A Hymn to the Virgin
Benjamin Britten
Recording
Finzi Singers, Paul Spicer
- Album
- Britten: Choral Edition, Vol. 1
- Year
- 1995
- Length
- Period
- 20th c. & modern
- Listen
Painting
Netherlandish (Bruges) Painter
Virgin and Child, ca. 1495–1500
The piece
Britten wrote it in 1930, at sixteen, and revised it in 1934. It sets an anonymous English lyric of about 1300 for unaccompanied double choir: the full choir sings the English lines and a semichorus or solo quartet answers each one in Latin.
The recording
Paul Spicer and the Finzi Singers recorded it at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, London, in October 1995 for the first volume of Chandos's Britten choral edition, released in 1997.