A tip of the halo to St. Cecilia on her feast day! Keep looking up with this evergreen playlist of Cecilia inspirations. All hail, music’s patron saint!

William Boyce, “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day” (overture also published as Boyce’s Symphony No. 5)

Benjamin Britten, “Hymn to St. Cecilia” (Britten was born on this date)

Ernest Chausson, “La légende de Sainte Cécile”

Norman Dello Joio, “To Saint Cecilia”

Gerald Finzi, “For St. Cecilia”

Charles Gounod, “St. Cecilia Mass”

George Frideric Handel, “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day”

Franz Joseph Haydn, “Missa Sanctae Caecilia”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhA7LEd56ts

Herbert Howells, “A Hymn for St. Cecilia” (text by Ursula Vaughan Williams)

Franz Liszt, “Hymn to St. Cecilia”

Arvo Pärt, “Cecilia, vergine romana”

Henry Purcell, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day (Hail! Bright Cecilia)”

Various, “Bright Cecilia: Variations on a Theme by Henry Purcell,” a 2002 BBC commission for the Last Night of the Proms sporting contributions by Colin Matthews, Judith Wier, Poul Ruders, David Sawer, Michael Torke, Anthony Payne, and Magnus Lindberg

Joaquin Rodrigo, “El Album de Cecilia” (written for the composer’s daughter; Rodrigo was born on this date)

Alessandro Scarlatti, “St. Cecilia Mass”

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PAINTING: “St. Cecilia” (1647), by Frans Francken the Younger and Cornelis de Baeilleur