Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda
The William Ferris Chorale is a Chicago-based vocal group, specialising in little-performed works by contemporary or Twentieth Century composers. Here they are, however, with a well known composer. Camille Saint-Saëns…
Interestingly, “A Mhuire Mhathair” is not a traditional Irish hymn, but the result in the 1970s of setting an Irish text to the Maori tune Pokarekare Ana :
Joe Heaney was a sean-nos singer born just over one hundred years ago near Carna in Connemara. He sang in both Irish and English, and would contribute to John Cage’s…
From the contemporary Polish composer Krzysztof A Janczak here is a timeless sounding (yet of its time) Ave Maria:
Ave Maris Stella is an extremely versatile and influential piece of music, and moving away from the choral focus of Marian May so far, here is an instrumental version by…
A setting of a poem written by (according to the record label site) the Greek Orthodox Saint Nectarios of Aegina , this piece was my first exposure to Greek Orthodox…
“Totus Tuus” was the motto of Pope John Paul II, an allusion to St Louis de Montfort’s formula of total consecration to Our Lady. Appropriately the late Polish composer Henry…
While compiling the ChoralMarch series it did strike me that an entire month of choral music dedicated to Mary was entirely possible. I am not promising daily updates but this…
Séamus Sweeney 