On Record

Keith Orrell | A Benedictine Anthem

In July 1991, the Archbishop of York led a service in Shrewsbury Abbey during the period when Keith Orrell was Director of Music there. He collaborated with the then curate Peter Myers to create this short piece, 'A Benedictine Anthem,' for the occasion. It was enjoyed by choristers and listeners alike and was repeated a few weeks later in his final service before he moved to Shrewsbury RC Cathedral.

The music conjures up the medieval world of the Shrewsbury Benedictine monks (reinvented in the Cadfael books by Ellis Peters) whose rule was 'to work is to pray.''

Benjamin Britten | Rejoice in the Lamb (the Opening Hymn section)

'Rejoice in the Lamb' was the first work commissioned by St Matthew's Church in 1943, and is a setting of part of the poet Christopher Smart's extended poem 'Jubilate Agno.' Benjamin Britten's work is considered a masterpiece for choir and organ, written on his return to Great Britain after a stay in the USA, where he had just completed 'A Hymn to St Cecilia' and the 'Ceremony of Carols.'

Here we have a great collaboration: one of the great eighteenth century poets who thought beyond contemporary literary norms — whose father-in-law showed his distain by criticizing him in the press and having him committed to an asylum — together with one of the greatest British composers of the twentieth century who re-established Great Britain as a land with music.