Christmas Recording

Opus Anglicanum’s concert of Mediaeval Carols has been an annual sell-out at Wells Cathedral each December and the highlight of their performing calendar. We have captured this spellbinding concert on a double CD, the ideal gift for Christmas.

£15.00

Quantity:

Use code MULTIBUY to save £5 when purchasing TWO Mediaeval Carols CDs (or on any order over £30)

Sample Music

Sample Reading

Opus Anglicanum: John Bowen, David De Winter, James Birchall, Stephen Burrows, Roland Robertson, Zeb Soanes

Join Opus Anglicanum on a Christmas journey 800 years back in time, visiting entrancing music and words from our mediaeval past.

On this inspiring journey we encounter Christmas music performed for centuries in great cathedrals as well as more intimate works, such as those written for seasonal feasts in collegiate halls, but the identity of most of our composers remains a mystery.

Masterworks include Perotin’s Beata viscera, Walter Lambe’s Nesciens mater, from the Eton Choirbook, and as a finale, Obrecht’s dazzling Factor orbis, where multiple Advent texts and chants combine in an intricate 'musical sermon'.

Our readings, performed by Zeb Soanes, invite the listener to encounter great mediaeval spiritual thinkers, poets and artists. Their words - spanning a thousand years from the fifth-century eloquence of Chrysostom via the glorious ninth-century antiphon O Oriens, to the wisdom of Lancelot Andrewes - illuminate the surrounding music.

“Definitely one to listen to again and again.”

— Robert Hugill

“This CD offers a lot more than the modest title suggests. In fact it spans 1000 years, and, as you’d expect from the evergreen Opus Anglicanum, this programme is no mere anthology but a sequence, telling the Christmas story step by step; every item is a distinctive delight, beautifully sung, and interspersed are readings, perfectly judged by Zeb Soanes. Expect the unexpected here; the story begins with the familiar accounts of St John, but as translated and expanded by Wycliffe; then comes a series of declarations and homilies of startling power and humanity. We may think of carols mostly as singalong pieces, which alas we can’t enjoy at the moment! but we can engage with this dynamic programme as grateful listeners.”

— Dame Emma Kirkby

Past Recordings

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Adorna

£15.00

Jazz star Jason Rebello joins classical a cappella experts Opus Anglicanum in a striking new collaboration entitled 'Adorna'. Sublime and ancient Gregorian chant for the midwinter feast of Candlemas comes to new life when the spontaneous improvised piano of Jason Rebello joins the mix.

Use code MULTIBUY to save £5 when purchasing TWO Adorna CDs (or on any order over £30)

Mediaeval Carols III Double CD

£15.00

Join Opus Anglicanum on a Christmas journey 800 years back in time, visiting spellbinding music and words from our mediaeval past. Masterworks include Perotin’s spell-binding solo Beata viscera, and Obrecht’s dazzling Factor orbis. Our readings, performed by Zeb Soanes, invite the listener to encounter great mediaeval spiritual thinkers, poets and artists, spanning a thousand years to illuminate the surrounding music.

Presented on two CDs, one containing both music and readings and the other, music only.

Use code MULTIBUY to save £5 when purchasing TWO Mediaeval Carols CDs (or on any order over £30)

Figgy Pudding CD

£12.50

Christmas jollity, sacred and secular, with carols and songs from the past 800 years – including Vaughan Williams and Orlando Gibbons – and words by Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Stanley Holloway, and Laurie Lee. An enduring OA favourite programme.

An English Music CD

£12.50

An English Music was conceived for a concert in King’s Place, London in 2016. Although it begins and ends with Purcell and Byrd, the focus is to present 6 works from among the 30+ new commissions made by Opus Anglicanum between 2000 and 2017. Zeb Soanes reads from Shakespeare, Siegfried Sassoon and John Milton, and the commissions include Einstein (Dobrinka Tabakova, 2013), Sing friends, sing to the honour of the Lord (Diana Burrell, 2014), Put Out Into the Deep (David Bednall, 2008), Three Miniatures of Fortunatus (Howard Skempton, 2016), Awakening (Gordon Crosse, 2010) and Fantasia on English Children’s Songs (Owain Park, 2013).

The Great and Wide Sea CD

£12.50

A haunting programme of original commissions from two of the UK’s leading female composers: a complete reading by Zeb Soanes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic Rime of the Ancient Mariner with music by Lynne Plowman, and Sally Beamish’s powerful Sea Psalm, setting an account from the only surviving officer of the destroyer HMS Duchess, which was sunk on 12 December 1939.

In Parenthesis CD

£12.50

Marking the centenary of WW1, David Jones’ In Parenthesis is based on the artist's experience as a young volunteer soldier in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Zeb Soanes tells the harrowing story of the Battle of Mametz Wood (July 1916) in Jones’ own words, and the singers of Opus Anglicanum perform soldiers' songs as well as Schubert and Palestrina. The CD also has two powerful works commissioned by Opus Anglicanum, from Cheryl Frances Hoad (In the Crypt of the Wood) and Owain Park (Sequence: In Parenthesis).

The Seeds of Love

£12.50

One of OA's most popular and poignant programmes, telling the remarkable story of the English 'folksong hunters' of the early 20th century. Opus Anglicanum bring these wonderful tunes to life in all their original beauty, as well as in a rich variety of arrangements by Vaughan Williams, Cecil Sharp and Percy Grainger.

The House CD

£12.50

A fascinating entertainment in which an imaginary English country manor house is observed through a thousand years of English history. From its first description as an Anglo-Saxon establishment in the Domesday Book through changing times up to the 1950s, with poetry, prose, laughter and tears.

Bede CD

£12.50

Exactly what the 8th century Benedictine monk Bede would have sung and heard is unknowable as musical notation was not developed until after his death. Opus Anglicanum's tribute to Bede juxtaposes readings from John Touhey of Bede’s Life of Cuthbert with early Gregorian and Anglo-Saxon Chant and 10th century works for St Cuthbert. Included is a spellbinding OA commission by Judith Bingham, Necklace of Light, based on Bede’s best-known work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Love Song CD

£12.50

A fun-filled and passionate entertainment depicting successively the emotions of falling in love, marriage, false and farcical lovers, and partings. Readings and music sublime and ridiculous, from the 12th century up to 2012.

The Journey CD

£12.50

This sequence of words and music explores the concept of journeys as part of life itself, and pilgrimage as a consecrated journey found in all faiths. Opus Anglicanum commissioned Judith Bingham’s Uppon First Sight of New England, setting an ecstatic poem by Thomas Tillam, a 17th century Baptist minister seeing America for the first time. Readings by John Touhey range from John Bunyan to Auschwitz survivor Agi Ruben, with music from Palestrina and Tallis to Vaughan Williams.