The 1700 Joseph Tisseran harpsichord; the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, Oxford.

GREGORIAN CHANT • Monks & Novices of St. Frideswide • THE GIFT OF MUSIC 1278 (54:57)


This program of 19 chants consists of the Mass for Easter with a few Office chants, all sung according to the Sarum use, the variant version of liturgical chant sung at Salisbury (Sarum) and extended to most of the English dioceses in the late Middle Ages. The different readings were comparable to the local variants found in every diocese on the Continent: varied melodies of standard repertoire and special chants for local saints. The “monks and novices” sound like a small professional men’s ensemble, for there is no such monastery known to me. The name St. Frideswide is taken from a 12th-century Augustinian establishment at Oxford (she is the patron saint of Oxford) that survives only as the chapel of Christ Church College. The singing is skilled, the tempo deliberate, probably reflecting an idea of pre-Reformation style. The solo verses are well done.


The disc is at least a decade old, but in searching Chantdiscography.com there is no sign of its previous appearance. For one rare item ( Sedit Angelus ), I found only two versions, those of Schola Hungarica and Schola Antiqua, altogether three radically different versions of the chant. The sequence Fulgens praeclara for Easter is found only on Mary Berry’s Anglo-Saxon Easter (Archiv LP only). The hymn Angulare fundamentum has been recorded seven times, but the word is “angularis” in standard editions. The liner notes are vague, failing to identify the program in any specific way, and only a track list is added. As a full CD of chants of the Sarum use, this can be placed next to three other full CDs, Sarum Chant ( Fanfare 12:5), Like the Sun in his Orb (16:3), and Gregorian Chant (men of King’s College Choir on EMI 557983). The processional hymn Salve festa dies in the same Sarum variant, also directed by Mary Berry, is on the second disc.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

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