ABSTRACT
Symphony No. 9, Sinfonia Sacra, was premiered on 20 February 1973 by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Sir Charles Groves; the soloists were Norma Procter, Benjamin Luxon, and Miriam Bowen. It had been completed by Edmund Rubbra on Good Friday 1972 after a lifetime of composition and the creation of the bulk of his music. The first four symphonies had established his reputation as a leading composer of his generation, and, as a result, after World War Two he joined the faculty at Worcester College, Oxford University and taught composition at the Guildhall School of Music. Perhaps an overlooked source for Rubbra's Ninth Symphony is the music of Hubert Parry, who attempted at the end of the nineteenth century to create a new choral-orchestral form from seventeenth-century models. Indeed, two of these, The Love that Casteth out Fear and The Soul's Ransom, are both styled 'Sinfonia Sacra'.
