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Quo Vadis (Dyson)
''Quo Vadis'' is a cycle of poems for chorus and orchestra in nine movements, composed between 1936 and 1945 by George Dyson. It has been described as an "anthology cantata", using poems by multiple authors to explore a subject—in this case, "where are you going?" (the literal translation of the Latin phrase ''quo vadis''). Christopher Palmer summed up the work's theme as "man’s earthly pilgrimage, his spiritual odyssey and its consummation in Shelley’s 'white radiance of Eternity'". What we now know as part one was originally intended for the Three Choirs Festival on 7 September 1939, but the performance was cancelled when war was declared on 1 September. The first complete performance eventually took place in Hereford at the 1949 Festival. Lewis Foreman related the work to a movement he termed "agnostics at prayer", including other choral compositions of the period such as '' Sancta Civitas'' ( Vaughan Williams, 1925), ''Hymnus Paradisi'' ( Howells, 1938), ''Intimation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Dyson (composer)
Sir George Dyson (28 May 188328 September 1964) was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War. As a composer Dyson wrote in a traditional idiom, reflecting the influence of his teachers at the RCM, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. His works were well known during his lifetime but underwent a period of neglect before being revived in the late 20th century. Life and career Early years Dyson was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Halifax, Yorkshire, the eldest of the three children of John William Dyson, a blacksmith, and his wife, Alice, ''née'' Greenwood, a weaver.Foreman, Lewis"Dyson, Sir George (1883–1964)" Oxford Dictiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Herrick (poet)
Robert Herrick (baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674) was a 17th-century English lyric poet and Anglican cleric. He is best known for ''Hesperides'', a book of poems. This includes the '' carpe diem'' poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may". Early life Born in Cheapside, London, Robert Herrick was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith."Robert Herrick," Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, Web, 20 May 2011. He was named after an uncle, Robert Herrick (or Heyrick), a prosperous Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester, who had bought the land Greyfriars Abbey stood on after Henry VIII's dissolution in the mid-16th century. Nicholas Herrick died in a fall from a fourth-floor window in November 1592, when Robert was a year old (whether this was suicide remains unclear). [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oratorios
An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio, the choir often plays a central role, and there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. Protestant composers took their stories from the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints, as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salisbury Diurnal
George Herbert Palmer ( Grantchester, 9 August 1846 - Oxford, 20 June 1926) was an English Anglo-Catholic priest, musicologist, organist, and expert on plainchant, particularly of the Sarum Use. Named after the priest and poet George Herbert, he was ordained a priest in Chester in 1871 and later was organist of St Margaret's Church in Toxteth Park, Liverpool, and St Barnabas, Pimlico, London. He helped found the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (PMMS) in 1888. The majority of his extensive editions of liturgical music and texts were produced by the PMMS and the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage in Oxfordshire. He was notable and influential for his musically sensitive translations of Latin hymns into English. Works *''The Antiphoner and Grail: Being the Words of the Antiphons and Hymns at Mattins and Evening, and also of the Introits, Graduals, and Sequences at the Holy Eucharist, Derived Mainly from the Sarum Breviary and Missal, and Adapted to the Use of the Boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem." Shelly's reputation fluctuated during the 20th century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his " prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican ministry, Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s, and Canonisation of John Henry Newman, was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019. Originally an Evangelical Anglicanism, evangelical academic at the University of Oxford and priest in the Church of England, Newman became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became one of the more notable leaders of the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholicity, Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists." He was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He sat in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625. After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioner ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Vaughan
Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in ''Silex Scintillans'' in 1650, with a second part in 1655.''Oxford Companion to English Literature'', s. v. Henry Vaughan. In 1646 his ''Poems, with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished'' was published. Meanwhile he had been persuaded by reading the religious poet George Herbert to renounce "idle verse". The prose ''Mount of Olives'' and ''Solitary Devotions'' (1652) show his authenticity and depth of convictions. Two more volumes of secular verse followed, ostensibly without his sanction, but it is his religious verse that has been acclaimed. He also translated short moral and religious works and two medical works in prose. In the 1650s he began a lifelong medical practice. Early life Henry Vaughan was born at Newton by Usk in the Llansantffraed (St. Bridget's) parish of Brecknockshire, the eldest kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Keble
John Keble (25 April 1792 – 29 March 1866) was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him. Early life Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father, also named John Keble, was vicar of Coln St. Aldwyns. He and his brother Thomas were educated at home by their father until each went to Oxford. In 1806, Keble won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He excelled in his studies and in 1810 achieved double first-class honours in both Latin and mathematics. In 1811, he won the university prizes for both the English and Latin essays and became a fellow of Oriel College. He was for some years a tutor and examiner at the University of Oxford. While still at Oxford, he was ordained in 1816, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Williams (writer)
The Reverend Isaac Williams (1802–1865) was a prominent member of the Oxford Movement (or "Tractarians"), a student and disciple of John Keble and, like the other members of the movement, associated with Oxford University. A prolific writer, Williams wrote poetry and prose including the well known Tract: ''"On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge"''. Life Williams was the son of a Welsh Chancery barrister who spent much of his time in London. The Williams family had a home, Cwmcynfelin, in Llangorwen, Cardiganshire, from which Isaac would walk to Oxford and other destinations. He is associated with the establishment there of a distinct parish separated from that of Llanbadarn Fawr. He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Oxford, where as an undergraduate he gained the Latin verse prize and thus came to the notice of John Keble. In 1829 he was ordained as curate of Windrush, a Gloucestershire village not far from John Keble's home at Fairford. He th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Sternhold
Thomas Sternhold (1500–1549) was an English courtier and the principal author of the first English metrical version of the Psalms, originally attached to the Prayer-Book as augmented by John Hopkins. Life Anthony Wood says that Sternhold entered Christ Church, Oxford, but did not take a degree. The first definite date in his life is 1538, when the name of Thomas Sternhold appears in Thomas Cromwell's accounts. He became one of the grooms of the robes to Henry VIII, and was a favourite, to whom a legacy of a hundred marks was bequeathed him by the king's will. He may have been the Thomas Sternell or Sternoll who was elected for Plymouth to the parliament that met on 30 January 1545, and was dissolved by Henry VIII's death in January 1547. Sternhold was born in Blakeney, Gloucestershire, and died on 23 August 1549. His will, dated August 1549, was proved on 12 September following. Among the witnesses to his will was Edward Whitchurch, probably his publisher. His property co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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