The Fifth Century was the first full album of Gavin Bryars's music on ECM New Series in decades, following After the Requiem and Vita Nova. Its centre is the seven-part title work of 2014 for choir and saxophone quartet, a setting of words by the 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne. The texts come from his Centuries of Meditations. The album closes with Two Love Songs (2010), a cappella settings of Petrarch for the women of the choir.
The singers are The Crossing, an American chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally, joined in the title work by the PRISM Quartet. The Crossing commissioned the piece for performance with PRISM, and the score is dedicated to the choir, in memory of Jeff Dinsmore. Bryars has called it "a joy to work with Donald Nally and The Crossing". The Fifth Century was recorded in July 2014 at Gould Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia. The Two Love Songs followed in June 2015 at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in the same city. Bryars and Brian Morton wrote the liner notes.
Each section takes its title from a line of Traherne, from We see the heavens with our eyes to Our bridegroom and our king being everywhere. The saxophones open sections and thread long tones around the voices, guiding rather than commenting. In the fourth movement, Eternity is a mysterious absence of times and ages, a word begins in one voice and is held over several bars while other voices take up the text. Tempos stay slow throughout. Io amai sempre and Solo et pensoso, the two Petrarch songs, are also slow, but plainer in line and more directly emotional.
Joshua Kosman wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that the saxophones form "a sort of gilt frame" around the choir, and found the effect "at once modern and antiquarian". Kate Wakeling, in BBC Music Magazine in 2018, called it "signature Bryars but no less affecting for its familiar soundworld". John von Rhein, in the Chicago Tribune, heard an otherworldly surface calm over an intense spirituality. In The New Yorker, Russell Platt found the music beautiful but predictable.
CD edition of ECM New Series 2405, first released on 18 November 2016.
