Sidney Choir release new album

Dubai-based British composer Joanna Marsh has a growing international reputation for new works across many genres. The Sidney Sussex College Choir celebrate Joanna’s recent position as composer-in-residence of the College with this new album of choral and instrumental works. The album includes a work written specially for the Choir, Sanctifica nos, while Martha and Mary and The St Paul's Service see the Choir collaborate with viol consort Fretwork. Fretwork are also joined by organist Martin Baker for Ottomania, composed specially for this recording. Listen to a selection of audio samples below:

1. Martha and Mary

The anthem Martha and Mary was commissioned to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the admission of women to Sidney Sussex College. This particular biblical story is usually interpreted as an example of Christ’s affirming the place of women as disciples and teachers. In her composition, Joanna reaches into the Tudor era to find a musical vocabulary that points towards the origins of the College. It opens with a direct quotation from the composer William Byrd, “Why do I use my paper, ink and pen?” It is likely that Byrd would have been known personally by the College's foundress, Lady Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex.

2. Thou hast searched me

One of Joanna’s most performed works, Thou hast searched me, was originally written to be performed at the memorial service of Joanna’s mother Barbara Marsh. The piece revolves around a repetitive cadential sequence with a low root that evaporates away into ethereal upper registers; thick textures quickly reducing to thin ones. These thin textures are frequently left hanging in the air and unresolved.

3. St Paul’s Service ’Nunc dimittis’

The St Paul’s Service was commissioned by Lucy Winke for Aurora Nova on the occasion of her final day at St Paul’s Cathedral over twelve years as both Chaplain and Canon Precentor. The first performance was during Evensong in St Paul’s Cathedral. The canticles are inspired by the church music of William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes. Echoes of their figurations and extensions of their harmonic idioms are found throughout both the Magnificat and Nunc Dimis. This arrangement for viols was created for the Choir and Fretwork for their tour of Dubai in 2012.

4. Sanctifica nos

Written to commemorate the foundation of Sidney Sussex College, the anthem Sancifica Nos is a song of words from Philip Sidney’s poetic realistion of the Psalm 145. The passage is an interpretation of verses 14–15, which in their Latin translation, Oculi Omnium ad te spectant, Domine are also found within the Sidney Sussex College Grace. The piece was written so that the College Grace could be sung as an independent unaccompanied work.