William Jackson of Exeter was memorably described by the historian Charles Burney as having “selfishness, arrogance, and an insatiable rage for superiority”, though others spoke more warmly of him! His music is the climax of this curious disc, which places him at the end of a line of those who learned from Purcell. But the striking thing about Jackson’s harmless anthems is their cheerful classicism, whereas the other music here, starting from Humfrey’s superb O Lord my God and Greene’s Thou visitest the earth, is much deeper. So in spite of attractive performances by the university choir at St Andrews (where the Finzi collection preserves this rare music), displaying good choral blend but uneven solo singing under Tom Wilkinson, this interesting sequence is not quite coherent.
