I have a liking for British composers, and Edmund Rubbra was a British composer. He composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras. He was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak of his fame in the mid-20th century. The most famous of his pieces are his eleven symphonies. Although he was active at a time when many people wrote twelve-tone music, he decided not to write in this idiom himself. Instead, he devised his own distinctive style. His later works were not as popular with the concert-going public as his previous ones had been, although he never lost the respect of his colleagues. Therefore, his output as a whole is less celebrated today than would have been expected from its sheer merit and from his early popularity.

You can learn more about the man himself here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Rubbra but this is worth repeating if you can't be arsed... Rubbra was married three times, firstly in 1930 to his landlady Lilian Duncan. This marriage was never consummated.

In 1933 Rubbra married Antoinette Chaplin, a French violinist. They toured Italy together, as well as giving recitals in Paris and radio broadcasts. They had two sons, Francis (1935–2012) and Benedict (born 1938, painter), with the marriage lasting into the late 1950s.

In 1975 (aged 74 by now), Rubbra married Colette Yardley (aged 28), with whom he had had one son called Adrian. Colette was at the time of Adrian's birth married to Rubbra's neighbour Hugo Yardley.

Symphony No. 9, Op. 140, Resurrection (also known as Sinfonia Sacra) was written between 1968 and 1972.

He really didn't know when to give up, did he?

The symphony itself, his "Symphonia Sacra," (subtitled "The Resurrection") is a choral symphony - stop flinching, I know you're not going to like it, but it's my choice, so suck it up - and features the soloists Lynne Dawson (Soprano), Delia Jones (Alto), and Stephen Roberts (Baritone) along with the BBC National Chorus of Wales, and the National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Richard Hickox.

I think it's a fairly magnificent work, and ventures far beyond the usual perceived limitations of British music in general. In places, it becomes almost operatic in scope, and almost Wagnerian. I can also hear Mahler in places, although Rubbra was mainly influenced by British composers who had gone before him. Cyril Scott championed his early work, and one of his tutors at UC Reading was Gustav Holst.

On Rubbra's retirement from Oxford, in 1968, he did not stop working; he merely took up more teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where his students included Michael Garrett and Christopher Gunning. Neither did he stop composing. Indeed, he kept up this activity right until the end of his life. He had, in fact, started a 12th Symphony in March 1985, less than a year before his death. He died in Gerrards Cross on 14 February 1986.

Ronald Stevenson summed up the style of Rubbra's work rather succinctly when he wrote, "In an age of fragmentation, Rubbra stands (with a few others) as a composer of a music of oneness".

Sir Adrian Boult commended Rubbra's work by saying that he "has never made any effort to popularize anything he has done, but he goes on creating masterpieces".

I know that there's not a great love of religious choral works among the few classical fans here at TAS, but give it a go. I think it ranks alongside anything Elgar composed, Gerontius etc.

I must not forget The Morning Watch, which opens this disc. It's one of Rubbra’s most eloquent choral pieces. It dates from 1946, and so comes roughly half-way between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. A setting of the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan, it too is music of substance and its long and moving orchestral introduction is of the highest order of inspiration.