Robert Hugill:Requiem, 'For Butti - In memoriam Robert Buttimore'
performed by FifteenB, conductor Paul Ayres, with Carl Jackson,organ.
Robert Hugill's Requiem is from its very opening firmly anchored in the glorious plyphony of the English Renaissance: lines derived from plainsong, the modal flavouring of passages in conjunct motion, and the odd spicy false relation combine to mean that it would not be unreasonable to place this new work in the tradition of Vaughan Williams.
To RVW, the music of the English Golden Age had as much power to move 20th century audiences as it had when it was written some 450 years ago, and at the premiere of his Requiem Hugill emphasises his owbn indebtedness to 16th Century English composers by interspersing the movements with organ works by Tallis, Byrd, Taverner and their contemporaries.
Hugill's music is also, however, highly individual, combining austerity with a rich variety of expression.
The forthright Christe Eleison, for example contrasts with the sublime and comforting Hosanna and this in turn suddenly brings to mind no lesser work than Gabriel Faure's own Requiem.
While the Dies Irae opens with the famous plainchant used by Berlioz, Rachmaninov and all the rest, however, Hugill's extended setting remins firmly indebted to Renaissance models as dense, agitate passages of polyphony wreath around cantus firmus-like long-note ideas.
From a practical point of view, good choirs will find it eminently singable. At its premiere at St. Mary's, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, on 22nd June 2000 it was performed very persuasively by FifteenB and special mention
must be made of soprano soloists, Felicity Ford and Rowena Wells, whose ethereal singing was particularly appropriate at the most poignant moments of the text.
John Humphries, British Music Society Newsletter
Close Window