Feeling he’d already said everything he had to say as a composer, Howard Ferguson shifted his focus to musicology at midlife. Thankfully, he lived long enough to experience a modest revival of interest in his own works. “The Dream of the Rood” (1958), for chorus and orchestra, is a setting of an 8th century Anglo-Saxon poem that melds the Passion story with characteristics of the secular heroic tradition. Portions of the poem were engraved on the Ruthwell Cross (pictured). Hear it, alongside Ferguson’s Octet, Op. 4 (1933), this Easter Sunday at 10 pm.
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The Lost Chord: April 4 - Rood Awakening
