Your heavenly sounds.

[MickyD]

Religious or not, what pieces of music do you consider to be your idea of musical paradise? I am prompted to ask the question, having just discovered the wonderfully atmospheric Hyperion CD of Polyphony singing Bruckner choral music in Ely Cathedral. If there is a heaven, I hope it is like this!

[Lateralthinking1]

All of my favourite hymns were written by Van Morrison.

[antongould]

.........Bruckner choral music ..... If there is a heaven, I hope it is like this!

Could not agree more.

[vinteuil]

Tomás Luis de Victoria will do for me. And for starters - have you tried the wonderful 10 CD set recently out on archiv with Ensemble Plus Ultra / Michael Noone?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Heavenly" means the best earth has to offer for atheists like me. Slightly off-topic (already, I know!) - when I heard Rebecca Saunders' Stasis last November, it occured to me that the ending of the piece is rather as I hope dying will be: surrounded by strange, beautiful new sounds that captivate my conciousness until oblivion gently takes over.

[EdgeleyRob]

Mozart Great C Minor Mass.

[Vile Consort]

Howells's evening canticles "Collegium Regale". They have reduced me to a sobbing wreck in more than one cathedral!

[Nick Armstrong]

Tomás Luis de Victoria will do for me. And for starters - have you tried the wonderful 10 CD set recently out on archiv with Ensemble Plus Ultra / Michael Noone?

Victoria will do for me too (don't know that set). The Requiem sung by Tenebrae is up there...

So many others.

Cardoso by Herreweghe http://store.harmoniamundi.com/missa...agnificat.html

Tallis 'Puer Natus Est' by Stile Antico http://www.stileantico.co.uk/PuerNatusEst.php

Fauré Requiem by Accentus/Equilbey http://en.naive.fr/#/work/faure-requiem

Duruflé Requiem by King's Choir / Ledger http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fauré-Requie.../dp/B001I4NT8M

And in real life, sitting in the substalls in King's College Chapel, preferably of a winter's evening by candle-light, with the choir singing the Howells 'Gloucester' or 'St Pauls' Magnificat - that'll do it for me...

[jayne lee wilson]

Kevin Volans, White Man Sleeps, 4th dance.
Szymanowski, Stabat Mater.
J.S.Bach, Cantatas 21 & 147; Matthew Passion no.75, bass aria "Mache Dich, mein Herze, rein".
Beethoven Missa Solemnis - the Sanctus/Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis.

Roussel, 3rd movement, "Soir d'ete" from Symphony No.1, "Poeme de la Foret".
Bruckner Symphony No.4, 2nd Movement andante.
Bartok Piano Cto. No.3, 2nd movement, andante religioso.
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.3, 3rd movement, andante elegiaco.
Nielsen Symphony No.3, 2nd movement, andante pastorale.

Ives, Orchestral Set No.1, 3rd movement, "The Housatonic at Stockbridge".
Ives, Orchestral Set No.2, 3rd movement "From Hanover Square North, at the end of a tragic day, the voices of the people again
arose."

In a way it's what you always seek... as R.S.Thomas put it,

"that green
island, ringed with the rain's
bow, that we had found and would spend
the rest of our lives looking for."

(R.S.Thomas, "That Place")

[Beef Oven]

Bruckner Te Deum

[scottycelt]

When I seek 'heavenly sounds' I instinctively reach for a Bruckner symphony.

Too many special moments to list here, but my extra-special ones are the closing bars of the first movement of No 7, the slow movement of No 2, and that incomparable conclusion to the Fifth (more ecstatically 'heaven-storming' than 'heavenly', possibly).

Strangely enough, I don't encounter many such moments in the composer's formal religious works, and the Te Deum I find somewhat aggressive and almost militaristic-sounding.

Very strange ...

[amateur51]

"Heavenly" means the best earth has to offer for atheists like me. Slightly off-topic (already, I know!) - when I heard Rebecca Saunders' Stasis last November, it occured to me that the ending of the piece is rather as I hope dying will be: surrounded by strange, beautiful new sounds that captivate my conciousness until oblivion gently takes over.

Nice one, ferney - I'd vote for that too.

Don't know the piece tho'

[amateur51]

Kevin Volans, White Man Sleeps, 4th dance.
Szymanowski, Stabat Mater.
J.S.Bach, Cantatas 21 & 147; Matthew Passion no.75, bass aria "Mache Dich, mein Herze, rein".
Beethoven Missa Solemnis - the Sanctus/Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis.

Roussel, 3rd movement, "Soir d'ete" from Symphony No.1, "Poeme de la Foret".
Bruckner Symphony No.4, 2nd Movement andante.
Bartok Piano Cto. No.3, 2nd movement, andante religioso.
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.3, 3rd movement, andante elegiaco.
Nielsen Symphony No.3, 2nd movement, andante pastorale.

Ives, Orchestral Set No.1, 3rd movement, "The Housatonic at Stockbridge".
Ives, Orchestral Set No.2, 3rd movement "From Hanover Square North, at the end of a tragic day, the voices of the people again
arose."

In a way it's what you always seek... as R.S.Thomas put it,

"that green
island, ringed with the rain's
bow, that we had found and would spend
the rest of our lives looking for."

(R.S.Thomas, "That Place")

Lordy, jlw - that programme is ALL bleeding chunks

[Don Petter]

Essential Heaven?

[Richard Tarleton]

Religious or not, what pieces of music do you consider to be your idea of musical paradise? I am prompted to ask the question, having just discovered the wonderfully atmospheric Hyperion CD of Polyphony singing Bruckner choral music in Ely Cathedral. If there is a heaven, I hope it is like this!

Heavenly/paradisal music by its very nature is something unknown and unknowable to us. We get glimpses of what it might be like, courtesy of several of the above - Victoria, Bruckner....but my idea of heavenly music, utterly unknowable to us because it does not yet exist, is the final movements, played by a heavenly orchestra, of Schubert 8 and Bruckner 9 - not the approximations of them reconstructed from fragmentary evidence laudable as those attempts are.