The NMC Songbook

he NMC Songbook

‘This extraordinary project confirms the robust health and endlessly varied landscape of Britain’s new music. There is no other document anywhere that has given such a snapshot of an artistic community that, while comprised of a hundred different ways of expressing itself, is of one voice when it comes to creative energy.’ JOHN ADAMS

To mark its 20th Anniversary in 2009 NMC Recordings has commissioned the NMC Songbook. Nearly 100 composers, ranging from the country’s most highly regarded figures to the younger generation of emerging talents, have each written a song, loosely themed on ‘Britain’ and scored for single voice or duet and a range of accompanying instruments. Songs are interspersed with instrumental interludes from an arrangement of a Galliard by Thomas Morley, specially made for the Songbook by NMC’s Executive Producer, composer Colin Matthews. The songs have been set to text chosen by the composers and cover a vast array of subjects, from traditional poems by Blake and Byron through to a list of the Kings and Queens of England, extracts from a National Trust brochure, chants from the Leyton Orient terraces, a whisky recipe, and a colourful rant about our consumerist society. · The first recording to be made at the new state-of-the-art concert hall at Kings Place, London.

4-CD set with special packaging and a 60-page booklet.


Anderson, Julian: Lucretius
Bainbridge: Sonnet XVIII
Baker, R: English Lullaby
Barry, G: The Importance of Being Earnest
Basford: Hour-glass
Bauld: Titania's Song
Bawden: Vocalise - Loch Lurgainn in the Sunshine
Bedford, D: The Roman Centurion's Song
Bedford, L: Upon St George's Hill
Berkeley, M: Echo: hommage à Francis Poulenc
Bingham: She walks in beauty like the night
Birtwistle: This Silence before Light Arr. Colin Matthews
Blake, D: A Swallow
Bryars: Old Man and Sea
Burrell: Love Song (for yoga)
Butler, M: London
Carpenter, G: Interlude
Cashian: Daisy's Song
Casken: Night and Morning
Causton: English Encouragement of Art
Cole, J: tss-k-haa
Cresswell: A Recipe for Whisky
Crosse: Dirge from Cymbeline
Cutler: Bands
Davies, Maxwell: Labyrinth to Light
Davies, T: Destroying Beauty
Dench: An Hypallage
Dennehy: Swift's Epitaph
Dillon, J: Upon the cloudy night
Duddell: Cease Sorrows Now
Elias, B: Meet Me in the Green Glen
Finnissy: Outside Fort Tregantle
Foskett: Driving
Fox, C: The True Standard Advanced
Fujikura: Lake Side
Gilbert, A: Those Fenny Bells
Goehr: Ulysses' Admonition to Achilles
Grange: First Known When Lost
Grant, J: Know They Kings and Queens
Grime: Nobody Comes
Hall, E: A Simple Neo-Georgian Summer
Harrison, B: An Oblique
Harrison, S: Easter Zunday
Harvey, J: Ah! Sun-flower
Hayes, M: A Dictionary of London
Holloway, R: Go, lovely Rose
Holt, Simon: Raju Raghuvanshi is a Ghost
Horne: A curious thirsty fly
Howard, Emily: Wild Clematis in Winter
Hunt, J: An Aesthetic of Lines
Keeley: Because I breathe not love to everyone
Kindsdottir: haiku
Leach: Out of Town
LeFanu: The Bourne
Lloyd, Jonathan: The Greenwood's Lament
MacMillan: Mouth of the Dumb
MacRae: The Lif of this World
Marsh, R: Lullaby
Martin, P N: Blaze of Noon
Matthews, C: Galliard - Versions 1-13 & Complete Version based on a Galliard of Thomas Morley Out in the Dark
Matthews, D: Plover's Peak
Mayo: The Fitful Alternations of the Rain
McCabe: A Cat
Meredith: Fin like a Flower
Molitor: My favourite Sound
Montague: The Poison Tree
Moore, L: Music, thou Queen of Souls
Musgrave: A Winter's Morning
Northcott: Poet and Star
O'Regan: Darkness Visible
Panufnik, R: That Mighty Heart
Payne: Ghost Train
Phibbs: The Moon's Funeral
Philips, J: Blist's Hill
Poole, G: Heynonnynonny Smallprint
Powell, J: Stanzas 1814
Powers: Shining Plain
Roberts, J D: Spoken to a Bronze Head
Roxburgh: A Dangerous Crossing
Rushton: With my Whip
Sackman: Maiden in the moor
Sawer: The Source
Saxton: The beach in winter: Scratby (For Tess)
Simpson, J: Bees a-zwarmen
Skempton: Silence on Ullswater
Stoneham: 25
Swayne: I look into my glass
Turnage: Bellamy
Wallen: Tree
Watkins, H: Proud Maisie
Weir: Blackbirds and Thrushes
White, J: Houses and Gardens in the Heart of England
Wiegold: A Cause for Wonder
Williams, Roderick: A Coat
Wood, Hugh: Easter
Woolrich: Stendhal's Observation

Sopranos - Claire Booth, Ailish Tynan, Elizabeth Atherton
Mezzo-sopranos - Susan Bickley, Loré Lixenberg, Jean Rigby
Countertenors - James Bowman, Michael Chance, Andrew Watts
Tenors - Andrew Kennedy, Daniel Norman, Benjamin Hulett
Baritones - Stefan Loges, Roderick Williams, George Mosley, Richard Jackson, David Stout
Trebles - Andrew Swait, Sam Harris
Pianists - Iain Burnside, Andrew Ball, Andrew Plant, Andrew West, Michael Finnissy, Huw Watkins, Jonathan Powell
Lucy Wakeford harp; Jane Chapman harpsichord
Owen Gunnell percussion
Antonis Hatzinikolaou guitar