Parry and his pupils

1 July, 2018 - 19:30 Exeter College Chapel

Timothy Wakerell, organist

2018 marks the centenary of the death of Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, who the composer Stanford considered the finest English composer since Henry Purcell. Whether or not others share this view, his influence on later composers is widely recognised, and it is this that the Cherwell Singers celebrate in our summer concert. Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Howells, Bridge and Wood are just some of the composers who benefited from Parry’s teaching, and each of them have a work featured in our programme alongside several works by Parry himself. From his large scale setting of Milton’s poem “Blest Pair of Sirens”, which established him as the leading English choral composer of the day, to a couple of the reflective “Songs of farewell” written at the end of his life, we present a glimpse of his sacred choral writing from the grand to the small scale. Performed in the suitably Victorian chapel of the college where he was an undergraduate between 1867-70, this concert also celebrates Parry’s close links with Oxford, where he returned to become Heather Professor of Music from 1900-1908 succeeding John Stainer.

Directed by: James Brown