HAVPCD346 – AVE VIRGO SANCTISSIMA
A Garland for Our Lady

The most familiar texts recorded here – the Ave Maria, Ave Regina caelorum, Regina caeli, Salve Regina and Mary’s own canticle, the Magnificat – have for centuries played a central part in traditional Catholic devotional life. Through them countless faithful have embraced Mary, not just as the mother of their Redeemer, but also as their own mother, and through her have sought to draw closer to her Son.

Many of the other texts here are entirely different in mood. They seek to express feelings not so much of filial devotion but of ecstatic rapture addressed to that most extraordinary product of God’s creation – the human mother of God-made-Man – by drawing on poetic images of creation, terrestrial and extraterrestrial: of birds, trees, rivers, flowers and perfume, of the heavens, light, stars, sun and moon.

The highly imaginative, sensual language of these texts, many of them embedded in the liturgy, is mainly drawn directly, or adapted, from the highly-charged Song of Songs and similar Old Testament sources. Offering wonderful possibilities for rich colour and passionate expression, they were understandably popular with composers from the medieval period onwards, and most especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Choir of the London Oratory is England’s senior professional Catholic choir, serving the liturgical celebrations of the Roman Rite for which the London Oratory has been famous ever since it moved to its present Brompton Road site in 1854. Previous distinguished directors have included Henry Washington, John Hoban and Andrew Carwood.

Singing at Solemn Mass and Vespers on all the Sundays and great feasts of the year, as well as on many other important occasions, chief amongst them the solemn liturgies of Holy Week and Easter, the Choir is noted for its communicative power and stylish deployment of a wide range of vocal colour in a huge working repertoire, including more than 100 settings of the Mass and 500 motets. Broadcasts and CD recordings, especially in recent years for Aid to the Church in Need on the Herald label, have led it to be acclaimed as ‘among the finest mixed voice choirs in the country’ (Choir and Organ) and ‘a Rolls-Royce of its type’ (Church Music Quarterly).

HAVPCD345 – Catholic Collection II

I am delighted to support this wonderful recording of music by the Choirs of Leeds Cathedral, under the Director of Music, Benjamin Saunders. Below the altar in our Cathedral, we have the relics of two of the English Martyrs, who gave their lives for the Faith during the 16th Century. We are closely linked to the suffering Church through these two witnesses to the Truth, Blessed Peter Snow and Blessed Ralph Grimston, who were martyred in Yorkshire during penal times. Therefore it is a great joy that this recording will help the Catholic Charity, Aid to the Church in Need, in their work for those who are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. For in so many parts of the world today people are in need of the consoling love of Christ and the Resurrection hope that He offers us. I pray that this recording – which is a celebration of God’s love – will inspire all listeners in faith, hope and charity. May Our Lady, St Anne and all the martyrs encourage and strengthen us all.

HAVPCD341 – Pray the Rosary with Cardinal Newman

According to tradition, the Rosary devotion in its entirety was revealed to St Dominic by Our Lady herself. Sceptics have other theories, but it is certain that the cycle of 150 prayers, corresponding to the 150 Psalms, was promoted for the use of the laity by the late Middle Ages. The pattern of three sets of five meditations, reflecting the birth, death and resurrection of Christ as seen through the eyes of His Mother, is certainly very old, although it took time for the exact choice of meditations to become fixed, as it has remained for the last five hundred years. The essential facts of our Redemption were summarised in just those three moments, birth, death and resurrection (as they are in the writings of St Paul). The moods of joy,sorrow and glory are also the classic moods through which a life of prayer develops, as described in many spiritual writers. After the joy of first conversion comes the sorrow of the struggle with the various forms of difficulty in prayer, until the break-through into glory. Yet all three moods can co-exist in one person, as seen so dramatically in the life of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Radiating joy to those around her,she experienced deep sorrow in her solidarity with suffering humanity, at times unconscious of the heart of glory within her.