Barnaby Martin: Videntes Stellam: Chœur Mixte et Piano/Orgue

Philip Moore draws on a lifetime's experience of music for Anglican worship to present Bishop Ken's classic evening hymn in darker, more subjective hues than those of Tallis's Canon, to which it is usually sungcongregationally. In particular, a penitential note of strained serenity is struck in this nocturnal plea for repose of body and soul. The voices move quietly in comfortable thirds and sixths to the accompaniment of a questioningfive-note figure, a phrase which is rarely absent from the Organ part and which subtly questions their prayer for peace in its edgy harmonic and metric ambiguity.