SHEFFIELD Oratorio Chorus ends its 59th season with performances of John Rutter's setting of the Magnificat and a rarity by Britten, The Company of Heaven, at Sheffield Cathedral this Saturday.
In effect incidental music, it is not quite as rare as it once was, however.
Having been dormant for 60 years following its initial performance on BBC radio in 1937, it has started to gain circulation in the last decade.
Labelled a cantata, The
Company of Heaven was the second of 25 commissions for incidental music by the BBC from the composer between 1937 and 1947.
Although most were drama productions, this particular commission was to accompany a sequence of poetry and prose selected by Richard Ellis Roberts relevant to Michaelmas Day.
Among the work's literary sources are the Bible, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Christina Rossetti, John Ruskin, Gerald Manley Hopkins, William Blake, Emily Bronte and John Bunyan.
Linking a seemingly disparate crew of scribes are references in their writings to angels – The Company of Heaven.
The work is in three parts: Before the Creation; Angels in Scripture; Angels in Common Life and at Our Death, and much of it is spoken – the Oratorio Chorus performance employs two speakers.
Britten's music, a fine example of him cutting the musico-dramatic teeth he was famed for, is scored for large forces, soprano, tenor soloists, choir, organ and orchestra.
It represents the other crucial ingredient in his future celebrity too.
Listen out for Emily Bronte's A thousand, thousand gleaming fires sung by the tenor in part three. It could only have been written for one person, the first music Britten specifically penned for Peter Pears.
The work sharing a concert with the Magnificat, Mary's response to the angel Gabriel's news that she is to be the Mother of God (alluded to in the Britten), is astute programming.
The full article contains 311 words and appears in Sheffield Telegraph newspaper.
