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Vivat Regina
The Ebor Singers
Music celebrating the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II
With the Dean of York, the Very Reverend Raymond Furnell.
This recording takes its form from the order of the Coronation Service, and includes some music and spoken prayers and readings from that service of June 2 1953, as well as other pieces inspired by or associated with the ceremony. Some of this music had been composed specifically for that ceremony, including Vaughan Williams' O taste and see and All people that on earth do dwell, and Gordon Jacobs' arrangement of the National Anthem (here preceded by a fanfare specially composed for this recording by Richard Shephard, headmaster of York Minster School) while other pieces had been performed at previous ceremonies, such as Handel's Zadok the Priest (1727, George II) and Parry's I was glad (1902, Edward VII). There was also music by earlier English composers, including Gibbon's Threefold Amen.
Two works were included in the ceremony of Edward VII, Stanford's Te Deum and Stainer's Ninefold Amen (though neither were written specifically for the event). Robert Poyser, Director of Music at York Minster School and Sub-Organist at York Minster, wrote his Fanfare in 2000 on the occasion of the wedding of his friends Jenny Bonfield and Alastair Fisher. Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory has long been the unofficial British national anthem, though the version here is taken from the final movement of his Coronation Ode (1902): while the melody is familiar, taken from Pomp and Cicrumstance, March No 1 (Op. 39, 1901) the form and text differs from the arrangement popularised in the Last Night of the Proms. Parry's setting of William Blake's poem Jerusalem, originally written for the 'Fight for the Right' of Women's Right to Vote campaign in 1916, and too has taken on the status of national hymn, also heard each year at the Proms. Haydn Wood's ballad Elizabeth of England is an arrangement of his instrumental march written in 1952. Stanford's Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (from his Evening Service in G) and Psalm 150 were not written for any coronation service, though Stanford, from Ireland, became associated with the British music - and particularly church music - tradition. The canticle settings reflect Stanford's masterfully restrained response to the joyous texts, which provide a contrast to the other works on this recording.
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