Royal Holloway is a constituent university of the federated University of London. Its campus is in Egham, Surrey, halfway between Windosor and Heathrow in southeastern England. In 1879, at the suggestion of his wife Jane, the philanthropist Thomas Holloway decided decided to use around a quarter of a million pounds to establish a college for women. Royal Holloway is renowned for the magnificent Founder’s Building designed in the French Renaissance style by W.H. Crossland. Queen Victoria opened it as a college for women only in 1886, but it admitted men as graduate students in 1945, and as undergraduates in 1965. The composition of the choir – originally of all female voices – has reflected the changing face of the student body. There are currently twenty-four choral schools and two organ scholars. The choir is the only university choir in Britain that sings daily Matins. There were two recording sessions, curiously neither in Royal Holloway itself – the first in Saint Paul’s, Knightsbridge, and the second in Saint Augustine’s, Kilburn.

Dan Locklair (b.1949) came originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, and held his first post as an organist at the early age of fourteen. He earned his undergraduate degree from Mars Hill College in North Carolina and obtained a Master of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He then earned his Doctor in Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He studied composition with Joseph Goodman, Ezra Lederman, Samuel Adler, and Joseph Schwantner, and organ with Donna Robertson, Robert Baker, and David Craighead. He is composer-in-residence and professor of music at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Locklair is best known for his organ composition Rubrics, inspired by select rubrics in the Episcopal Prayer Book of 1979, which was played at President Reagan’s funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Locklair’s music has brought him worldwide fame, with performances in such countries as England, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Poland, and the Czech Republic, as well as the United States and Canada.

The organist David Goode (b. 1971) was a chorister at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and following a short period of study at Wells Cathedral School, he became organ scholar first at Eton College and then at King’s College, Cambridge. He graduated from King’s with a Master of Arts degree (First Class Honours) and subsequently also obtained a Master of Philosophy degree in music. His organ teachers included David Sanger and Jacques van Oortmerssen. He has composed choral and organ music as well as being a performer, and notably his Blitz Requiem premiered at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London in 2013. He was sub-organist of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, between 1996 and 2001, following which he did a stint as organist-in-residence at First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, California, between 2001 and 2005, whereupon he returned to England as organist and head of keyboard studies at Eton College between 2005 and 2022. He then resigned in order to pursue exclusively his international career as a recitalist and composer.

The conductor Rupert Gough (b. 1971) was a chorister at the Chapels Royal, Saint James’s Palace, and then won a scholarship to the Purcell School for Young Musicians in Bushey, Hertfordshire. He received a master’s degree (with distinction) in English church music from the University of East Anglia while he was organ scholar at Norwich Cathedral. In 2001 he won third prize at the Saint Albans International Organ Competition. He is particularly renowned for his work in combination with the violin as a member of the Gough Duo. He has been director of choral music and college organist at Royal Holloway, University of London, since 2005. As such he is responsible for the creative planning and artistic direction of the choir and oversees the Founder’s Choir and College Chorus, as well as teaching choral conducting and organ. He is also organist and director of music at London’s oldest surviving church, Great Saint Bartholomew, Smithfield, which maintains a professional choir. He previously spent eleven years as assistant organist at Wells Cathedral where he collaborated closely with the choir both as an accompanist and choir trainer. His overall output of nearly fifty recordings encompasses his work as a choir director, organist, and harpsichordist. As a conductor he has worked with a variety of professional choirs and orchestras including the Britten Sinfonia, the London Mozart Players, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and Florilegium. In 2015 he conducted the King’s Singers in their first U.K. Summer School, held at Royal Holloway.

Onyx Brass, established in 1993, is an English group of five brass players who combine virtuosity with accessibility and sometimes merriment. The current members are Niall Keatley, trumpet, who is co-principal trumpet of the BBC Symphony Orchestra; Alan Thomas, trumpet, principal trumpet of the Central Band of the Royal Air Force and of the London Mozart Players; Andrew Sutton, French horn, sub-principal horn of the Orchestra of the English Opera Company; Amos Miller, trombone, head of brass at the Royal College of Music; and David Gordon Shute, tuba, who is principal tuba in the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Orchestra of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, as well as tuba teacher and head of brass at Eton College, and principal conductor and music director of the Hertfordshire County Youth Wind Sinfonia and Ealing Wind Orchestra. Amos Miller and David Gordon Shute are the two remaining original members from the founding of Oryx Brass in 1993.

Although the leaflet gives him only passing mention, I think it probable that Tristan Fry (b. 1946), the percussionist, is the most famous musician on this compact disc. He has been a drummer in both classical and pop music circles. He began his career at the age of seventeen playing timpani in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been a founding member of ensembles that include the Nash Ensemble of London, the chamber music ensemble Fires of London, and the London Sinfonietta. He was for years the timpanist of the Academy of Saint Martin’s-in-the-Fields Orchestra. He also played timpani with the London Chamber Orchestra at the wedding of Prince William and Katherine Middleton, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, in 2011. As a pop musician he has played with the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Olivia Newton John, John Martyn, Sir Elton John, Nick Drake, and David Essex, among others. His link with the Beatles is that Fry contributed timpani to the two orchestral climaxes of the song “A Day in the Life.”

Many of Locklair’s compositions on this compact disc are choral settings of familiar English and Latin hymns. The initial five tracks are settings of carols and hymns for Christmas. The first of these, From East to West, from Shore to Shore (2003), an anthem for SATB chorus, organ, and brass, lends its name to the compact disc. In this piece Locklair’s compositional style reminds me of Vaughan Williams’s “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing” from Five Mystical Songs.

The a cappella SATB anthem Love Came Down at Christmas (2009) makes use of a similar harmonic structure, but a much greater feeling of peace and calm prevails. Locklair composed Three Christmas Motets (1993) for SSAATTBB a cappella.

The character of Three Motets reminds me a lot of Francis Poulenc’s Quatre Motets pour le Temps de Noël, FP 152, although Locklair places his motets in a different order and omits “Videntes Stellam.” I must say that I find the melodies Locklair uses less satisfying than those of Poulenc, but Locklair’s motets are nevertheless beautifully crafted pieces.

Locklair wrote Dona Nobis Pacem (1985) for a cappella SATB choir. The text comes from the end of the Ordinary of the Mass, and settings of it are extremely plentiful, I should think only second in number to the Ave Maria, but Locklair nevertheless manages to produce a motet that is fresh and interesting. The work is in three sections, the first and third of which are quiet and tranquil as befits a state of peace, while the central contrapuntal section displays a feeling of disquiet, suggesting that one cannot always take peace and tranquility for granted.

Locklair composed his setting of The Lord Is My Light for SATB chorus and organ in 2017. This anthem draws on texts from the King James Version of Psalm 27 and Isaiah. It is another very interesting and original piece that alternates loud rhythmic passages with moments of calm, reminding me somewhat of William Matthias’s anthem, Lift Up your Heads, O ye Gates!

Following two a cappella SATB anthems using hymn texts, there is one of Locklair’s major choral works, Brief Mass (1993) for SSAATTBB a cappella. The joyful, energetic “Gloria” is of particular interest, as are “Sanctus” and “Agnus Dei,” all using the Phrygian mode, the latter two making use of the Lydian mode as well. In “Sanctus” Locklair repeats words and phrases in a kind of litany. Louis Bourgeois’s hymn tune Donne Secours appears as a melody in “Agnus Dei.”

Following Brief Mass we hear another four anthems making use of hymn texts. The third of these, the a cappella SATB anthem, The Lord Ascendeth Up on High, is one of a series of anthems for the liturgical year that Locklair composed in 2011. This joyous work would be a useful, somewhat easier, alternative for choirs to Ascension Day anthems like Stanford’s Coelos Ascendit Hodie and Finzi’s God Is Gone Up With a Triumphant Shout.

The final work, The Texture of Creation (1983), is the most original composition here. Locklair based it on a specially written text of Martha W. Lentz for the inauguration of Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., as president of Wake Forest University. It uses all the resources of double SATB chorus, brass quintet, timpani, and organ. The work is in three parts, comprising two fortissimo outer sections and a mezzo piano central one. The outer sections have massive fanfare-like passages leading up to the entry of the full double choir.

This compact disc is an excellent introduction to the choral works of Dan Locklair. I wholeheartedly recommend it to readers of The Diapason.