Newman’s poem that inspired Elgar is perhaps his most celebrated literary work, but now, 150 years on, more of his writing is being set to music.

Widely celebrated for his personal ministry in Oxford and Birmingham as well as his scholarship, John Henry Newman – the theologian, academic and former Anglican priest, who was canonised in 2019 – is perhaps best remembered culturally as the author of The Dream of Gerontius: the poem “written by accident” in 1865 that would go on to inspire Elgar’s much loved oratorio. For decades it has stood all but alone – an unexpectedly rare setting of a writer whose gift attracted praise from no less than Henry James. He memorably declared: “Nobody has ever written English prose that can be ­compared with that of a tiresome, footling little Anglican parson, who afterwards became a prince of the only true Church.”
But in 2021, The Sixteen are looking to change things. A concert by Harry Christophers and his chamber choir at Farm Street’s Church of the Immaculate Conception this month – Newman: Meditation & Prayer (10 June) – is built around two newly commissioned settings, centrepieces for a programme that aims to offer comfort, consolation and ­reflection through music after a year of silence.

“I’ve tried to choose pieces that, when you hear the first couple of bars, will just help you relax and move beyond any difficulties and problems,” says Christophers. “It’s about letting go of the pain of the past year and moving beyond it.”
The concert grew out of a conversation with the Genesis Foundation’s John Studzinski – the Catholic philanthropist whose passion for sacred music has already yielded major commissions including James MacMillan’s Stabat Mater, as well as settings of St John of the Cross, St Teresa of Avila and Padre Pio.