Our love is a miracle now
Oct. 2nd, 2012 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaAt intervals I pop up on here and tell you that I think Benjamin Till is great. He's a London-based composer who produces both prolifically and with impressive variety.
Anyway, his latest project is The London Requiem which is a full requiem mass. It uses the traditional Latin text of the mass, but the lyrics also include a wealth of inscriptions he's collected from gravestones in London cemeteries.
I've been following along on his blog as the project went from germ-of-idea to full-blown performance in Abney Park (which, disappointingly, I couldn't go to). Just getting the funding for such a project is a mammoth task; I have huge respect that the thing ever got off the ground at all.
The London Motet is a full-blown choral work, but it is very approachable if you're not a fan of such things as a rule. If you're thinking that you're not a churchgoer and have no use for a requiem mass, then I wouldn't worry: nor is he. The list of soloists is bewildering: Maddy Prior, Barbara Windsor, Tanita Tikaram, Matt Lucas... surely something for everyone ;)
If you pop along to Benjamin Till's website and give the nice man £14, he'll put you a beautifully-produced CD in the post. And you can listen to clips there. But I encourage you to buy a CD. It's a genuinely interesting work, and I feel very strongly that people who fight to scrabble together the money to make music like this should be supported.
Anyway, his latest project is The London Requiem which is a full requiem mass. It uses the traditional Latin text of the mass, but the lyrics also include a wealth of inscriptions he's collected from gravestones in London cemeteries.
I've been following along on his blog as the project went from germ-of-idea to full-blown performance in Abney Park (which, disappointingly, I couldn't go to). Just getting the funding for such a project is a mammoth task; I have huge respect that the thing ever got off the ground at all.
The London Motet is a full-blown choral work, but it is very approachable if you're not a fan of such things as a rule. If you're thinking that you're not a churchgoer and have no use for a requiem mass, then I wouldn't worry: nor is he. The list of soloists is bewildering: Maddy Prior, Barbara Windsor, Tanita Tikaram, Matt Lucas... surely something for everyone ;)
If you pop along to Benjamin Till's website and give the nice man £14, he'll put you a beautifully-produced CD in the post. And you can listen to clips there. But I encourage you to buy a CD. It's a genuinely interesting work, and I feel very strongly that people who fight to scrabble together the money to make music like this should be supported.
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Date: 2012-10-02 01:00 pm (UTC)If you are a fan of choral music? It depends on what else you're a fan of really :) If you are a hardline anything-post-Tallis-is-rubbish sort of choral person, I imagine you wouldn't like it much. It's got quite a poppy sensibility in places. But it's also got some really fabulous harmonies and polyphonic bits in it.