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Track(s) taken from CDA67483

Let my prayer be set forth

composer
Hubert Stanley Middleton (1890-1959)
1928
author of text
Bible
Psalm 141: 2-3

St Paul's Cathedral Choir, John Scott (conductor)
Recording details: March 2004
St Paul's Cathedral, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Julian Millard
Release date: January 2005
Total duration: 1 minutes 43 seconds
 

Reviews

‘The performances are excellent, as are William McVicker's booklet-notes, and the great echo's presence is felt as friend, not foe’ (Gramophone)

‘If this is Scott's swan song with the St Paul's Choir, it is a brilliant one. The choral tone and discipline are outstanding … the Hyperion engineers demonstrate that they know how to record a choir in a highly reverberant setting. The tone is always clear but sumptuous, giving the listener a feel for the immense space involved yet never obscuring the musical textures. The audible reverberation at the pauses in Parry's Lord, let me know mine end is nothing short of breathtaking’ (American Record Guide)

‘Each piece in this collection—those considered first-rate, those considered perhaps less than first-rate, and those perhaps scarcely considered at all—is given added quality through the pedigree of the performers and the performances; thus many find a stature which would surprise the cynic. If this CD enables some standard works to receive reference performances, and some lesser works to receive a fresh popularity, then it will have done more than most such collections. Warmly recommended’ (Organists' Review)
Hubert Stanley Middleton was born in Windsor on 11 May 1890 and died on 13 August 1959. He was educated at the Imperial Services College, Windsor, where he caught the eye of Sir Walter Parratt, who gave him organ lessons. Thence he went up to Peterhouse in Cambridge, where he studied for the history tripos. He was elected an external fellow of his college and was for some time organist at Truro Cathedral. From 1926 to 1931 he was organist and choirmaster at Ely Cathedral. In the latter year he was appointed organist and director of studies in music at Trinity College, finally being appointed a fellow in 1946. Middleton also held a post as a lecturer in music at Cambridge University. In this role he spent the wartime years working towards a syllabus for the music tripos which was established in 1945. Hubert Middleton was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1928 and between 1945 and 1946 worked for the British Educational Section in Berlin.

His motet Let my prayer be set forth is written for double choir and was published by Dean & Sons in 1928. It is a setting of words from Psalm 141 and is unusual in that the two sides of the choir – cantoris and decani – are scored in four-part canon. That is to say that the second chorus imitates exactly what the first has sung at a distance of one bar – a compositional technique which is embraced to great effect. The music fades away to a single note – a unison E – just as it began.

from notes by William McVicker © 2005

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