New Collection – Novello Book of Music for Lent & Easter (ed. David Hill)

The sixty-four pieces in this anthology have been chosen to offer the most vibrant possible selection for all the major feast days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, covering the seasons of Lent, Passiontide and Eastertide.

 

The collection features exciting settings of standard texts – such as Svein Møller’s beautiful Ave verum, Ralph Allwood’s haunting On the Mount of Olives and Lotti’s visceral six-voice Crucifixus – and arrangements of well-loved melodies, including Stephen Jackson’s Lord of the Dance, Were you there? and Dale Adelmann’s Steal away. With rehearsal pressures in mind, we have included a number of shorter, easy anthems by, amongst others, J.C. Bach, Britten, Dowland and Charles Wood, while Adam Harvey’s Gethsemane and Christopher Borrett’s Two Adams offer engaging, less traditional texts. Charles-Marie Widor’s striking Surrexit a mortuis is published here for the first time in a version for single organ and choir: an unforgettable opening work for any Easter service

 

There are also hymn arrangements, including a specially commissioned selection, from James Burton’s reflective It is a thing most wonderful and Tom Wiggall’s When I survey the wondrous cross to Matthew O’Donovan’s thrilling and dramatic Jesus Christ is risen today, Christopher Johns’s Ye choirs of new Jerusalem and Richard Marlow’s Alleluia! Alleluia!.