John Rutter was born in London 24 September 1945. Rutter grew up living over the Globe pub on London’s Marylebone Road. He was educated at Highgate School and as a chorister there took part in the first (1963) recording of Britten’s War Requiem under the composer’s baton. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the choir. While still an undergraduate he had his first compositions published. He served as director of music at Clare College from 1975 to 1979 and led the choir to international prominence. In 1981, Rutter founded his own choir, the Cambridge Singers, which he conducts and with which he has made many recordings of sacred choral repertoire (including his own works), particularly under his own label Collegium Records. He resides at Hemingford Abbots in Cambridgeshire and frequently conducts choirs and orchestras around the world.
In 1980, he was made an honorary Fellow of Westminster Choir College, Princeton, and in 1988 a Fellow of the Guild of Church Musicians. In 1996, the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred a Lambeth Doctorate of Music upon him in recognition of his contribution to church music. In 2008, he was made an honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple while playing a significant role in the 2008 Temple Festival. In 2023 Sir John Rutter CBE was award a knighthood in the King’s Birthday Honours, for services to music.
Feel the Spirit is a cycle of seven familiar spirituals expertly arranged by John Rutter for mezzo-soprano solo, mixed choir, and orchestra or chamber ensemble. Equally suitable for concert, school, or church use, the vivid and expressive arrangements can be performed individually, or as a complete cycle that showcases the rich heritage of the spiritual. The work brings new life to such well-loved titles as Steal away, I got a robe, and When the saints go marching in and has two accompaniment options: full orchestra or chamber ensemble.
Soloist: Bongani Nakani – Mezzo soprano
Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music.
Schubert showed uncommon gifts for music from an early age. His father gave him his first violin lessons and his elder brother gave him piano lessons, but Schubert soon exceeded their abilities. In 1808, at the age of eleven, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school, where he became acquainted with the orchestral music of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. He left the Stadtkonvikt at the end of 1813, returned home and he began studying to become a schoolteacher. Despite this, he continued his studies in composition with Antonio Salieri and still composed prolifically. In 1821, Schubert was admitted to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member, which helped establish his name among the Viennese citizenry. He gave a concert of his works to critical acclaim in March 1828, the only time he did so in his career. He died eight months later at the age of 31, the cause officially attributed to typhoid fever, but believed by some historians to be syphilis. Appreciation of Schubert’s music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased greatly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is considered one of the greatest composers in the history of Western classical music and his music continues to be widely performed.
The Mass in G major was written in early March 1815 and was originally scored for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, mixed choir, strings and organ. It was once thought that parts for oboes or clarinets, bassoons, trumpets and timpani had been added by Schubert’s elder brother Ferdinand, but the recovery of the original parts in Schubert’s hand makes it clear that the revised orchestration was his own work. The Mass was probably first heard at Liechtental and the soprano solos suggest that the work had been written partly with the talents of Therese Grob in mind. The young soprano, daughter of neighbours of the Schubert’s, had sung the soprano solos in Schubert’s Mass in F, and Franz Schubert seems to have set his heart on her, although nothing came of the supposed attachment. As elsewhere, Schubert treated the liturgical text with a certain freedom and omitted from the Credo the phrase “Et in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam” (“And in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”), an omission taken by some to indicate an element of alienation from the Church. It has recently been suggested, however, that Schubert here was conforming to the standard contemporary practice of the Catholic Enlightenment.
Soloists: Magdaleen Minnaar – Soprano, Thomas Erlank – Tenor, Tshilidzi Ndou – Bass
Conducted by Richard Cock.
Feel the Spirit – John Rutter (full album) – YouTube
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