Songs for the Soul
Psalms, folk songs and spirituals
Thursday 13 June 2024, 19:30 - 21:30
St Botolph's Church [ map ]
Bishopsgate
London EC2M 3TL
Orlando Chamber Choir
Lucy Goddard, director
Orlando’s summer programme looks at psalms, folk songs and spirituals settings from Great Britain and America. At the heart of this programme are the five spirituals from Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of our Time, which was written in the aftermath of Kristallnacht as an expression of Tippett’s pacifism and support for oppressed people throughout the world. The spirituals serve a similar purpose in the piece to the chorales in Bach’s Passions: they are unifying moments of collectivity, as are the hymns, psalms and folksongs that appear in this programme. Tippett was inspired by composers such as Tallis and Purcell, whose moving psalm settings we will present. We will perform Undine Smith Moore’s spiritual Daniel, Daniel, Servant of the Lord, and folksong settings and partsongs by Holst, Elgar and Stanford to end this programme, which we hope will be a balm to the soul in troubled times.
