REUNION: New College, Oxford Concert, 2015

The Keble College chapel is one of the largest at Oxford.

Sept. 22, 2015 – The New College Choir, with a contingent of young choristers from the New College School, sang in a concert on Sunday at the Keble College chapel.

This was the last public event of the Oxford Alumni Weekend.

The choir is one of the best at Oxford and has been continuously singing since the 14th century, when William of Wykeham created a foundation within New College to support the choir.

It was a great combination of a superb choir with one of the great college chapels, a grade 1 listed building and one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture.

The Keble College chapel has fine acoustics and a superlative new organ.

I discretely recorded snippets of the singing on my iPhone, in the second row.

Unfortunately, only one of my snippets is short enough (25 seconds) to post on a Google blog.

The program was as follows:

1. Francisco Guerrero (1528-99), Duo Seraphim Clamabant (Two Seraphim Cried Out).

2. Henry Purcell (1659-95), I was glad (Psalm 121).

3. Thomas Tallis (c 1505-85), Three tunes from Archbishop Matthew Parker's Psalter. Psalms 2, 42, 67 as translated by Archbishop Parker.

4. Thomas Tallis, Suscipe quaeso Domine, by St. Isidore of Seville.

This is the new organ.

5. Organ solo, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47), Variations on the Lord's Prayer, from Sonata in D Minor, Op. 65 no. 6.

6. Kenneth Leighton (1929-88), God's Grandeur, Gerald Manley Hopkins.

7. Matthew Martin (b. 1976), In the Year that King Uzziah Died, Isaiah 6.

8. Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), O Clap Your Hands Together, Psalm 47.

A glorious concert. Timothy Wakerell was the organist and Robert Quinney (one-time Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge) was the conductor. Quinney is also the Organist of New College.