Sunday, November 11, 2012

Pentecost 24 – Remembrance Day - Sunday 11 November, 2012

  • Organ Prelude: Sursum corda – John Ireland 
  • Opening Hymn 528 “O God, our help in ages past” 
  • O Canada God Save the Queen 
  • Service Music: David Hurd 
  • Psalm 127 (Tone II.1) 
  • Anthem: “Greater Love hath no man” – John Ireland
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it. Love is strong as death.
Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree,
That we,being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.
Ye are washed, ye are sanctified,
ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation;
That ye should show forth the praises of him
who hath call'd you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God,
that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto to God, which is your reasonable service.
  • Offertory Hymn 335 “How shall I sing that majesty” 
  • Communion Hymn 171 “What does the Lord require” 
  • Final Hymn “And can it be that I should gain” 
  • Organ Postlude: Alla Marcia – John Ireland
Music Notes

John Ireland was born near Manchester, England in 1879. He entered the newly-established Royal College of Music in London at the age of fourteen, lost both his parents shortly after, and had to make his own way as an orphaned teenager, studying piano, organ and composition. The last was under Sir Charles Stanford, who taught many of the English composers who emerged at the end of the 19th century, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells and a host of others. Ireland emerged as a celebrated composer towards the end of World War I when his Violin Sonata No.2 brought him overnight fame. From then until his death in 1962 he led an outwardly uneventful life combining composition, composition teaching at the Royal College (where his pupils included Benjamin Britten and E.J. Moeran), and his position as organist and choirmaster at St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, in London. He composed a great deal of music, although not a lot for the church. Ireland is known throughout the English-speaking world for his music to the hymn “My song is love unknown”, and is justly famous for “Greater love”, this morning’s anthem, which he wrote in 1912. Both “Sursum corda” (the prelude) and “Alla marcia” (the postlude) were composed a year earlier.

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