William Boyce: Ode for St Cecilia's Day

Boyce cleverly adapted his original London scores for the Dublin Society’s remarkable Dublin soloists by keeping most of the orchestral lines and rewriting as necessary the vocal lines. These Dublin soloists were the very same singers who would premiere Handel’s Messiah a year later.   They were all members of the two Cahedral Choirs in the city and included the remarkable high tenor, John Church, for whom Boyce rewrote several tenor numbers into a much higher tessitura.  As he re-wrote the score for the new singers, we can see the composer also make several subtle additions, such as adding strings and flutes in the recitatives, for stylistic and dramatic reasons.  Nevertheless, both versions have their distinct flavour and, in the case of the Lamentation, both have a distinctively powerful and dramatic beauty.  The Lamentation is a short work of extraordinary depth in which the composer uses the orchestra to vividly colour the tragic story as it unfolds.   This is intensely moving music, an extraordinary expression of grief contained in music of remarkable simplicity and assurance that leaves us to wonder at the maturity of this young composer, still only 24 years old.