Caius Choir album released

  • 05 May 2023
  • 3 minutes

The Choir of Gonville & Caius College’s new album Philips & Dering: Motets shines a light on two underrepresented British composers from the 17th century.

The Choir’s first album since 2018, the recording proved fruitful in experience for the students involved whilst also offering a unique research opportunity to Director of Music, Matthew Martin.

The album showcases the music of Peter Philips and Richard Dering, two expatriate English Catholic composers who left England during the Reformation to work in continental Europe. Despite their fascinating and remarkably similar biographies, the composers remain rather underrepresented on disc and are hardly ever paired with one another.

For Matthew, it was a natural partnership.

“I have wanted to record these two composers for quite some time, but I hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to do it,” he says.

The composers, born two decades apart, moved in concentric social circles at last intersecting in 1614 when Philips’ daughter was received into the Convent of Our Lady of The Assumption in Brussels where Dering was organist.

Perhaps owing to their parallel narratives, their music has various similarities. However, to Matthew’s expert ear, there are some clear distinctions.

“Dering’s music is generally harmonically freer and Philips leans towards the Venetian Polychoral style at times, a type of music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras which involved spatially separate choirs, often singing in alternation.”

In his preparation for the recording, it became clear that the composers’ underrepresentation on disc is not due to scarcity or inaccessibility. Indeed, Matthew found a lot of Philips and Dering music in the University Library and Gonville & Caius College Library where, he says, “there’s oceans of it!”. Rather, Matthew explains it is the nature of the compositions themselves that may be the issue.

“A lot of the motets use obscure text, as they were written for specific days and feasts, sometimes making it difficult to find moments to sing them in services,” he says.

A particularly striking element of the album is the inclusion of period instruments. Keen to capture the sound worlds of Philips and Dering, Matthew worked closely with the musicians of early-music ensemble In Echo.

“Gawain Glenton from In Echo and I spent a lot of time making decisions about instrumentation and which vocal parts we wanted the instruments to double or replace. It was a real collaborative process,” Matthew says.

Staying true to the performance practices of Philip’s and Dering’s time, the instruments add extra flare to the already vivid music through ornamentation and improvisation. Creating, as Matthew explains, unique musical moments on the album – albeit challenging to manoeuvre in the editing room.

“We recorded a really beautiful 5-part Salve Regina by Philips. The cornet, played by Gawain, replaced the voices in the uppermost vocal part, adding ornamentation and improvising in a style affiliated with this type of music. It was a special moment of music making and one that would be hard to recapture.”

The album cover for Philips and Dering Motets by Caius ChoirThe album is released in the UK on Friday 5 May and worldwide on Friday 12 May, and will be accessible on all streaming platforms. 

Discover the album at: https://lnk.to/PhilipsDeringMotetsFB

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