music of the spires
CHORAL MASTERPIECES OF OXFORD
“This is a fantastic initiative, providing a rare opportunity to hear this marvellous music in live performance in some of the country’s finest buildings.
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Project
Music of the Spires is our celebration of the English choral tradition with a focus on repertoire from the Tudor period and present day. Each concert features a selection of music from sources held in the unparalleled collections of Oxford’s famous libraries as well as new pieces by our Associate Composers and others, combining to create programmes of great spiritual depth and sonic beauty in atmospheric and historic settings.
“Sonic glimpses of not so much samsara as nirvana: molten sound, flowing in luminous streams towards resonant silences, perfectly judged.”
story
In January 2018, we launched Music of the Spires with the aim of exploring some of lesser known and under performed repertoire from the collections in Oxford’s libraries. We gave six concerts in some of the city’s most beautiful and historic buildings with a focus on the festal masses by Robert Fayrfax and John Taverner from the Forrest-Heyther partbooks, held in the Bodleian library. Each concert also featured new pieces by our Associate Composer Marco Galvani and other contemporary composers including Kerensa Briggs, Judith Weir, and James MacMillan.
The project continued in 2019 with concerts in Oxford, Chichester and Edington.
Concerts
2019
28 September - Holy Trinity Church, Guildford
20 September - University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford
22 June - Edington Priory Church
13 April - Chichester Cathedral Lady Chapel
12 April - New College Chapel, Oxford
26 January - Pusey House Chapel, Oxford
2018
1 December - St John the Evangelist, SJE Arts
6 October - St Michael & All Angels
15 September - Magdalen College Chapel
9 June - Merton College Chapel
5 May - St Mary Magdalen's Church
27 January - Pusey House Chapel
All artwork by Michael Tompsett (prints available here)
thanks
We are enormously grateful to the following Music of the Spires supporters:
The Williams Church Music Trust
Hymns Ancient & Modern
Susie & Peter Furnivall
David Hodges
David Galvani