Opera Today

You may never have heard of Lennox Berkeley. But his music was admired by many of the most notable composers of the mid-20th centuryóBritten and Poulenc were close personal friends, and he has a dedicated band of admirers today (there is a Lennox Berkeley Society). Yet, for one reason or another, Berkeley has never become a household name.

The ìXLî of the title of this recording is, as the program book notes, a double reference. First, read as Roman numerals, it points to the extraordinary number of voice parts in Thomas Tallisí famous ìSpem in aliumî and its modern analogue here, Antony Pittsí ìXL,î a forty-voice setting of text from Psalm 40.