Grier: lit by holy fire

Stephen Cleobury and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge present a live world premiere recording of Francis Grier’s lit by holy fire. 

A vespers service that is, in the composer’s words, ‘less traditional than most’, lit by holy fire is set for unaccompanied choir and takes seven poems by the British writer Elizabeth Cook as its base. The scoring and musical atmosphere follows the emotional sequence of Cook’s poems, leading from darkness to light, from music often of brooding intensity and simplicity towards more complex and more animated forms and tonal pictures.