This Endernight
Vocal score
Published on 29. June 2017
Other
Sheet music
12 pages
978-0-19-351317-4 (ISBN)
Description
for SATB and organ
Commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, for the 2016 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, This Endernight is a tender, peaceful setting of well-known fifteenth-century words. The recurring melody has an appropriately lilting feel, and Berkeley employs artful textural juxtapositions, with solo lines always opening out into a rich, full-choir sound for the 'lullay, by-by' refrain. The organ part provides colour and support for the voices, with sparkling semiquavers leading into the final, vibrant section.
Commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, for the 2016 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, This Endernight is a tender, peaceful setting of well-known fifteenth-century words. The recurring melody has an appropriately lilting feel, and Berkeley employs artful textural juxtapositions, with solo lines always opening out into a rich, full-choir sound for the 'lullay, by-by' refrain. The organ part provides colour and support for the voices, with sparkling semiquavers leading into the final, vibrant section.
Reviews / Votes
The infant Jesus sits on his mother's lap. The affecting dialogue between the two provides the 15th-century carol text for This Endernight. Michael Berkeley's setting was written for King's College, Cambridge 2016 Nine Lessons and Carols. Undemanding on singers or listeners, it builds up gradually from an opening solo soprano to a full final chorus, given a sense of propulsion by an ostinato-like rising scale passage repeated in the organ pedals. * James L. Montgomery, CMQ Sunday by Sunday, September 2018 * Last year's commissioned piece for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge was composed by Michael Berkeley - a setting of an anonymous medieval carol text, This Endernight. It is one of the more straightforward compositions among the impressive corpus of King's commissions that has emerged over recent decades, suitable for many choirs to perform. It has a measured, ostinato-style idiom that gives a purposeful build-up over its four-and-a-half minute duration, shifting from E flat major up into F and finally, for the last three bars, to G major. * Geoffrey Webber, Choir & Organ, September 2017 *More details
Edition
Vocal score
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 1 mm
Weight
44 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-351317-4 (9780193513174)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael Berkeley was born in 1948. He studied composition, singing, and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that Berkeley began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Since then Michael's music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. Most of Michael's significant orchestral work, much of his chamber music and his operas are available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. For ten years from 1995 Michael was artistic director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. He currently presents Radio 3's Private Passions, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild's Radio Programme of the Year Award in 1996, and is Chairman of the Governors of The Royal Ballet.