Cecilia Virgo
Vocal score
Gabriel Jackson
Description
for 6S 6A 6T 6B unaccompanied
This expansive piece requiring 24 singers sets an anonymous 16th-century text of supplication to St Cecilia. From the cascading imitation of its opening to the monolithic triads of its close, it remains spellbinding and invokes a powerful sense of the divine. Inspired by the great motets of the Eton Choir Book, this is seriously beautiful music with particular appeal for committed choirs.
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Programme Notes:
The florid, ecstatic music of the Eton Choirbook is a particular obsession of mine so I was very excited that Cecilia Virgo was to receive its first performance alongside pieces from that miraculous repertoire. My first attempt to engage with this extraordinary music, A Vision of Aeroplanes (premiered by the BBC Singers in 1997) took its cue from the ever-changing combinations of voices and ornate, complex counterpoint characteristic of early Tudor polyphony. Cecilia Virgo