Wesley's output of church music was considerable, the quality can be a bit uneven but he composed enough masterpiecs that his style remained influential amongst the generation of musicians and composers who followed him. Even amongst his less happy compositions there's generally movement or two of very high quality that show what could have been were it not for Wesley's mercurial nature that on occasion descended into insanity. Amongst his undoubted masterpieces is 'Man that is born of a woman' which he composed in 1861 for the funeral of the Warden of Winchester College. It's a moving and dignified piece of music full of pathos and showing very clearly Henry Purcell's (1659-1695) influence upon the composer. Indeed so strong was Purcell's influence on this particular piece that Wesley suggested when it was published that Purcell's Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts be sung immediately afterwards. It's sung below by the Choir of Worcester Cathedral conducted by Donald Hunt. Enjoy :-).
markfromireland
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Purcell's De Profundis is a remarkable composition. It's a verse anthem (verse anthems are anthems that consist of solos for one of more voices interspersed with short full choral passages that amplify the solo material. - mfi) that could well be from as early as 1680. It appears in the Flackton Manuscript (British Museum Add. MS 30931) in Purcell’s own hand and its verse sections are scored for three soloists a treble, a high tenor and a bass.
Recordings of Fissinger's music are now ludicrously exensive and very hard to come by even if you are prepared to pay US$99.99 for a second-hand CD (I'm not). So I was very glad to see his 'Lux aeterna' on the track list for Stephen Layton and Trinity College Choir Cambridge's recent CD of late twentieth century American A Capella music. Fisssinger's career as a conductor and composer spanned forty-five years and was by no means confined to choral works of which he wrote one hundred and eighty three. All of his published music is certainly well worth listening to whether it's one of his orchestral, piano, or vocal compositions there's a lively and very distinctive musical imagination at work that attracted the attention of his fellow members of the American Choral Director’s Association of which he was a founder member. Perhaps that's why if you hear his work at all these days you tend to it hear it being such by All-State Choirs at regional and national ACDA conventions.
I've written about Ola Gjeilo's setting of 'Ubi Caritas' before (see:
Byrd’s Propers for the Mass of Corpus Christi were published in the first book of the Gradualia (London, 1605) they're beautiful music both in context of the Mass and in their own right. (I wrote about the Mass with propers for Corpus Christi here: 