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Illumina

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Illumina --- 1999

Track 3 from 'Vigilia' Track 4 from the 'All-Night Vigil, op.37' Track 15 from the 'Liturgy of Holy Week,op.58' Track 16 from the 'All-Night Vigil, op.52' Tracks 2 and 12 © Novello & Co. Ltd. Track 3 © edition Fazer, Helsinki Track 4 © Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. Track 9 © Oxford University Press Track 15 © unknown Track 18 © Litolff/Peters Recorded in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, June 1999. Total playing time: 76' 08" Images copyright 1999 Photodisc, Inc. © 1999 Collegium Records ℗ 1999 Collegium Records Made in Great Britain ----------------------------------- ALBUM INTRODUCTION ----------------------------------- This album explores the theme of light. The first act recounted in the Bible was the creation of light, which has always held symbolic significance both within and beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. Poets and composers of many centuries have been inspired by the primal miracle of light—a miracle preceding even life itself—and there is a remarkable body of choral music embodying the response of their imaginations to the many facets of light: morning and evening light, holy light, light as a symbol of Christ, light as the conqueror of darkness and sin, even (in our age of radio astronomy) the light of distant galaxies as seen in musical terms by György Ligeti. Composers have returned again and again to certain key texts, and the eighteen a cappella pieces chosen for this recording afford fascinating points of comparison: two settings of the medieval Compline hymn Christe, qui lux es et dies, four of the Canticle of Simeon (Nunc dimittis), and four of the third-century Greek hymn text best known in the John Keble translation as Hail, gladdening Light. The music ranges in date from the dawn of notation in the middle ages to Ligeti in 1966; geographically there is a spread from Tallis’s England, via Hildegard of Bingen’s Germany and Palestrina’s Italy, to Finland and Russia, whose fervent sacred music is presently winning new audiences throughout the choral world. This rich programme, recorded in the magnificent acoustic of the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, marks the debut on the Collegium label of Timothy Brown and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. JOHN RUTTER