Simple Gifts / Fullington, The Tudor Choir

$14.99
Label
Gothic
Release Date
April 1, 2009
Format
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    Featuring ⌄
    • COMPOSER
      VARIOUS
    • ORCHESTRA / ENSEMBLE
      The Tudor Choir
    • PERFORMER
      Fullington
    Product Details ⌄
    • RELEASE DATE
      April 01, 2009
    • UPC
      000334926526
    • CATALOG NUMBER
      G-49265
    • LABEL
      Gothic
    • NUMBER OF DISCS
      1
    • GENRE
      Choral - Secular
    Works ⌄

    1. Simple Gifts, "'Tis the Gift To Be Simple"

      Composer: Joseph Brackett Jr.

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    2. The Humble Heart (arr. K. Siegfried)

      Composer: Thomas Hammond Jr.

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    3. Star of Purity (arr. K. Siegfried)

      Composer: Susannie M. Brady

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    4. All at Home [Shaker Song] (arr. K. Siegfried)

      Composer: Anonymous

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    5. Simple Gifts (arr. K. Siegfried)

      Composer: Joseph Brackett Jr.

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    6. I Am the Rose of Sharon

      Composer: William Billings

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    7. I Wish I Was a Child Again (arr. M. Neaum)

      Composer: Traditional

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    8. Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

      Composer: Elizabeth Poston

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    9. My Shepherd Will Supply My Need (arr. V. Thomson)

      Composer: Traditional

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    10. Simple Gifts (arr. A. Copland)

      Composer: Joseph Brackett Jr.

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    11. Zion's walls (arr. A. Copland)

      Composer: John G. McGurry

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    12. The Hills

      Composer: John Ireland

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    13. I. Top of the Hill

      Composer: Kevin Siegfried

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    14. II. Boat Song

      Composer: Kevin Siegfried

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    15. III. In Restless Waves

      Composer: Kevin Siegfried

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    16. IV. The Eagle Trees

      Composer: Kevin Siegfried

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    17. He That is Down Need Fear No Fall (arr. B. Judge)

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    18. O Taste and See

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    19. The Call (arr. A. Percival)

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    20. Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep

      Composer: John Rutter

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    21. One Thing Have I Desired

      Composer: Doug Fullington

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington

    22. Simple Gifts (arr. B. Chilcott)

      Composer: Joseph Brackett Jr.

      Ensemble: The Tudor Choir

      Conductor: Doug Fullington




SIMPLE GIFTS • Doug Fullington, cond; Tudor Ch • GOTHIC 49265 (59:35 &)


Choruses and arrangements by BRACKETT, HAMMOND, jr., BRADY, SIEGFRIED, BILLINGS, NEAUM, POSTON, THOMSON, COPLAND, fine, Ireland, VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, PERCIVAL, RUTTER, FULLINGTON, CHILCOTT, TRAD


The Tudor Choir is a Seattle-based chamber chorus of 12 voices, whose recording on Loft of Shaker music, in arrangements by Kevin Siegfried, Craig Zeichner “implored” us to buy (25:1). This recording is intended as a complement to that earlier one, and offers slightly more varied fare, all of it from the same musical and emotional neighborhood, however. The choir uses little vibrato and its fairly bright sound lets the sopranos stick out at the cost of the altos, though this is in part because there are only two altos but four sopranos. The choir sings cleanly and articulates clearly, and that is always a plus, even if one wishes there were a bit more heft now and then.


The core of this program is Shaker music, though only one Shaker piece is done in the unison we take to be the Shaker style, and that is the title piece (which, however, uses a variant of the melody we best know in Aaron Copland’s use of it in Appalachian Spring ). These words, and three different arrangements of it, by Kevin Siegfried, Copland (as further arranged by Irving Fine), and Bob Chilcott (for the King’s Singers), recur throughout the program. These are certainly more polished versions of Shaker tunes than those exhibited on Joel Cohen’s more scholarly recording with the same title (on Erato), done in the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community.


The major piece on the program is At the water’s edge , a setting by Kevin Siegfried of four poems by Sarah Orne Jewett. Commissioned in 2005 by the community chorus of South Berwick, Maine, where Jewett lived, these are gentle, largely consonant, nature settings, though the third, in five parts, ventures some discreet dissonance. They are similar in style with the rest of the program.


This matter of stylistic coherence is one of the striking features of this recording. Most of the arrangements are by Siegfried, and those by others share similar traits. That is, they tend to adopt the scale-structure of the melody being arranged. This was a technique demonstrated to great effect by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker in their arrangements of spirituals, which, like a number of the tunes here, have “gapped scales,” that is, scales that are incomplete somewhere within them.


This is a fine recording and I think Siegfried’s unfussy Jewett settings are certainly worth getting to know. They are a solid, mainstream, contribution to the modern American choral repertoire.


FANFARE: Alan Swanson