Searching for Tamsin Jones - 8 results.
Responses scored for unaccompanied ATB, which hark back to an older style. The Lord's Prayer is three-part canon with the tenor inverted, but can be sung to a monotone if preferred.
This piece is a canon, both 4 in 1 and 4 in 2. The alto and tenor parts have the same canon as the soprano and tenor, but in inversion.
This setting is for ATTB, but can be sung by SATTB with soprano doubling the alto line.
The piece shows very diverse influences, from Josquin and Schuetz through to Sumsion, Howells (the opening theme is based on the first treble entry of the Collegium Regale Magnificat) and Lennon and McCartney.
The Magnificat uses a call and response style inspired by 1960s pop music, but also canonic techniques and unusual dissonances derived from such diverse sources as Cavalieri and the Franco-Flemish school. The soprano soloist sings a playful and childlike theme to evoke the innocent joy of the girl Mary, but in the Nunc Dimittis, related material is presented by a tenor using oddly balanced rhythms to suggest the unsteady gait of the old man Simeon.
The Magnificat was recorded by Chester Cathedral choir in 2002 for their disk The Water of Life and is now being published alongside the Nunc Dimittis as the Chester Service.
Maria Zart or Gentle Mary was a late fifteenth-century Austrian hymn immortalised in Obrecht's mass setting named after it. This motet is straightforwardly based on the hymn. The soprano introduces each phrase of the tune, which is then elaborated by the lower voices, with frequent short episodes of imitative counterpoint. The modality and vocal idioms are directly borrowed from the music of Obrecht and his contemporaries, and include such characteristic devices as extremely extended sequences and greatly lengthened scalic runs. Ideally, it should be performed by solo singers.
This motet is suitable for many occasions: with its references to salvation being brought forth by Mary, it is obviously fitted to Christmas and Marian services. However, it also deals with death and the inadequacy of good works for achieving salvation, and so could be used for a funeral or even a Passiontide service.
Pax Dei explores the different textural possibilities of an SATBB choir. At key moments imitative counterpoint gives way to homophony, and these contrasts are underlined with changes of dynamic. The motet makes extensive use of an Okinawan pentatonic scale, which provides a bright, serene tonality to balance the relative darkness of the scoring. It should be sung at a relaxed walking pace.
Appearing for the first time in a single volume, the settings of the Preces and
Responses for men's voices (ATB with various divisions) by Tamsin Jones, Edmund
Saddington and David Truslove all appear in this collection. Each setting is closely
associated with a particular cathedral.
Tamsin Jones's Preces and Responses for Low Voices was first performed at Chester
Cathedral. Its Lord's Prayer setting is a three-part canon with the tenor inverted.
Edmund Saddington's Preces & Responses, which have never been published
before, were written in 2012 and given their premiere by the lay clerks and choral scholars at Portsmouth Cathedral under Dr David Price
in March 2015.
David Truslove's Preces & Responses for ATBB Voices was written for the
layclerks of Winchester Cathedral Choir, though they're also in the repertoire at
Chichester Cathedral. They offer some arresting harmonies and a few irregular
progressions, as well as the unconventional use of an alto soloist.
This simple but subtle carol perfectly expresses the bittersweet wonder of Christmas: the promise of joy to a world in pain.