9:52am Friday 28th August 2009
By Martin Dreyer
A GOODLY host of costumed brethren from the Sealed Knot, their babes-in-arms bonneted like their womenfolk, mixed freely with the common people at Tuesday’s commemoration of the English Civil War.
Musketed yeomanry stood guard at the South Door.
Music for Troubled Times was part of a festival running in York until Monday. More specifically, it recalled a service held by the Royalists in York Minster during the Siege of York, in the 1644 run-up to the Battle of Marston Moor.
Cannon fire then ricocheted round the building – mercifully an exercise not repeated on this occasion.
The evening’s other focus was the warm relationship between Charles I and his Catholic queen, Henrietta-Maria, heard through their touching letters.
The conflict eventually forced their final separation, as she returned to France for safety.
Much of the music, cleverly intertwined with the readings, was elegiac in tone, with the occasional warlike burst.
Every English composer worth his salt from the second half of the 17th century got a look-in.
William Lawes, the king’s own composer, brought us all to our feet for All People That on Earth Do Dwell, a setting with soloists and congregation, and a metrical psalm.
John Hutchinson, Minster organist at the start of the war, was well represented by a lively anthem.
But Purcell’s exquisite Hear My Prayer and Blow’s heartrending Salvator Mundi revealed English music of the era at its true peak.
The Ebors, under Paul Gameson, sang throughout with immense conviction.
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