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Track Name: Coventry Carol
Composer: Trad. arr. Richard Allain
Duration: 3:47
Nationality: British
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Richard is also one of ORA’s commissioned composers. His work, a reflection on Thomas Tallis’ Videte Miraculum, has received sensational reviews: “Richard Allain’s Videte miraculum takes the falling motif of Tallis’ opening and turns it into a spellbinding series of suspensions spread over the whole breadth of the choral texture, while the sopranos rhapsodise ethereally over the top.”
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Richard has been commissioned to write music for UK Stations BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4, and his work Ubi Caritas has been a core item on Classic FM for nearly a decade!
Richard Allain first set the ancient melody of the Coventry Carol not for voices, but for string quartet as part of a work for strings and narrator based on Dickens' Christmas Carol. The work, which featured several traditional Christmas tunes woven into the story, was written to support Great Ormond Street Hospital. It was premiered at London's South Bank with Richard Stilgoe as the narrator, and was later performed at Great Ormond Street itself before being recorded as a charity CD. It was only some years later, when the opportunity arose to write a choral arrangement, that Allain returned to the fragment that he'd set in Christmas Carol, and developed into a full Choral arrangement. Listen out for the rocking lullaby figure that runs throughout much of the music, and cries of innocent children in the high sopranos on the word 'slay'. Unlike more traditional settings, Allain exploits the drama of the text through the use of rich harmonies throughout.
Photo Credit: ORA