ABSTRACT
Rubbra’s standing as a composer of symphonies should not obfuscate the fact that he left an astonishingly large corpus of choral music, Symphony No. 9 (Sinfonia Sacra, Op. 140, subtitled “The Resurrection,” for soloists, chorus, and orchestra) representing his most visionary compositional utterance and the spiritualityintellectual, wide-ranging, consistent, and profound-that was the raison d’être for much of his work. Indeed, Rubbra’s very first opus (unpublished) was on a religious poem of R.G.S. Mead, The Secret Hymnody (1924), scored for full orchestra, chorus, and organ. Mystical settings entered his oeuvre with the unaccompanied Five Motets, Op. 37 (1934/premiered 1936), to texts of the metaphysical poets Herrick, Vaughan, Donne, and Crashaw, and The Dark Night of the Soul, Op. 41, no. 1 (1935/premiered 1943), to the words of St. John of the Cross, for contralto soloist, chorus, and orchestra, the composition of which actually extended from 1936 to 1942-an important period that included the completion of the first four symphonies and the consolidation of Rubbra’s symphonic technique.2
