played worldwide than those of any other composer born in the twentieth century.
Gabriel Fauré
composer
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) was a French composer, pianist, organist and teacher whose music links late Romanticism with early modernism. His best-known works include the Requiem, the Pavane, and a large body of songs and piano music.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
composer
Palestrina's sacred polyphony balances proportion and serenity with crystalline text. His masses and motets move in smooth, carefully controlled lines where dissonance yields to consonance and every voice serves the liturgy.
Francis Poulenc
composer
Francis Poulenc's music swings from boulevard wit to peasant devotion. Perpetual-motion piano, chamber sonatas, horn élégies, Christmas and penitential motets, a Gloria, and songs that can flirt, mourn or protest sit side by side in the catalogue.
Jay Althouse
composer
Ward Swingle
composer
Ward Swingle's arrangements give Bach's fugues and inventions a jazz vocal lift: close-harmony scat that keeps the counterpoint clear while the rhythm swings. Choirs still reach for those scores when they want that sound.
Digital booklet
Digital booklet Notes, texts and credits — read online or download the PDF Download the PDFPerformers
- The Choir of Ormond College · choir
- Douglas Lawrence · director
Technical credits
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Recording Engineer
Martin Wright
Vaughan McAlley
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Editing Engineer
Vaughan McAlley
Details
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 77 minutes 53 seconds
- Release date
- 2002
- Categories
- Choral, Classical
- Musical work copyright
- © 2002 Move Records
- Sound recording copyright
- ℗ 2002 Move Records
- Catalogue
- MD 3258
- EAN
- 9314574325829
More to explore
Beatus Vir
Recorded live on their 1999 European tour, the Choir of Ormond College under Douglas Lawrence presents small-scale sacred works in up to eight parts by Palestrina, Gesualdo, Handl, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Stanford and Rheinberger.
Kodály Missa Brevis
Recorded on their 1997 European tour in Northern Italy and Germany, the Choir of Ormond College sings Kodály’s Missa Brevis, with works by Tye, Howells and Bach.
Music from Heaven
The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, in a highly acclaimed programme of unaccompanied sacred works by Allegri, Byrd, Poulenc, Britten, Barber and J.S. Bach.
The Choir of Ormond College Melbourne
Directed by Douglas Lawrence, who led chapel music at Ormond College, Melbourne, for more than twenty years, this recording presents the college choir in English church music of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.
Gold
The Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence, performs works by eight Australian composers. From Gordon Kerry’s Shakespeare setting to Malcolm Williamson’s English Eccentrics, the programme turns individual voices into pure gold.
Keys to Heaven
The Australian Chamber Choir opens with the first recording of Agata della Pietà’s cantata Ecce nunc, written in eighteenth-century Venice by an orphan of the Ospedale della Pietà and reconstructed by Elizabeth Anderson. Sacred works by Palestrina and Allegri complete the programme.