Pentecost, the foundational moment of the creation of the Church, was an overpowering spectacle marked by mighty wind and tongues of fire, by which the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and set out upon their universal mission of evangelisation to all peoples. In this album, the Choir of Westminster Cathedral demonstrates the majesty and glory of this story anew through their performance of the psalms and chants appointed for the celebration of Vespers at the end of this day.

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi celebrates each year the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. On this album, the Choir of Buckfast Abbey presents a musical offering bearing witness to this great celebration through music rooted in the words and ancient chants of this feast. At the heart of this album is a Mass setting by Martin Baker, Missa O sacrum convivium!, newly commissioned for the Choir of Buckfast Abbey and here given its premier recording, which develops chant melodies into a passionate tour de force for choir and organ.

The organ stands at the spiritual heart of music heard in French Catholic liturgy. In this disc, Peter Stevens invites us to encounter two contrasting titans of this world, César Franck and Charles Tournemire, at one time teacher and pupil, who forged compositional idioms that continue to dominate the world of the organ and its use as an instrument capable of inflecting the spiritual sensibilities of French culture.

The Choir of Westminster Cathedral is the crowning jewel of Catholic church music and has been at the forefront of English sacred music since its foundation in 1901. This new disc draws us into the mystery of the Paschal Vigil, the very apex of the Church’s liturgical year, transporting us on a journey from darkness into light through a sequence of plainsong and polyphony.

Prizewinning performer Ben Bloor makes his debut recording on the iconic instrument with which he is so well acquainted: the Walker organ of the London Oratory, designed by Ralph Downes in 1954. The carefully constructed programme is one close to his heart: music centred around Gregorian chant, and takes in a liturgical year of plainsong-based works from 20th- and 21st-century France, Germany and England.

For his debut recording with Ad Fontes, Matthew Martin has brought together a recital showcasing two of the greatest organist-composers of twentieth century France: Maurice Duruflé and Jehan Alain. The lively voicing and colour of the Ruffatti organ of Buckfast Abbey provides the ideal vehicle for this programme, expertly captured in a building which lives and breathes the music.

Marking the hours of the day by praying the Angelus is a tradition dating back to the eleventh century. By the late nineteenth century, this devotional prayer was given musical life in Louis Vierne’s triptyque for voice and organ of the same name, whose first and last movements’ timeless quality is imbued with the repetition of the tolling Angelus bell hidden within the accompaniment…

Flor Peeters was one of the most significant Catholic composers of the twentieth century, whose deeply spiritual œuvre incorporates elements of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony. This recording celebrates his Latin choral music, a perfect assimilation of the motu proprio of Pope Pius X in 1903, which was unjustly neglected following the Second Vatican Council but is now sung in both Catholic…

The name Dom Sebastian Wolff is synonymous with the music of Buckfast Abbey. Born in Ireland in 1929, Fr Sebastian became a monk of Buckfast in 1948, and has crafted a considerable oeuvre of music including settings of the Mass, responsorial psalms for the complete three-year cycle, and a Requiem. However, it is perhaps the organ which provided his greatest compositional inspiration. In this, the first recording…

Peter Stevens plays works by three towering figures of the French organ world. Charles-Marie Widor’s Symphonie Romane is a radiant meditation on the Gregorian chants of Easter Sunday, and the Fantaisie-Choral from Tournemire’s L’Orgue Mystique is a deeply spiritual reflection on two of the best-known chants of Pentecost: Veni Sancte Spiritus and Veni Creator Spiritus. Two contrasting pieces by Marcel Dupré bookend the…

The Choir of Buckfast Abbey presents music for the Mass of Christmas Day. Weaving between the Gregorian chant propers are George Malcolm’s evocative Missa ad Præsepe (Mass at the Crib), and traditional carols and festive motets. The much-loved hymn Adeste fideles opens the Mass, progressing from the original plainsong melody through to a dramatic new arrangement of the penultimate verse, epitomising the joy of the Incarnation.