About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

On July 5, 1672, antiquarian and diarist Anthony à Wood noted in his diary, "Encaenia: excellent musick." The Encaenia was what seventeenth century Oxford called its annual graduation ceremony, which was held in a theater, and the music was "Descende caelo cincta sororibus," or The Oxford Ode, written by England's then-reigning monarch among composers, Matthew Locke. To get a second performance, however, it appears that Locke's "excellent" music had wait some 316 years until its appearance on this 1989 Hyperion recording, Matthew Locke: Anthems, Motets and Ceremonial Music. By all accounts, it appears to have been worth the wait, as this Ode is conjoined with a selection of Latin and Anglican church music by Locke, all of it comparatively little known and revealing Locke as a master of seventeenth century English sacred music for both Anglican and Catholic services.

Time has not allowed us to keep much of Locke's output in terms of church music, at least not in comparison to the magnitude of such music produced by Locke's successor, Henry Purcell. Matthew Locke: Anthems, Motets and Ceremonial Music contains much of the music that matters the most, including the luscious motet settings "Super flumina Babilonus" and "Audi, Domine, clamantes ad te," both of which may date from a period in which Locke and the Royal Family were located at Oxford, hiding out from the Plague raging in London. These pieces have a suitably penitential tone, but Locke's music in general has a tremendous amount of coloristic and instrumental variety, not to mention his totally unconventional ideas about what constituted "functional" harmony. Events move swiftly and keep listeners on their toes; the boy singers alternate with adult choir, adult chorus, strings, organ, and continuo in a rapid, almost stream-of-consciousness succession that defies any notion of predictability or established formal scheme. The text seems to be the point of departure, but the music is so complex that one seldom pays attention to the words, thankfully the enunciation in the New College Choir, Oxford, is of such excellence that all of the Anglican music can be understood with ease.

Although this disc involves soloists, chorus, organ, and the Parley of Instruments led by Peter Holman, all of them have to work as a team -- Locke's music demands it. Hyperion's recording, made at Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel in Hampstead, is excellent, and now that this disc has entered the Helios series and, therefore, has had its price taken down somewhat, there is no reason not to want this outstanding survey of the singular vocal music of Matthew Locke. Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

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