This CD, highly recommended, is a splendid demonstration of the work of The Cathedral Singers, who deputise for the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. The Singers number about 30, and their sound under Hilary Punnett’s direction is strong and assured. While the choirs who feature on present-day CDs of church music usually seem to have an almost entirely young membership, The Cathedral Singers are more diverse in terms of age, as a photograph in the CD booklet shows.

The CD is essentially the outcome of the New Music Project of 2020. This was ‘conceived to provide the choir with new contemporary music which would be singable…and usable as part of the choir’s daily offerings in Christ Church Cathedral’ (in the words of James Potter, director of The Cathedral Singers from 2016 to 2022).

A Missa Brevis by Grayston Ives forms ‘the central item of the project’. The choral items by Bertie Baigent, Sarah Rimkus, Ben Rowarth and Alison Willis were commissioned following an invitation for detailed proposals for new pieces for the choir. Those unfamiliar with the names just quoted can find information online (although their pieces are described in the CD booklet.

The CD’s is a named after Ives’s mass, and means in translation ‘Mass of Christ’s House’, ‘The House’ being a name often affectionately applied to the college (which is uniquely a college of Oxford University and the diocesan cathedral).

The movements of Ives’s (Latin) mass (with organ) are interleaved with other items, with the Gloria last (almost reminiscent of the position of a Prayer Book Gloria). This splitting up recognises that not all movements would be performed in succession in the liturgy, and helps also to offer a more varied listening experience to those who listening to the whole CD continuously.

The music is varied in texture and sonority, with some lovely moments in the Agnus Dei in particular, although perhaps the Gloria might, overall, be a touch more exultant.

For liturgical use also are settings of ‘Cantate Domino’ and ‘Deus misereatur’ by James Potter. These texts (Psalms 98 and 67) are very rarely used alternatives to Magnificat and Nunc dimittis at Evensong. (They were first introduced in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, quite possibly because their introduction distanced the Anglican liturgy a little further from the pre-Reformation offices of Vespers and Compline.

In each of Potter’s fauxbourdon settings (for choir without organ) plainsong tones alternate with (recurring) choral harmonisations, which to my mind recall passages from Allegri’s celebrated ‘Miserere’. Hopefully these alternative canticles may inspire others to explore the same texts afresh.

The CD begins with an impressive setting of ‘A Hymn of George Bell’, for choir and organ by David Bednall. The poem (not, I think, a hymn sung in church) begins ‘God, to whom all creatures bring / Psalm and praise…’ and includes in the second stanza the prayer that ‘as thy choir on high / sings in perfect harmony / So may we with one accord / make sweet music to our Lord’. George Bell, a former Bishop of Chichester, was never Archbishop of Canterbury as the CD booklet says, although he was Dean at one time and was considered as Archbishop in 1944, being rejected, it is suspected, partly because of his having criticised some of the British ‘blanket bombing’ of German cities in World War II. It is strange that Bell’s strong connections with Christ Church are not mentioned.

The anthology includes two organ solos: Anthony Gray’s ‘An Aquinian Sequence’ is a continuous collection of pieces (but playable separately) based on plainsong melodies associated with texts ny St Thomas Aquinas. Simon Hogan gave the first performance in Southwark Cathedral in 2024. It was for Hogan that the closing item on the CD, Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s ‘Toccata’ was composed. His initials and full name are ‘translated’ into musical motifs and themes by equating specific letters with specific pitch classes – e.g. the initials ‘S. H.’ become (using the German nomenclature, E flat–B natural). The piece is excitingly virtuosic.

Bertie Baigent’s anthem ‘Rise Heart’ exemplifies the opportunities provided by George Herbert’s poetry, and also includes the Latin ‘Surrexit pastor’ in a contrasting middle section. The piece demonstrates ‘the joy and warmth of the Easter message’ and ‘something more personal and intimate than purely triumphant and victorious’.

Two other pieces exploit the possibilities of setting more than one text. Ben Rowarth’s ‘A New Year Carol’ combines Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Match Girl’ with an anonymous New Year carol previously set by Britten. The former text contrasts the shameful poverty and death of the match girl at New Year and the surrounding wealth and warmth. ‘The God who sees me’ by Sarah Rimkus interestingly links various Biblical texts, ranging from part of Psalm 139 to Hagar’s words in Genesis 16.

Alison Willis’s ‘Regine coeli’ employs the traditional plainsong in enterprising ways and with a powerful range of textures. The tremendous climax suggests, according to the booklet, the multitude of Christians who, throughout the ages, have prayed the ‘Regina coeli’. A striking piece!