Palestrina: Sicut cervus

The Psalms of David – sometimes referred to as the hymn-book of the bible – have inspired composers writing for the church through the ages.

The vivid, poetical nature of the texts, arousing the full gamut of human emotions, has stimulated the composition of many great sacred works in Western music.

The Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London, directed by Colm Carey, was established in 1966 to lead and enrich both worship and liturgy in the two historic chapels within HM Tower of London.

This new CD, Exultate Deo, creates a kaleidoscopic snapshot of music inspired by the Psalms, and is a captivating insight into the wealth and variety of repertoire sung on a weekly basis by the choir.

In 1509 one of the greatest Swedish painters, Albertus Pictor, passed away. On church walls and church ceilings, he has told the stories of the Bible and of the eternal questions of life through his art.

The same themes also inspired the composers of the time to move us with musical stories of the Virgin Mary, the life of Christ and of love, death, pain and joy in medieval and renaissance Europe. Medieval man constantly strived to ensure his place in heaven through prayers and good deeds.

Most of all, he turned to the Virgin Mary to pray for her intercession. Above Albertus Pictor’s self portrait in the church of Lid, where he paints himself as a fashion concious man in his prime, he has even written Memento mei Alberto pictor huius ecclesie – ”Remember me, Albertus, painter of this church”

This collection of Motets for the Church’s year, Hymns and Motets to Mary, Music of the Eucharist and Songs of Faith and Forgiveness contains a wide range of works including Gregorian chant, works by Haydn, Charpentier and Pergolesi and more modern compositions.

Easter 2009 sees the release of a major new disc on Collegium from John Rutter, the Cambridge Singers and La Nuova Musica, featuring a collection of outstanding motets from the canon of European sacred choral repertoire.

Focusing on the extraordinary body of choral music produced for liturgical use during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, The Sacred Flame explores the rich and varied ways in which European composers responded to sacred texts. Delving into a treasure-trove of music from cultural centres as diverse as Amsterdam, Antwerp, Leipzig, Milan, Rome, and Venice, this collection features familiar classics by Gabrieli,Monteverdi, Palestrina and Schütz, as well as less widely-known masterpieces by Bach, Buxtehude, Hassler and Sweelinck. All are performed in stunning new recordings by the Cambridge Singers at their sensuous and virtuosic best, joined here for the first time on disc by the instrumentalists of La Nuova Musica, rapidly establishing areputation as one of the UK’s most exciting early music ensembles.

All repertoire featured on The Sacred Flame is drawn from the enormously popular European Sacred Music collection edited by John Rutter for the Oxford University Press Oxford Choral Classics series. Recorded in the unparalleled acoustic of the Great Hall at University College School in London, and produced and engineered by award winning producer Simon Eadon, the performances of these much loved works heard on this disc are set to become definitive.

“These singers of John Rutter's choir are so expert, so very good at everything they do… They shade and shape the phrases beautifully” Gramophone