Post Description

Canty 

Rebecca Tavener (director)
Micaela Haslam
Anne Lewis
Joanne Wicks
with William Taylor - harp 

  

Recorded at Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, UK on 24th - 26th February and 9th November 2009
Produced and engineered by Philip Hobbs
Post-production by Julia Thomas, Finesplice, UK
Design and photography of Canty by John Haxby
Cover image: Royaumont (Dép. Val-d'Oise, Ile de France, France), Abbey - Abbaye de Royaumont / AKG Images 

For Benjamin Thomas Gibson and William George Dunton 


Carmina Celtica 

There are a number of thematic strands running through this programme: the wanderings of Celtic saints across Europe in the Dark Ages, light and the heavenly bodies, and the life-force of creation, to name but three. The most important aspect of this recording for Canty, however, is that for the first time we have been able to celebrate part of the rapidly growing corpus of contemporary music that has been of vital importance to us since we began our musical journey. Everything on this disc, old and new, is a world-premiere recording, reflecting our conviction that the musical interfaces between classical/traditional, ancient/modern, and east/west are permeable ground, rich and ripe for exploration. One of the most significant ways in which we explore this idea is through the harp, and this disc features three from William Taylor's large collection of copies of authentic instruments: a gut-strung harp typical of the type of instrument common across Europe in the Middle Ages, a wire-strung medieval clarsach with a bell-like timbre of the sort used in Ireland and Scotland, and a harp with buzzing bray-pins with a tone that almost defies classification. Bill's accompaniments to the medieval material are improvisations whereas, of course, in the new works they are fully composed. 

All the new music on this disc, except for Ivan Moody's ‘O quam mirabilis', was written for Canty, either commissioned by us, for us, or gifted by the composer. The setting of an antiphon for St Columba from the Inchcolm Antiphoner, ‘Os mutorum', by James MacMillan was commissioned by my husband, Alan Tavener, as a birthday present. The text is a favourite passage from the Office for St Columba in the 13th century Scottish manuscript, the Inchcolm Antiphoner. It expresses very clearly and movingly the affection for St Columba still held in Scotland today. The premiere was given at Mass in the composer's church, St Columba's RC Church, Glasgow, in June 2008, followed that evening by the official concert premiere in Glasgow's West End Festival. There is a figure in the accompaniment in the final section that bears more than a fleeting resemblance to the theme of the 60s TV spy series ‘The Saint' - could it be a coincidence? 

Canty has been associated with the music and poetry of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, as her 900th anniversary in 1998 provided the spur for the formation of the group. Ivan Moody writes: "‘O quam mirabilis' was written in 2006 to a commission from the very fine American girls' choir Mandala, conducted by Sean Ivory. It was requested that the text be in Latin, which gave me the perfect reason to set, once again, words by the remarkable mystic Hildegard of Bingen, expressing to perfection awe at the mystery of the Creator God." 

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