Veni Creator Spiritus

Released June 2025
www.adfontes.org.uk

Pentecost, the foundational moment of the creation of the Church, was an overpowering spectacle marked by mighty wind and tongues of fire, by which the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and set out upon their universal mission of evangelisation to all peoples. In this album, the Choir of Westminster Cathedral demonstrates the majesty and glory of this story anew through their performance of the psalms and chants appointed for the celebration of Vespers at the end of this day. The ancient texts of this feast are also adorned with choral settings by Palestrina, Tallis and Victoria, exemplifying the polyphony for which this choir is renowned, as well as through a contemporary composition by Gabriel Jackson. The album concludes with Herbert Howells’ imposing setting of Regina cæli and Maurice Duruflé’s thunderous organ work based on the famous Vespers hymn Veni Creator Spiritus.

Lumen Christi

Released March 2024
www.adfontes.org.uk

The first album under the choir’s current director, Simon Johnson, picking up where Vexilla Regis left off, and immerses the listener in the Cathedral’s own unique treasury of liturgical music, including compositions crafted by its former musicians, as well as repertoire at the heart of the choir’s work, represented here in polyphony by Victoria, Monteverdi and L’Héritier’s glorious Surrexit pastor bonus.

‘From the sombre opening Gregorian chant to Langlais’s dazzling Incantation pour un jour saint for organ at the close, this darkness-to-light sequence for Easter Vigil is packed with atmosphere.’ BBC Music Magazine

Vexilla Regis

Released February 2020
www.adfontes.org.uk

[The choir’s] ‘journey through Holy Week demonstrates, as you would expect, their unique skill in singing Gregorian chant, which comes from the discipline of daily performance and familiarity with the liturgy, combined with an aspiration towards musical perfection and beauty that is unerringly achieved. The same exquisite balance between musical and spiritual intention can be heard throughout the disc, but particularly in two motets by Byrd – Ne irascaris, Domine and Civitas sancti tui – where every phrase is mellifluously shaped, the choral lines are handed seamlessly from one voice part to another…’ Choir & Organ

Westminster Cathedral Choir’s first release on the Ad Fontes label, this disc was recorded in Buckfast Abbey in March/April 2019.

John Sheppard: Media Vita

Released August 2017 and reached No 2 in the UK Specialist Classical Chart

‘It’s quite possible that 2017 marks Sheppard’s 500th anniversary year. It’s hard to think of a better birthday present than this outstanding recording of three of his finest works’ Gramophone

‘This treble sound is, well, nothing less than “ethereal”; I can’t come up with a more appropriate word. Nor can I for the rest of the music on this unforgettable program. The Mass, which the notes aptly describe as a “masterpiece” whose plainchant model is unknown, deserves all the attention it can get—as does this recording, a masterpiece itself, the finest I’ve heard from this choir.’
Classics Today

Alonso Lobo: Lamentations

Released June 2016. Reached No5 in the UK Specialist Classical Chart

Focuses on the music of Guerrero and Lobo, including Lobo’s Lamentations and the Missa Maria Magdalene, based on Guerrero’s motet.

‘Nothing … will prepare listeners for the beauty of Lobo’s Lamentations. Alonso Lobo’s Lamentations represent Iberian polyphony at its most tender and scented. I got to know the piece via John Eliot Gardiner’s tight recording from almost a decade ago, this newcomer has all the expense of Westminster Cathedral itself, unfolding as if in vaulted paragraphs. Awesome!’ Gramophone

‘Westminster Cathedral Choir is at its best in large-scale drama of the Credo of the mass … a convincing introduction to a neglected composer’ BBC Music Magazine

William Byrd: The Three Masses

Released September 2014 and reached No 4 in the UK Specialist Classical Chart

Features Byrd’s Masses for three, four and five voices, and the motet Ave verum corpus.

‘Byrd’s double life, in public a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal in a newly Protestant England, in private a covert Catholic, directly shaped his music. Grand works such as the Great Service are among the glories of the English choral tradition. In contrast, the three Latin masses set here, long neglected, were for amateur, chamber performance in hidden Catholic communities. Westminster Cathedral Choir may sing them with more splendour and finesse than Byrd himself would have expected, yet the results are uplifting and moving’. The Observer

James MacMillan: Tenebrae Responseries

Released June 2013 and reached No 2 in the UK Specialist Classical Chart

Featuring music for brass, percussion, choir & organ commissioned for the visit of Pope Benedict to the UK.

‘The combination of Westminster Cathedral Choir and MacMillan is irresistible.  We are drawn immediately into their complicity by the jaw-dropping Tu es Petrus … its simultaneous celebratory character and clear rootedness in liturgical tradition make it far more than a one-off firework. Quite different are the extraordinary Tenebrae Responsories … the sound of the Westminster choristers adds something unique and the building’s resonance buoys up MacMillan’s arching lines and dazzling often bitingly dissonant choral pillars … the performances throughout are outstanding.’ Gramophone