Barnaby Martin: Videntes Stellam: SATB: Vocal Score

Philip Moore draws on a lifetime's experience of music for Anglican worship to present Bishop Ken's classic evening hymn in darker more subjective hues than those of Tallis's Canon to which it is usually sung congregationally. In particular a penitential note of strained serenity is struck in this nocturnal plea for repose of body and soul. The voices move quietly in comfortable thirds and sixths to the accompaniment of a questioning five-note figure a phrase which is rarely absent from the Organ part and which subtly questions their prayer for peace in its edgy harmonic and metric ambiguity.