Arcana @ 10… Musical moments: Christopher Rouse’s Organ Concerto

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Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty

As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.

David Gutman writes:

This is a peculiar time for music and politics but perhaps it’s been that way for longer than we think.

Christopher Rouse, my favourite ‘living composer’, has been dead since 2019 and is rarely played in the UK but we’re continuing to discover ‘new’ works by him online and on disc. Rouse began as an academic evangelist for rock music as it was understood in the 1970s but took his ‘classical’ calling seriously enough to take an unfashionable stand: “I’m not going to talk about rock ‘n’ roll any more. It doesn’t need my help. It’s not that I no longer like that music, but I feel the wagons have been circled, and I’m going to stick with my high-falutin’, élitist, dead white European male brethren and, if necessary, go down fighting.”

His Organ Concerto of 2014 appeared only last year in a Naxos collection of American Organ Concertos played by Paul Jacobs. The Rouse is the highlight, his usual wildly eclectic mix, only around 20-minutes in length and traditional in form but pugnacious in content, whether tonal or atonal. There is also drumming. Its central Lento, which hostile critics have already misheard as ‘sentimental’, is another of the composer’s heartfelt meditations on the nature and acceptance of grief. This matters as we age (this listener is 67 ½) while the finale’s return to consonance and affirmation despite noises off is not just for show. It moved me very much. Rouse wrote the piece ‘the old-fashioned way’ with pencil and paper, on a table.

You can listen to the whole piece on Tidal below – the Rouse is tracks 5 – 7:

Published post no.2,430 – Monday 3 February 2025

Arcana @ 10… Musical moments: Stanford Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in G

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Charles Villiers Stanford by William Orpen Image Credit: Trinity College, University of Cambridge

As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.

Celia Lister writes:

“My musical discovery from the last decade is Charles Villiers Stanford’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G.

As an oboist specialising in solo and baroque ensemble performance, I was until recently hugely ignorant of vast swathes of church music. That all changed when my children became old enough to be church choristers, a hobby which my husband (an ex-lay clerk) was keen for them to pursue. As a result, over the last few years, I have been exposed to a huge quantity of music which was new to me, ranging from the early Spanish polyphony of Tomás Luís de Victoria to the anthems of Howard Goodall. A firm favourite genre in our house is liturgical Victoriana – Stanford, Wesley, Parry, Wood and Elgar to name but a few. Choral evensong is a highlight of the calendar, and a one of the most wonderful new pieces was Stanford’s ‘Mag & Nunc’ in G.

My daughters are lucky to have inherited my husband’s dulcet tones rather than my mezzo squawking, and my eldest recently had the pleasure of singing the not inconsiderable soprano solo in this wonderful work, with her siblings and parents on sop 2, alto and tenor respectively. Hearing her voice soaring to the rafters was undeniably special, as a parent and as someone who loves music, and was the culmination of hours of church practises, services and RSCM study sessions. It makes the seemingly endless taxi service I perform to shuttle my daughters to and from innumerable rehearsals worth it.

So in a way, it’s not that Stanford in G is a single piece which I can’t do without; it’s that for me it represents the pinnacle of a genre of music which I’d hitherto largely ignored. Liturgical music – not only, but largely Victorian – now affords me great pleasure for both musical and personal reasons. Now all I need to do is wait a few more years until they are trained up for the Passions…

Published post no.2,429 – Sunday 2 February 2025

Roll out the bunting…Arcana is 10 years old today!

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From Ben Hogwood, Arcana editor:

If you’ll forgive the indulgence…Happy Birthday to us!

Arcana is 10 years old today, a chance to celebrate a decade of sharing great music with our readers. I would like to thank you all for your encouragement and interaction with the site, to thank our guest writers – principally Richard Whitehouse and John Earls – for their excellent contributions and insights in recent years, and to thank my wife Sam Hogwood for her unerring support. This is an enterprise that run outside of working hours, so it is inevitably a balancing act where time is concerned!

As part of our birthday celebrations, we have invited readers to contribute with their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years. I’m looking forward to sharing them with you over the next few days; there are some crackers! It’s not too late to share yours either, by contacting me on e-mail (editor@arcana.fm)

In the meantime, here is an appropriate piece of music to mark the occasion – while at the same time giving a clue to what is upcoming on Arcana in the coming months:

Image by Alexander Raths

Published post no.2,428 – Saturday 1 February 2025

On Record – The Veils: Asphodels (V2 Records)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Finn Andrews and his band The Veils are now seven albums into a career the singer describes as ‘disconcertingly long’. They have changed a good deal since their noughties vintage, now more open to acoustic elements. On their last album, string arranger Victoria Kelly was an influential presence.

For this album she makes another telling contribution, while Andrews plays on the piano that Nina Simone used in her last gig at the Royal Festival Hall.

What’s the music like?

These are some of Andrews’ most subtle compositions, but they are touching too. The lyrical material is strong, Andrews using his own inspiration but also leaning on Federico Garcia Lorca, Ted Hughes and Louis MacNiece for inspiration.

‘Asphodels’ are Ancient Greek flowers of the Underworld, and here they bloom colourfully. Mortal Wound is powerful, Andrews “alive with the colours of spring”, while Melancholy Moon defies its title with a cheery singalong. A Land Beyond travels down a similar road.

Does it all work?

Pretty much…though there is the odd pang of regret that The Veils don’t punch as heavily in the guitar area as they used to. No matter, for the quality of the songs and their emotional impact is what really matters here!

Is it recommended?

Yes. Finn Andrews’ songwriting odyssey remains a compelling one, and this set of songs shows his versatility, not to mention his strength as a communicator. A fine album.

For fans of… The National, Nick Cave, Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at The Veils’ website

Published post no.2,427 – Friday 31 January 2025

Jingle All The Way – new music for BBC Radio 2

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by Ben Hogwood

It has been a big week on UK radio.

If you’ve been near any social media platform in this country, you’ll have surely worked out why, as BBC Radio 2 is undergoing an overhaul on its daytime schedule. You will probably have been blasted by the massed choirs heralding the arrival of Scott Mills on breakfast…but I would argue that the real star of the show so far has been Trevor Nelson.

On the evidence of the shows I’ve heard so far, his transition from late evenings to afternoons has been a seamless one – helped by bringing the ’5 Seconds To Name’ feature quiz with him and bolstering it with the superb ‘Old School Run’.

Yet there is another factor to his early success – his new jingle. Trevor has been fortunate with jingles – he had a couple of crackers on the Rhythm Nation show – but this one, co-written and sung by Zoe Birkett, is a proper ‘diva moment’. Listen to the jingle and watch its recording here:

@mrs.zoe.birkett

📻ITS OUT !!! Waghhhhh!! 📻 Buzzing to have recorded the vocal jingle for Dj Trevor Nelson @DjSpoonyofficial new radio show on @BBC Radio 2 I had so much fun with the writer in the studio, I was given a brief 2 days before recording but when I got into the booth the writer let me go loose vocally to pop my own spin on it , they were all so supportive and loved what I gave , and I can’t wait to tune in tonight to hear Spoonys jingle as hearing them LIVE on radio is there first time I’ve heard them ! Did anyone hear it ? ☺️ #singer #radio #bbcradio2 #fy

♬ original sound – Zoe Birkett

From personal experience, writing such a short piece of music is anything but easy. The Darkness singer Justin Hawkins, no less, started out in music writing adverts for IKEA and Yahoo. He and his contemporaries deserve so much more credit than they get, for everyone recognises the old start-up for Microsoft Windows, the double, slightly stuttered chord that brings the start of another Netflix show, or even the cosmic flash with which ITVX is introduced.

Trevor’s jingle has a lot going on. Birkett – who finished fourth in the original Pop Idol competition – has gone for broke with a killer vocal, her convictions backed up by some spicy harmonies and a production suggesting big room funk from the 1980s, with an especially big cadence that brings the likes of Parliament to mind.

Birkett hasn’t stopped there either, delivering a similarly classy jingle for DJ Spoony’s Good Groove show. Proof that the art of the jingle is alive and kicking – those writers and performers deserve a good deal of credit!