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Holst Singers
Directed by Stephen Layton
James Vivian (organ)

This pioneering new recording - a showcase for the virtuoso talents of the Holst Singers - presents all fifteen of Pierre Villette's unaccompanied choral works and his two motets for choir and organ.  Villette might best be regarded as the stylistic bridge between Debussy and Faure on the one hand and Poulenc and Messiaen on the other.  Villette was born into a musical family in 1926.  He studied with Marcel Dupre before attending the Paris Conservatoire.  Pierre Boulez was a fellow student but their careers followed very different paths.  In 1957, Villette was appointed director of the Conservatoire in Besancon, the capital of the French-Comte region.  He was dogged by ill health and had a lung removed while still in his twenties.  His health forced him to move from mountainous Besancon to a warmer climate.  He becamse director of the Academy at Aix en Provence in 1967.  He held this position until he retired in 1987, and he continued to live in Provence until his death in 1998.  A world rich in the familiarities of Gregorian chant infuses much of his choral output, while ambitious chromaticisms and textural gestures create effects which are at once spiritual and sensuous.  This is the music of private prayer set in the context of an incense-filled Gothic Uber-Cathedral.  Under their long-standing director of music Stephen Layton, the Holst Singers have established themselves firmly at the top of England's league of chamber choirs.  This CD can only enhance their justly deserved reputation.

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• 1962 Tridentine Liturgy > Catholic Sacred Music > Sacred Music

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