This is the record of John
Orlando Gibbons
Recording
Charles Daniels (tenor), Fretwork, Magdalena Consort, Peter Harvey
- Album
- In Chains of Gold: The English Pre-Restoration Verse Anthem, Vol. 1
- Year
- 2017
- Length
- Period
- Renaissance polyphony
- Listen
Painting
Piero di Cosimo (Piero di Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio)
The Young Saint John the Baptist, ca. 1480–82
The piece
A verse anthem on John 1:19–23 in the Geneva Bible text, in three sections where a solo voice sings each verse and the full choir answers. Gibbons wrote it for William Laud, president of St John's College, Oxford, from 1611 to 1621, and scored it for organ or for viols.
The recording
Fretwork and the Magdalena Consort under Peter Harvey perform it with viols, with Charles Daniels as soloist, on the first complete recording of Gibbons's consort anthems (Signum, 2017). BBC Music Magazine gave the disc five stars.
Other recordings
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge under David Willcocks (Decca, 1958) sings it with organ, and Winchester Cathedral Choir under David Hill with Robin Blaze recorded it for Hyperion in 2007.