{"id":1571,"date":"2018-11-02T10:10:19","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T10:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2018-11-29T09:07:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T09:07:57","slug":"i-saw-eternity-the-other-night-by-timothy-day-chopins-piano-by-paul-kildea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"I Saw Eternity the Other Night by Timothy Day; Chopin\u2019s Piano by Paul Kildea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I Saw Eternity the Other Night: King\u2019s College, Cambridge and an English Singing Style <\/strong>by Timothy Day Allen Lane, \u00a325<\/p>\n

When a German critic (not Brahms, as often erroneously attributed) described England as \u2018Das Land ohne Music\u2019 (\u2018the land without music\u2019),\u2019 it wasn’t true then, and it is even less true when the legacy of such composers as Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten began to be known throughout the world. And certainly one area in which the UK has excelled is in an indigenous choral singing style, best exemplified by the nonpareil work of King\u2019s College, Cambridge. Timothy Day\u2019s fascinating study could not be more timely, as this year is the hundredth anniversary of the College\u2019s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. In a style which is fastidiously intelligent but always accessible, Day (for many years curator of Western art music in the British Library\u2019s Sound Archive) traces the King\u2019s College style from its Victorian origin (noted initially for its rough and ready approach, with the singers only having the barest essentials of musical knowledge), to the high level of professional endeavour that is the norm today. Day is also an authority on recorded music, and notes how the advent of the longplaying record in the 1950s and 1960s that disseminated the sound of the choir. Under the direction of the much-respected David Willcocks, the choir perfected the celebrated King\u2019s sound which — with its clarity and feeling — quickly established itself as the status quo for English choral singing. I Saw Eternity the Other Night<\/em> also addresses such issues as the background of the societies and communities that typified the approach described in the book \u2013 mostly, of course, middle-class, but stretching in appeal beyond what might be perceived as the natural fiefdom of such music. The author’s earlier books include A Century of Recorded Music<\/em> as well as a study of Hereford Choral Society, which makes him the natural chronicler of this subject. Such is the authority of the book that it\u2019s hard to imagine another study doing the kind of justice to the King\u2019s College sound that Day accords it here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chopin\u2019s Piano: A Journey through Romanticism <\/strong>by Paul Kildea Allen Lane, \u00a320<\/p>\n

When in November 1838 Chopin and Georges Sand took a trip to Majorca to escape from the rigours of the Parisian winter, they stayed in an abandoned monastery in the Palma mountains where the composer finished the creation of one of the key works of the piano repertoire: his 24 Preludes. This fascinating document \u2013 quite unlike anything that Chopin aficionados will have encountered before \u2013 looks at the history of the composer\u2019s masterpiece and the various instruments on which it has been played, along with its many gifted interpreters. Kildea\u2019s unorthodox book makes for a fascinating study, and the subtitle, \u2018A Journey through Romanticism\u2019, shows that by concentrating on one particular topic, the author has — inter alia — opened a window on to a whole musical field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Saw Eternity the Other Night: King\u2019s College, Cambridge and an English Singing Style by Timothy Day Allen Lane, \u00a325 When a German critic (not Brahms, as often erroneously attributed) described England as \u2018Das Land ohne Music\u2019 (\u2018the land without … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}