Description
Cecilia McDowall has been described by the International Record Review as having a ‘communicative gift that is very rare in modern music. An award-winning composer, McDowall is often inspired by extra-musical influences, and her choral writing combines rhythmic vitality with expressive lyricism. Her music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by leading choirs, among them the BBC Singers, The Sixteen, and Oxford and Cambridge choirs and is regularly programmed at prestigious festivals in Britain and abroad. In 2017 McDowall was selected for an Honorary Fellow award by the Royal School of Church Music.
Sacred and hallowed fire was commissioned by Harrison & Harrison as part of their 150 years celebration of organ building. It is one of a trilogy of works for organ by McDowall which draws from the poetry of George Herbert; the first of the three (commissioned by Christopher Batchelor for the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music) is Sounding heaven and earth; the last of the trilogy, Church bells beyond the stars, has been commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the Edinburgh Society of Organists, May 2013.
