CROFT. VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL WORKS. Honor Sheppard (soprano), Marjorie Lavers (violin), Michael Dobson (oboe), Jane Ryan (viola da gamba) and Robert Elliot (harpsichord). Oryx Q ORYX730 0 ORYX730 (12 in., 30s. plus 5s. 6d. PT).

A Hymn on Divine Musick. Harpsichord Suite in C minor. Harpsichord Suite in E minor. Sonata in G minor for violin and continuo. Sonata in B minor for violin and continuo. Harpsichord Suite in E flat major. Harpsichord Suite in C minor. Cantata: By Purling Streams.

William Croft (1678-1727) is remembered today as the probable composer of the tune for 0 God our Help in Ages past (and he may just possibly have written the one for 0 worship the King) and as the certain composer of some deeply moving music still used on state occasions for the Burial Service. In 1708 he succeeded Blow as organist at Westminster Abbey, and by this time he was giving all his energies to church music. In 1724 he published 30 anthems full of Solid professional counterpoint, and some of these are still sung in cathedrals today. One or two have been recorded as well, but no one till now has paid any real attention to the very different music Croft wrote as a young man. He must have been precocious. In 1699, when he was only 21, he published his three violin sonatas and a few harpsichord suites in A Choice Collection of Ayres for the Harpsichord or Spinett, an anthology of music by various composers. A year or two later he published further suites in a similar collection called The Harpsichord Master, as also some theatre songs, but it seems he was not very highly thought of at this time for many of his suites survive only in two manuscript collections now in the British Museum. These and the published collections were drawn on about 1920 by Fuller-Maitland who edited 12 suites for Chesters, inventing numbers for them and misinterpreting many of the ornaments. The suites recorded on this record are Nos. 1, 2, 8 and 12 in the Chester edition, but the original sources have been preferred for the text; the first two come from the Choice Collection and the others from a British Museum manuscript.

Like Purcell, Croft was seldom at his best in his harpsichord music. The suites on Side 2 in E flat and C minor both have rather dull movements, and Robert Elliot does not help by trying to compensate in the minuet of the former with an odd-sounding lute stop and in the Aire of the latter (actually a good movement) with too much 16-foot tone. Here and there a livelier tempo might have helped. Mr Elliot has taken a good deal of trouble over style and though some may find the double-dotting excessive in two of the `Corants', the playing is in general scholarly and effective. The C minor Suite on Side 1 is perhaps the best of the four recorded here, being good all through.

Nevertheless the two violin sonatas are better still. Indeed these works are real discoveries which deserve to be widely known. Croft has sometimes been criticised for an inability to write quick music, but the Allegro in the B minor Sonata is splendid, and it is remarkable that he should have written so effectively in the Italian style before the Corelli sonatas can have been available in this country. Each of these Croft sonatas is in four movements, the first and third being slow and the last a Gigue. The third movement of the G minor, which follows the Allegro without a break, may be very short, but in a few bars it contrives to be deeply expressive and moving. The playing does full justice to this delightful music.

I also much enjoyed the two vocal items. A Hymn on Divine Musick was published in 1700 as a supplement to the second volume of Harmonia Sacra, and the slower section seems to me of Purcellian stature. By Purling Streams (1702) has an obbligato part for oboe or recorder, and is a four-section cantata. Maurice Bevan might have mentioned in his scholarly and interesting sleeve-note that there is a good modern edition edited by Fritz Spiegl and published by Schott under the alternative title Celladon. Honor Sheppard sings both the above with pure tone, and the accompanments are stylishly managed.

This interesting and out-of-the-way disc is well balanced and recorded except that there are brief touches of extraneous crackle on my copy, more especially on Side 1. (I do not of course refer to static; the crackles recur at the same point at every playing.) They did little to hinder my pleasure. R.F.