Lennox Berkeley: Grace: SATB: Vocal Score

The poem I Sing Of A Maiden is one of the best known of the anonymous medieval hymns deceptive in its simplicity and full of grace and faith. The setting by Lennox Berkeley also has a deceptivesimplicity but reveals on repeated listenings or performances a harmonic integrity and subtlely that has made it a work that will continue to be performed and enjoyed for a long time to come. Lennox Berkeley wascomposing and having his works performed before he finished school then upon meeting Ravel was introduced to legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris with whom he studied. He mixed with the great artistic and musicalnames of prewar Paris before returning to Britain where he later met and lived with Benjamin Britten before the arrival of Peter Pears in Britten’s life. Berkeley was professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Musicand himself composed more than two hundred works of music many of them of enduring value.

For unaccompanied chorus SSAATTBB. Text: Edmund Spenser.The Hill Of The Graces was commissioned by the BBC and was first performed on 20th October 1975 as part of a concert given by the BBC singers to mark the 50thanniversary of their first unaccompanied recital.