Choral Alphabet reaches 3000

29 August 2020

Over the past twenty-six days our Facebook and Twitter streams have been releasing a daily dose of choral music at 8:00am each day, with over three thousand people following the posts, in no small part thanks to the series being mentioned on both Classic FM and BBC Radio 3.

Our Musical Director, Lee Dunleavy, put together one composer for each letter of the alphabet, to keep us entertained (and at time, baffled!) over the August recess. It was an incredibly diverse selection of composers and works - with 15 men, 11 women, and 7 BAME composer - as can be seen in the image displaying all the composers (except for George Jeffreys, the seventeenth-century composer who has no extant image, and is represented with an image of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, where he worked for the last 35 years of his life).

Most of the pieces are less than five minutes long (the entry for Z being the “big finish”!), and a good number are both listening and watching (especially true of the entry for E). If you missed it the first time round, here’s the full list so you can work through them one-at-a-time!

A - Kerry Andrew - O nata lux
B - J. S. Bach - Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele
C - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - By the waters of Babylon
D - Eleanor Daley - Set me as a seal
E - Duke Ellington - It don’t mean a thing (if it ain’t got that swing)
F - Dan Forrest - Dance of exultation
G - Patrick Gowers - Viri Galilaei
H - David Hurd - Love bade me welcome
I - Grayston Ives - Edington Magnificat
J - George Jeffreys - A Musick Strange
K - Hannah Kendall - Regina Cæli
L - Morten Lauridsen - Dirait-on
M - Cecilia McDowall - I know that my Redeemer liveth
N - Knut Nystedt - Immortal Bach
O - György Orbán - Dæmon irrepit callidus
P - Ben Ponniah - O sacrum convivial
Q - Sarah Quartel - How can I keep from singing
R - Shruthi Rajasekar - Numbers
S - Ana Sokolović - ASAP for SATB
T - Dobrinka Tabakova - Of the Sun Born
U - Vincenzo Ugolini - Beata es, Virgo Maria
V - Janika Vandervelde - O viridissima Virgo
W - Grace Williams - Ave maris Stella
X - Iannis Xenakis - Sea Nymphs
Y - Chen Yi - Landscape
Z - Jan Dismas Zelenka - Missa Divi Xaverii