Nico Muhly:
Senex puerum portabat
Rev’d Mustard His Installation Prelude
A Hymn on the Nativity
Take care (Hudson Preludes, No. 1)
A Song of Ephrem the Syrian

David Lang:
again (after ecclesiastes)
if I sing (after psalm 101)
sleeper’s prayer

Libby Larsen:
I will sing and raise a psalm

Philip Glass:
Satyagraha, Act III - Conclusion (arr. Michael Riesman)

Abbie Betinis:
Cedit, hyems

Stephen Paulus:
The Road Home (arr. from a tune (‘Prospect’) in The Southern Harmony, 1835)

Deep river (arr. Gerre Hancock)

In barely a decade of existence, Merton College’s new choral foundation has ambitiously redened the choral landscape of the great university city of Oxford through its twin commitment to excellence & innovation.

Now, focusing entirely on American music of the late twentieth and early twenty-rst centuries, this latest in a series of thematically conceived recordings begins as a striking ‘double portrait’ of two composers who have written or arranged works especially for the choir. David Lang’s austere choral postminimalism, informed by a background of Jewish liturgy and thought, provides a striking foil to Nico Muhly’s more richly referential approach; Muhly fell in love with the Anglican tradition as a young chorister in Rhode Island.

Two solo organ works by Muhly, and a transcription from his mentor Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha, widen the expressive gamut still further – from whimsical allusiveness to meditative calm – and are set in context alongside the more stylistically eclectic yet no less powerfully communicative sound-worlds of Libby Larsen and Abbie Betinis.

Two nal choral items draw on pre-existing traditions of the spiritual and the Baptist hymnal in moving demonstration of the New World’s ability to honour its past while gazing rmly ahead.

---

Recorded on 30 June & 1-2 July 2019 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford