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The album is a complex mixture of works, built around hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams, but involving ten composers and arrangers. The album explores arrangements of his many hymn tunes; some of the hymns are also sung as they were written, so that the tunes can become familiar.
The tune Mantegna was written for a passion-tide hymn about Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The poem was called ‘The Agony in the Garden’, which is also the name given to Mantegna’s 1455-6 painting (the album’s cover picture). Vaughan Williams knew it and named his tune after the artist. The organist Francis Jackson (1917-2022) was fascinated by the tune Mantegna and wrote a set of orchestral variations on it, called ‘Homage to Vaughan Williams’. This is the most substantial work on the disc.