TWO CDs OF MUSIC BY CHRISTOPHER RATHBONE:

AMPHION PHI CD 503:
THIS ENDRIS NIGHT - Music of Christopher Rathbone Volume One
[1] Puer Nobis, op 71, Toccata for Organ (1998)
Christopher Rathbone, organ
[2] This Endris Night op 69, Carol for Choir and Organ (1998)
Choir of Leeds Parish Church, Jonathan Lilley, organ Directed by Simon Lindley
Sonatina for Organ op 64 (1998)
[3] Prelude [4] Andante [5] Scherzo [6] Passacaglia
Christopher Rathbone, organ
Sonata for cello and piano op 52 (1991)
[7] Introduction and Allegro [8] Adagio [9] Scherzo [10] Passacaglia and Epilogue
Tom Rathbone, cello Christopher Rathbone, piano
Stations of the Cross, Seventeen meditations for organ op 77 (1999)
[11] Introduction; [12] Jesus is condemned to death; [13] Jesus receives the cross;
[14] Jesus falls (Disposer supreme);
[15] Jesus meets his mother; [16] The cross is laid upon Simon of Cyrene;
[17] Veronica wipes the face of Jesus;
[18] Jesus falls (Take up thy cross); [19] Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem;
[20] Jesus falls (When I survey the wondrous cross);
[21] Jesus is stripped of his garments; [22] Jesus is nailed to the Cross; [23] Jesus dies;
[24] Jesus is taken down from the cross;
[25] Jesus is laid in the sepulchre; [26] Vigil - the harrowing of Hell;
[27] Resurrection - Easter Alleluyas and Epilogue.
Christopher Rathbone, organ.
[28] Nunc natus est altissimus op 72, Carol for Choir and Organ (1999)
Choir of Leeds Parish Church, Jonathan Lilley, organ Directed by Simon Lindley
[29] Fantasia on 'The Old Bath Road' (1976)
Christopher Rathbone, organ
[2] & [28] Rec. Leeds Parish Church 21/1/2000. [3]-[6] & [11]-[27] Rec. Leeds Parish Church, 21/2/2000.
[7]-[10] Rec.Oakwood House, Leeds, 25/6/1999.
[1] & [29] recorded at public recitals at Leeds Parish Church, February 2000

Notes on the music
Puer Nobis takes the carol 'Unto us a boy is born' and submits it to toccata treatment, fiery semiquaver chords with the melody in the pedal. The piece was composed for Peter Gunstone in 1998.
This Endris Night was composed for the Morley Music Society in September 1998 and first performed by them, with Geoffrey Dunn at the organ, at their Christmas concert at St. Andrew's Church, Morley in December 1998. It is a setting of words selected from the 15th century carol in which the Virgin Mother addresses her Son, asking why he, the King of Heaven, should be born in a stable. The original text was fifteen verses, here reduced to five. The carol is dedicated 'to the Morleyites'.
The Sonatina was composed in early 1998 and first performed at Mill Hill Chapel in central Leeds in May of that year. It is dedicated to the composer's wife Isobel. There are four movements. The Prelude has elements of March and Fanfare. This leads via an inconclusive chord into the melodious cantilena of the Andante, followed by a Scherzo which develops a tendency to rumba rhythm before the reprise and the gentle tracery of the coda. The final Passacaglia is based on a 12-note theme, which remains in the pedal throughout. The build-up is inexorable, until the fanfares of the Prelude are recalled before the final variation.
The cello sonata was written before and after a sabbatical term in the winter of 1990-91 during which the composer visited Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and both coasts of the USA on a round-the-world ticket. The first movement, after a short introduction, is rhythmical, impulsive and energetic, with an abrupt ending. The slow movement is a complete contrast, full of heartfelt melody from the cello which rises to a high B flat at the climax. Both the highest and lowest notes of the piano are heard in this movement. The scherzo is whimsical, even humorous, but almost violent at the height of the argument. The tentative opening owes something to the scherzo of Elgar's cello concerto. Finally another passacaglia. The theme, initially in the piano bass, then pizzicato on the cello, becomes the subject of a variety of treatments: a canon in which the parts are exact pitch inversions of each other but rhythmically as different as possible; a forceful variation in which small segments of the theme are separated by recurring repeated notes; a scurrying quasi-canonic variation; and finally an extended epilogue in which the cello sustains each note of the theme against thudding chords from the piano.
'The Stations of the Cross' comprise seventeen short pieces for organ, written in September and October 1999, and dedicated to Richard Wiggen, vicar of Meanwood. It was designed to be played between the meditations based on the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, as the congregation moves from one Station to the next. The pictures used for the 1999 service by Mr. Wiggen included, in addition to the traditional fourteen stations, extra ones for the vigil of Easter Saturday and the glory of Resurrection on Easter Day, so this suite includes appropriate music for the Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection followed by an extended epilogue to help the congregation to meditate on the pain and sorrow of Good Friday which is such an important part of the triumph of Easter. The three pieces depicting Jesus falling under the weight of the cross are miniature hymn-tune preludes, using fragments of three Passiontide hymns in the bass. The meditations were first performed complete in public in February 2000 as the final recital of the series including the composer's complete organ works to date.
Nunc Natus est Altissimus was requested by Simon Lindley in February 1999 for a festival to mark the dedication of the new Angel Screen in Leeds Parish Church. It was first performed during the Angelfest in September 1999 by the Parish Church Choir under Mr. Lindley's direction, with Jonathan Lilley, organ. The text is a 15th century poem by James Ryman, and describes the angels appearing to the shepherds on the first Christmas night. The words are macaronic - half English and half Latin.
The Fantasia on 'The Old Bath Road' is based on a school song written by John Ivimey in the thirties while Director of Music at Marlborough College. Two variations on the melody are enclosed by modernistic music, which provides an element of surprise when Ivimey's splendidly Elgarian melody appears on the tuba.

© Christopher Rathbone, 2000

PHI CD 504: THE TURNING YEAR - Music of Christopher Rathbone Volume 2

Scenes and Antiphons op.80 for Organ (2000)
[1] O Sapientia; [2] A Voice Crying in the Wilderness; [3] O Adonai;
[4] The Annunciation [5] O Radix Jesse [6] Shepherds go to the Stable
[7] O Clavis David [8] Angels [9] O Oriens [10] The Word made Flesh
[11] O Rex Gentium [12] Magi follow the Star [13] O Emmanuel
[14] King Herod and the Holy Innocents [15] The Peace of the Christ Child
(Pax Christi, Pax Mundi) [16] O Virgo Virginum (Deo Gratias)
The Turning Year op 45 Cantata for voices and piano (1983)
[17] Prologue : New Year (Spender)*** [18] Winter (Thomson)***
[19] Winter, a memory of Childhood (de la Mare)**
[20] Last week of February 1890 (Bridges)*
[21] But these things also are spring's (E. Thomas)* [22] April 1885 (Bridges)**
[23] May with its light behaving (W.H. Auden)* [24] A Country Song (Breton)*
[25] The Green Roads (E. Thomas)** [26] Poppies in July (Plath)*
[27] Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day? (Shakespeare)**
[28] August (from 'Autumn Journal' ­ MacNeice)*** [29] In September (Todd)***
[30] North Wind in October (Bridges)** [31] Autumn (Thomson)*
[32] Epilogue : Sonnet (Bridges)***
[33]-[43] City of God : Jazz Variants on the
Hymn tune 'Richmond' op. 91 for Organ (2002)
[33] Moderato [34] Vivace [35] Allegro moderato [36] Blues [37] Ragtime
[38] Charleston [39] Tango [40] Dixieland (Commodo) [41] Gently Swinging
[42] Adagio [43] Fast
*Victoria Sharp, soprano **Sally Daley, mezzo ***David Owen-Lewis, baritone, Christopher Rathbone, piano and organ
1-16, 33-43 Rec. Holy Trinity Church, Meanwood, Leeds 16.xii.02 17-32 Rec. Oakwood House, Leeds 04.ii.03
TOTAL PLAYING TIME : 77.52

Notes on the Music
The song cycle 'The Turning Year' was composed in 1983 in a deliberately straightforward style, with the aim of providing challenging material for classroom singing. It rather outgrew this purpose, but none of the songs has a very wide range: the average treble, soprano, mezzo, tenor or baritone should be able to manage any of the songs. The composer has performed many himself, accompanying his own singing ('May with its light' has defeated him so far!) Three songs exist with accompaniment for string trio and were performed alongside works for piano quartet at Marlborough Summer School. The entire work had to wait till 2001, when the present line-up of singers (all friends and colleagues of the composer who are current or past members of Opera North chorus) was persuaded to perform the work. A second performance by Sally Daley and the composer took place a couple of months later. The poems trace the seasons from New Year ('the centre of the turning year' as Stephen Spender's Prologue has it). They come from various periods (from Nicolas Breton 1545-1626 to Sylvia Plath 1932-63) with major contributions from Robert Bridges (1844-1930) Edward Thomas(1878-1917) and James Thomson (1700-48) whose 'Seasons' provided the framework for Haydn's wonderful late oratorio. There are four songs for each season, though some depict the transition from one season to another. Bridge's 'Last Week of February' looks forward to the coming Spring, while Edward Thomas's 'But these things also are Spring's is positively wintry. Several songs adopt a jazzy idiom ('May', 'A Country Song' 'Poppies'), some alternate between straight and swung passages (de la Mare's 'Winter', Thomson's 'Autumn'), while the Shakespeare sonnet is set as a popular ballad and 'August' as a Tango.
'Scenes and Antiphons' is a work for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany conceived perhaps as a poor man's equivalent of Messiaen's 'La Nativité du Seigneur'. The Scenes or Pictures include some which directly correspond to the equivalent Messiaen pieces (Shepherds, Angels, Magi) though these Shepherds are shown making their way to the stable, then adoring the Christ Child, while Messiaen has the adoration then the stumbling, excited return. The Rathbone Angels have a comparable but very different aerial dance, while the Magi deliberately use one of Messiaen's 'modes of limited transposition' as a tribute. There is St John's voice 'crying in the wilderness' and the Annunciation for Advent, and an 'anger' piece for Herod (Holy Innocents, Jan 1st). The two quiet pieces (The Word..., The Peace...) attempt to illustrate our sense of wonder at the miracle of the incarnation. Interspersed are settings of the plainsong melodies for the Advent Antiphons (the 'Great Os') which are in effect a set of variations, as the melody is very similar in each case. The eighth provides a grand if brief finale, a kind of 'Deo Gratias'. The work was written between February and August 2000 and first performed by Simon Lindley, the dedicatee, at Leeds Town Hall in November 2000.
The Jazz Variants on Richmond (City of God) were composed in August and September 2002 and had not received a public performance before this recording. Their first performance is due to be given at Leeds Parish Church on the Friday after Easter 2003 (25th April). Inspired by the success of two jazzy variations in the work for trumpet and organ (variations on 'Picardy' op 73, 1999) I wrote twelve contrasted variations on the well-known hymn tune by Thomas Haweis (1734-1820), but with no attempt to illustrate the words usually associated with the melody ('City of God, how broad and far outspread thy walls sublime'.) Some are just vaguely 'swung', others imitate Ragtime, the Charleston, Tango, a Blues and even a Dixieland Jazz Band. The last but one is an extended Adagio - a quasi - Karg-Elert chorale prelude, if you like, not really jazzy at all, while the final variation is a trumpet solo, fast and furious. One variation (intermezzo, var.6) was omitted, due to limitations of space.
© Christopher Rathbone, 2003

PHI CD 505: REQUIEM - The Music of Christopher Rathbone Volume 3

[1] - [9] Requiem op 92 (2003) [37.10]
[1] Requiem aeternam [2] Kyrie [3] Domine Jesu Christe [4] Sanctus/Benedictus
[5] Pie Jesu [6] Agnus Dei [7] Lux aeterna [8] Libera me, Domine [9] In paradisum

[10] - [22] Variations on 'Dundee' op 95 for organ (2003) [10.00]

[23] God is our hope and strength: motet for unaccompanied choir op 93 (2003) [3.57]

[24] - [26] Miniature Suite for organ op 39 (1981)
[24] Minute march [0.56] [25] Blue chorale [1.36] [26] Fanfare and epilogue [2.45]

[27] Paean for organ op 26 (1972) [2.45]

[28] - [38] Variations on a French Psalm-tune for organ op 96 (2003) [15.00]

[1]-[9] St Peters Singers, Simon Lindley, organ, conducted by Christopher Rathbone recorded at Leeds Parish Church 15/5/05
[23] St Peters Singers conducted by Christopher Rathbone recorded at
Leeds Parish Church 6/6/04
[10]-[22] & [24]-[38] Christopher Rathbone, solo organ recorded at Leeds Parish Church

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 75.00

Released 12/4/06

Acknowledgements are due to:
Martin Monkman, engineer, producer and editor.
St Peter's Singers and Simon Lindley who generously gave their services.
The Precentor and Churchwardens for permission to record in the Parish Church of St Peter at Leeds.
Isobel Rathbone for typing the booklet notes.

THE COMPOSER AND HIS MUSIC
The main work on this recording is the Requiem of 2003, along with a motet written during the same period, two sets of organ variations from later the same year, together with a Miniature Suite dating from twenty years earlier, and the Paean of 1972.
Christopher Rathbone was born in 1947 in Selsdon, Surrey. He began composing as a schoolboy at Whitgift School, South Croydon, and went up to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, with a choral exhibition, to read music. His supervisors included the late Alan Ridout for composition. Under Peter le Huray's direction he took a B A and then a Mus B in organ playing and composition. He added an FRCO to his qualifications whilst at Cambridge. He married the day after graduating in 1969, producing an anthem 'A New Commandment' for his colleagues in the St Catharine's Chapel choir to sing at the wedding. In 1970 he became the first assistant organist at Carlisle Cathedral where he served for three years under Andrew Seivewright before moving south to take up the post of Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. Much of his compositional activity was directed to music for school and house plays, culminating in a full-scale opera called 'Pierce's Cave'. This work, to a poetic libretto by Robert Avery has been followed by a recent cantata and a song cycle to words by the same hand. The jaunty Marlborough Mass and its recent successor the Meanwood Mass are regular parts of the repertoire at Meanwood. A song cycle, 'The Turning Year' dates from 1983 and was recorded on Volume 2 of Amphion's series of the music of Christopher Rathbone.
Chamber music, including a cello sonata (on Volume 1) and a violin sonata, a clarinet quintet, and trios for cello, clarinet and piano and flute, clarinet and piano, have been followed recently by a quartet for string trio and organ, op 100 (2004).
From 1990 - 1996 Christopher conducted annual productions of Swindon Opera; and from the 1970s until now he has taken part in the annual Summer School at Marlborough, but in 1996 he left Wiltshire and moved to Leeds, becoming a busy freelance composer, organist, continuo harpsichordist, piano accompanist and choir director. He has composed much music for the various choirs with which he works - anthems and a communion service setting for Meanwood, where he is organist and choirmaster, carols and arrangements of spirituals for the Morley Music Society, and the Requiem and two carols (2005) for the Bradford Chorale. He has also been commissioned to write music for other choirs: the cantata 'The World's a Stage' was written for the Otley Choral Society's Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2003; the motet 'God is our Hope and Strength' for the Bolton Chamber Choir; the carol 'Nunc natus est Altissimus' for the choir of Leeds Parish Church (on 'The Music of Christopher Rathbone Volume 1). He has composed much music for organ, some of which has been championed by Simon Lindley, the dedicatee of 'Scenes and Antiphons' op 80. Recent compositions include four sets of variations (on this recording and vol 2, as well as the newest, a half-hour set of variations on 'Angel Voices', op 102). Altogether there are 15 organ solos (of which 10 are of at least 10 minutes duration). There are also a number of concerted works with organ, notably the recent Quartet for string trio and organ op 100 (2004).
Christopher gives weekly recitals on the recently (2001) enlarged organ at Meanwood, and also gives up to 12 recitals per year at Leeds Parish Church, where recent month-long series have featured music by Hollins, Whitlock, Franck and Howells, Leighton, Bach and French Fantasies. He has also included his own complete organ music to date in these recitals, as well as programmes based on Symphonies, Paeans and Passacaglias.

THE ST PETER'S SINGERS
This chamber choir, attached to Leeds Parish Church (St-Peter-at-Leeds) was founded by Harry Fearnley, an LPC alto lay-clerk, in 1977, with Simon Lindley as Musical Director. With its sister ensemble, the St Peter's Chamber Orchestra, the Singers present regular performances of major works by Bach and Handel. Their repertoire is very wide and the Rathbone Requiem joins similar works by Anerio, Mozart, Durufle and Rutter,as well as other contemporary composers. Francis Jackson's Stabat Mater was composed especially for the choir's 20th anniversary in 1997.

SIMON LINDLEY
Simon has been Master of the Music at Leeds Parish Church since 1975,and is also Leeds City Organist, responsible for organising and frequently playing the immensely popular series of Monday lunchtime organ recitals at Leeds Town Hall. He is a frequent guest recitalist throughout the U K and beyond. He was President of the Royal College of Organists from 2000 to 2003 and of the Incorporated Association of Organists from 2003-5. Two years ago he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leeds Metropolitan University in recognition of his services to the musical life of the city. He is Musical Director of the Leeds College of Music Choral Society and the Halifax Overgate Hospice Choir, as well as the St Peter's Singers.

Notes on the Music
[1]-[9] The Requiem op 92 was composed in late 2002 (the Pie Jesu) and early 2003. The Pie Jesu was a deliberate attempt to write a "popular" setting in the Rutter/Lloyd Webber vein. The rest of the Requiem seemed to grow naturally out of this, expanding the choir to four voices from the 2-part trebles of the Pie Jesu. During and shortly after the composition of the work several friends of the composer's family died: John Hanson, a colleague in the LPC choir, Jenny Lebon, wife of a musical colleague at Marlborough, Bishop Frank Weston, friend and mentor, and Mac Coventry, an old friend from Swindon Opera. To them the work is dedicated, along with the composer's parents who died in May 1995 almost exactly ten years before the date of this recording.
The Requiem was modelled very closely in text and form on the framework of the Requiem (1948) by Maurice Durufle, though the actual melodic and harmonic material is original. The Requiem was first performed in April 2004 by the Bradford Chorale in the famous church at Saltaire (Shipley), with Stephen Power, organ conducted by the composer. The St Peter's Singers performed it (and the motet 'God is our hope and strength') in Leeds Parish Church with Simon Lindley, organ in a concert in 2004 called 'The Composers Conduct', shared with Dr Francis Jackson. In September 2004 the work had its first liturgical performance in Wakefield Cathedral (St Peter's Singers and Bradford Chorale, Stephen Power, organ), at a Mass in memory of the disaster of 11th September 2001. St Peter's Singers sang it again on All Souls Day, November 2nd, at a Eucharist in Leeds Parish Church; while in April 2005 a third choir, the Morley Music Society, performed the work interspersed with the Songs of Palestine op 97, written after a visit to Israel and the West Bank in November 2003 (Geoffrey Dunn organ). The score has been superbly type-set and published by Barry Jordan of Calverley.
[10]-[22] Variations on Dundee op 95 were composed over the summer of 2003. The melody is a Scottish Psalm-tune, published in the 1615 Scottish Psalter, and is regularly sung to John Morison's (1750-98) Epiphany hymn 'The race that long in darkness pined/ has seen a glorious light'; and Charles Wesley's 'Let saints on earth in concert sing/ with those whose work is done'. Unlike the variants on 'Richmond', (op 91), which appeared in Volume 2, this set is not confined to jazzy styles, though variation 1 (after the initial musing statement of the theme) variation 6 and variation 9 are jazzy in effect. All the first nine are very brief, no 2 linking the notes of the theme with running semiquavers, no 3 building chords from the notes of the tune by accumulation, no 4 declaiming the theme on the sesquialtera stop, no 5 distorting both melody and rhythm and harmonising each note of the theme richly, but staccato. No 7 again links the shape of the theme with semiquavers, but with some mysterious gaps in the tune. No 8 is a piquant trio, the melody in the right hand. After no 9, a jazz ballad, we hear a parody of Bach's 'Wachet auf' prelude, with the hymn tune (as in Bach) soloed out on a reed stop in the left hand (but omitting notes 2 and 3). Variation 11 is a slow statement of the melody over rich chords somewhat in the Messiaen style, and the final variation, marked 'Chorale con pedale precipitoso', is a show-case for the organist's feet, while the melody is harmonised somewhat in the style of Flor Peeters.
[23] God is our hope and strength op 93
This motet, a setting of verses from Psalm 46, was requested for the Bolton Chamber Choir by its director Peter Gunstone (a former organ scholar at Leeds Parish Church). The request came whilst work proceeded on the requiem in January 2003 and was completed in two days. It was performed during the spring at two concerts by the choir in Bolton Parish Church and West Houghton Parish Church, in a programme which included exclusively music by Britten and Rathbone. Besides "Rejoice in the Lamb" and "Hymn to St Cecilia" (plus the "Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria") by Britten, the concert included the anthems "God is gone up" op 74, and "The House of God" op 76, the latter written for the 150th anniversary of Meanwood Parish Church in 1999. The motet is scored for unaccompanied four-part choir, with divisions, and brief soprano and tenor solos taken from within the choir.

[24]-[26] Miniature Suite for organ op 39 (1981)
This work was commissioned by the Calne Festival for a recital by the late John Nourse at St Mary's Church, Calne (on the fine 4-manual organ which owed much of its splendour to the generosity of the famous Harris Sausage Company whose factory used to dominate Calne Town Centre). A five-minute work was requested, but the Festival received a brief three-movement suite - a tiny march featuring the trumpet stop, a gloomy chorale in the Phrygian mode (E minor with F naturals), and an exultant fanfare, some of whose figures are recalled in tranquillity in the serene epilogue.
[27] The Paean op 26 was written in Carlisle in 1972, and first performed at the wedding of the composer's sister, Scilla. It is a turbulent piece, full of contrasts, and ends quietly.
[28-38] Variations on a French Psalm-tune op 96 (2003)
These variations were composed during November and December of the same year, 2003, which saw the Requiem, motet and "Dundee" Variations come into being. They were completed on 1st January 2004! The melody this time is an ancient French Psalm-tune set to psalm 86 in the Paris psalter of 1542, and attributed there to Louis Bourgeois. The melody was used by Holst in his setting of Psalm 86 (the choir sings an early C17th metrical version to Bourgeois's haunting tune while the solo tenor sings the Coverdale translation in the Book of Common Prayer). Holst's piece dates from 1920, and meanwhile in 1905 his friend Vaughan Williams had included the tune in the English Hymnal, setting Bishop Heber's words "Virgin-born, we bow before thee/ Blessed was the womb that bore thee". Of the eleven variations the first three are for manuals only: 4-part harmony, a 2-part Bicinium and a swift variation on the swell (8 foot and 2 foot stops) with triplet arpeggios above and below the theme. No 4 is in 5/8, with a clarinet solo, in which every third bar is a free link to the next section of theme. Variations 5, 7 and 9 are trios, while No 6 is an adagio inspired by the music of Langlais, and No 8 is a minuet. After the jig-like third trio there is another Adagio, this time more in the style of Messiaen, while the finale is a brilliant toccata, not a million miles from the Final of Vierne's First Symphony. Both these variation sets were premiered during February 2004 at Leeds Parish Church, and the op 96 set has also been performed at Wakefield and Bradford Cathedrals, Huddersfield St Paul's, Edinburgh McEwen Hall and Marlborough College Chapel, among others. There is now a fourth set of variations (on "Angel Voices" op 102) completed in March 2005, which comes in at 28 minutes.

© Christopher Rathbone, 2006

CHRISTOPER RATHBONE AND HIS MUSIC
Christopher Rathbone was born in 1947 in Selsdon, Surrey. He began composing as a schoolboy at Whitgift School, South Croydon, and went up to St. Catharine's College, Cambridge to read music, with a choral exhibition in 1966. Under Peter le Huray's direction he took a BA and then a Mus B. in organ playing and composition, with tuition in Composition from Alan Ridout. His organ piece 'October Music' was part of his Mus B. composition portfolio and was later recorded for Wealden Records. He added an FRCO to his qualifications while at Cambridge; in 1969 he married, producing an anthem 'A New Commandment' to be sung at the wedding. The following year he became the first Assistant Organist at Carlisle Cathedral. In 1973 he moved south and took up the post of Organist and Assistant Director of Music at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. Many opportunities to write and perform music for plays and musicals culminated in the composition of a full-scale opera 'Pierce's Cave'. The opera to a poetic libretto by Robert Avery has recently been followed by a cantata and a song cycle to words by the same hand. The jaunty Marlborough Mass (1982) was regularly performed, and now appears frequently on the music list at Meanwood. The song cycle, or cantata, 'The Turning Year', follows the progression of the seasons round the year, setting a selection of sixteen poems from various periods. It was composed in 1983, but was never performed complete until May 2001, when the present artists gave the work for the Yorkshire Composers Festival.
In 1991 the cello sonata (included in the previous CD of Rathbone's music, see page 10 for details) led to a flurry of chamber music, including a violin sonata, two trios and a clarinet quintet.
During the last seven years at Marlborough, Christopher took much delight and satisfaction from directing the performances of Swindon Opera, including two Verdi's, The Magic Flute, Carmen and the Bartered Bride, but in 1996 he finally left Wiltshire and moved to north Leeds, becoming a busy freelance composer, organist and choir director. He has composed music for the various choirs with which he works (anthems for Meanwood Parish Church, where he is director of music; carols and arrangements of spirituals for Morley Music Society; and a Requiem for the Bradford Chorale). He has also been commissioned to write music for other choirs (a cantata 'The World's a Stage' for the Diamond Jubilee of Otley Choral Society; a motet for the Bolton Chamber Choir.) He has composed much music for organ, as well as piano and piano duet. He frequently plays recitals at Leeds Parish Church (including a month-long series of Friday lunchtime recitals in 2000 which included all his organ music up to that time) and plays weekly Saturday morning recitals at Meanwood. He was delighted by the enlargement of the organ at Meanwood, which is now a comprehensive three manual organ of 34 stops. His organ music has been taken up by Simon Lindley, who has performed 'The Stations of the Cross' and 'Scenes and Antiphons' at Leeds Town Hall, and gave the premiere of the 'Meanwood Suite' at the reopening recital on the organ at Meanwood in October 2001.

For further details about the music of Christopher Rathbone please contact:
Christopher Rathbone, Oakwood House,
32 Claremont Road, Leeds. LS6 4EB