The Glasgow School of Art Choir today announced it will release its third album, Radiant Dawn, on 27 September 2019. The CD is available to pre-order online now. The album takes its inspiration from the idea of conflicting but simultaneous phenomena – light and dark, night and day, warm and cold, life and death.

Throughout history the closing of the day, arrival of night, and transition back to day again, has been the inspiration for countless works of art, passages of literature, and musical compositions. Artists have been fascinated by the transition from light to dark as a metaphor for the cycle of human emotions and the various different aspects of our psyche.

The acts of sleeping and waking, in addition to their obvious connection to winter as metaphors for birth, death and rebirth, have been used to explore the transience of human existence, the possibility of an afterlife and also, perhaps most powerfully, as an image of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

These dichotomies are explored throughout the music on the album, on occasion within individual works themselves but, on others, through the programming of works sequentially. As a whole, the programme offers a contemplation of the great perpetual cycles of our world: physical, astrological and emotional.

The album can be pre-ordered here.

Track listing:

O Radiant Dawn from The Strathclyde Motets
James MacMillan, lyrics by Anon.

Hymn to the Mother of God from Two Hymns to the Mother of God, No. 1
John Tavener, lyrics by Anon.

Ave Maris Stella
James MacMillan, lyrics by Anon.

Ubi Caritas
Ola Gjeilo, lyrics by Anon.

Waldesnacht from Sieben Lieder, Op. 62, No. 3
Johannes Brahms, lyrics by Paul Heyse

The Cloud-Capp’d Towers from Three Shakespeare Songs, Op. 6, No. 2 
Ralph Vaughan Williams, lyrics by William Shakespeare

Intercession in Late October from Mid-Winter Songs
Morten Lauridsen, lyrics by Robert Graves

Calme des Nuits from 2 Choruses, Op. 68, No. 1 
Camille Saint-Saëns

Sure on this Shining Night
Samuel Barber, lyrics by James Agee

Sleep 
Eric Whitacre, lyrics by Charles Anthony Silvestri

Irish Blessing 
Bob Chilcott, lyrics by Anon.