AS PART of the centenary celebrations of composer Stephen Dodgson, who died in 2013, the Outcry Ensemble, conducted by James Henshaw, performed his Te Deum with Exhortations from the Martyrs in a concert “Music for a Great City — A Feast Fit for a City” in St John’s, Smith Square, in London, last month.
The work is unusual in combining the traditional Latin text with extracts from Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”: four touching prayers and entreaties from Tudor martyrs written just before their deaths, sung here by the Pegasus Choir and English Voices.
The work bears many of Dodgson’s compositional hallmarks: fretful harmonies and rhythms switch suddenly to boisterous, playful moments. He juxtaposes strings, woodwind, and trumpets as distinct families, and plays with instrumental textures. He also, unusually, expands the orchestral sound palette by introducing the organ. What renders the work particularly attractive are the changing moods, and the quality of the word setting.
Like Charpentier before him, Dodgson starts with dramatic trumpet and timpani, and an opening choir full-throatedly repeating “Laudamus!”, which subsides via exquisitely rendered solos for flute, oboe, and cello, into George Marsh’s 1555 exhortation to listen to God’s word, poignantly sung by the baritone Nicholas Mogg against the open fifths of the women’s voices over a double-bass pedal, leading to a solemn chorus of “Te gloriosus”.
The second part began with a triumphant “Tu Rex gloriae”, from choir and solo trumpet, before the soprano Rebecca Hardwick duetted sweetly with violin over soft chorus in Anne Askew’s (1546) affirmation of forgiveness, and the chorus begged with uncertain D-major/F-major clashes to be numbered with the saints in glory.
In the work’s climax, the bass and tenor Jonah Halton movingly juxtaposed Bishop John Hooper’s (1555) exhortation for steadfastness of faith under trial with the choir’s “Salvum fac populum tuum”. As the mood shifts to darkness, the chorus sings its only English text in sotto voce unison. A chaotic woodwind and trumpet passage then heralds their joyous “Per singulos dies”, before they and the timpani subside into funereal repeated Ds.
Part 3 begins with a fluttering flute. The soloists take up the Latin text for the first time, choir, soprano, and tenor echoing each other with “Miserere nostri, Domine”. The bass soloist’s solemn rendition of Thomas Bilney’s (1531) text likening death to a sailor setting out, is echoed in the chorus’s last prolonged “In te Domine speravi”.
The concert finished with Walton’s mighty Belshazzar’s Feast, in which the two choirs backed the bass soloist with ringing clarity and fine dramatic sense. We really felt the terror of the writing on the wall.