Musgrave's Madrigals were written when she was still in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger and they were first performed by the Saltire Singers at St Andrew's, Scotland in 1953. Like most of her music, they are clearly and precisely imagined—she knows exactly what she wants to do, although it would be unreasonable at this stage to expect much individuality. The poems are by the sixteenth-century poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, diplomat, lover of Anne Boleyn and friend of Cromwell, whose downfall he shared. Musgrave's response, with some suggestion of the madrigalian period, is always delightfully apt. The Florilegium Chamber Choir sounds well, but the second madrigal, Tanglid I was in Love's snare, loses its desolation through being faster than the marked tempo.
Musgrave's Rorate coeli, commissioned by the National Federation of Music Societies in 1973, is far more resourceful. The text, from the fifteenth-century Scottish poet and priest William Dunbar, is a skilful interweaving of two poems simultaneously: one about the Nativity, the other on the Resurrection. Rorate coeli opens with a rich sequence of chords (founded on a recurring dominant seventh) which is exchanged between a group of soloists and the full choir. The ten-minute piece is an ingenious study in unaccompanied choral textures, including clusters and some ad lib solos. The plainsong Dies irae makes an appearance, freely superimposed and the 'celestial fowls' twitter. The performance is impressive, welding many different demands into a single continuity, but the ending seems abrupt.
Judith Zaimont has specialized in choral music—several works have been written for the Gregg Smith Singers, who have recorded them (not generally available in the UK). The Serenade: To Music uses W. H. Auden's poem, The Composer, and adds some phrases of her own. Before criticizing that, one should realize that Auden was apt to invite composers to make changes in the text if they wished. But the effect of the additions is to extend the poem beyond its natural length, at least for me. Zaimont's longer work, Parable (A Tale of Abram and Isaac), mixes part of a medieval mystery play with Wilfred Owen's poem, Parable of the Old Man and the Young, followed by the Mourner's Kaddish. The accompaniment is for organ and there are some cruel high notes for sopranos admirably delivered. Even more, the whole scheme seems over-extended (or am I recalling Britten's Canticle II on the same subject?) and too reliant on a line-by-line response to imagery.'