The Choir of New College Oxford, composed of adult singers and boy trebles, is one of the leading choral ensembles in the world, celebrated for its distinctive and stylish performance of music from five centuries. You can hear the choir in choral services live in New College Chapel, Oxford, and via webcasts, on concert tours and on its 100+ recordings. The choir is directed by Robert Quinney.
More About UsThe Choir of New College Oxford, composed of adult singers and boy trebles, is one of the leading choral ensembles in the world, celebrated for its distinctive and stylish performance of music from five centuries. You can hear the choir in choral services live in New College Chapel, Oxford, and via webcasts, on concert tours and on its 100+ recordings. The choir is directed by Robert Quinney.
More About UsSunday 17 March at 5.00pm. New College Choir with Instruments of Time & Truth, directed by Robert Quinney. Waiting list for tickets.
Find out moreThe choir is recruiting for two new lay clerks to start in October 2024: 1 tenor and 1 bass. This is an excellent opportunity for singers building a professional portfolio career.
Find out moreChoral services for Hilary Term have now finished. The first Evensong of Trinity Term will be on Friday 19 April at 6.15pm. Full details of the music list will be posted nearer the start of term.
Find out moreThursdays at 1.15pm: live or live-streamed. This term's organ recital series starts on 18 January. We welcome visitors from Coventry, Leipzig, Westminster Abbey, & St Paul's Cathedral.
Find out moreNew College: Commissions & Premieres is out now from Linn Records. The new disc celebrates the choir's commitment to new music over the last century.
Find out moreRobert Quinney discusses Frescobaldi on Radio 3's This Week's Composer with presenter Donald McLeod.
Find out moreTwo virtuoso performers, Robert Quinney & Donal McCann, play Byrd's dazzling keyboard music on all four instruments in chapel
Find out moreRelease Date:
This disc situates Parry’s music in its European context. Parry was a social and political liberal, and crucially—like all the leading British musicians of his time—his horizons extended beyond the island of his birth. His late set of six motets, Songs of Farewell, are among his greatest achievements in any musical genre, demonstrating his capacity for deeply affecting introspection. In this recording, they are prefaced by another sextet: the pithy Sechs Sprüche by Mendelssohn, which make clear the debt Parry owed to his continental forebears and contemporaries.
Moreover, this recording presents, for the first time, an early version of ‘There is an old belief’, edited by Robert Quinney from the autograph manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library and a printed proof copy. The compositional history of the motet is unclear, but the evidence suggests Parry vacillated between two strikingly different versions of the section ‘serene in changeless prime’ until shortly before publication.