2025 Concerts
Coming Up
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Saturday 7th June 2025, 2.30pm
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Sunday 8th June 2025, 7.30pm
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St Ambrose Church, Woodend
Ensemble Gombert & Accademia Arcadia, directed by John O’Donnell
With soloists Elspeth Bawden, Christopher Roache, Christopher Watson & Jeremy Kleeman
In Purcell’s day, St Cecilia, patron saint of music, was celebrated in London with a new work commissioned annually. Perhaps the greatest of all these works is Purcell’s 1692 setting of poetry by Nicholas Brady commencing Hail! Bright Cecilia, and featuring the superb alto solo ’Tis Nature’s Voice, sung in the original performance by Purcell himself.
Hail! Bright Cecilia (Z.328), also known as Ode to St. Cecilia, was composed by Henry Purcell to a text by the Irishman Nicholas Brady in 1692 in honour of the feast day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians.
Annual celebrations of this saint's feast day (22 November) began in 1683, organised by the Musical Society of London, a group of musicians and music lovers. Welcome to all the pleasures (Z.339) was written by Purcell in 1683 and he went on to write other Cecilian pieces of which Hail! Bright Cecilia remains the best known. The first performance on 22 September 1692 at Stationers' Hall was a great success, and received an encore.
