Lent 5 - March 22 2015

• Organ: Méditation (from Messe de Mariage) - Jean Francaix (1912-1997)
  
• Opening Hymn 564 Lead us, heavenly Father
• Psalm  51: 1-3, 10-13
• Lenten Gospel Acclamation: If anyone serves me he must follow me; wherever I am, there must be my servant also, says the Lord.
• Litany
• Offertory Hymn 185 Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle
• Hymn during Communion 49 Draw near and take
• Communion Motet: Ave verum corpus - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Hymn 438 O Jesus, I have promised
• Organ: Largo (from Suite profane) - Jean Francaix (1912-1997)

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Lent 4 - March 15 2015

• Organ Voluntary in A -  Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676)
  
• Opening Hymn 524 - O Christ, the great foundation
• Service Music: Mass for 3 voices – William Byrd (1539/40-1623)
• Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-22 (Tone VI) - Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good
• Lenten Gospel Acclamation: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son: everyone who believes in him has eternal life.
• Offertory 551 My faith looks up to thee (Olivet)
• Hymn during Communion 72 Bread of Heaven (Jesu, meine Zuversicht)
• Communion Motet: Who is at my window who – Welford Russell
• Hymn 398 Let us with a gladsome mind (Monkland)
• Organ: Pavan (The Earle of Salisbury) – William Byrd

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Music Notes

This Sunday (March 15) three of our lead singers (alto, tenor, bass) will sing a special setting of the communion service – William Byrd’s “Mass for 3 Voices”. Byrd (1543-1623) has been called “the greatest English composer, an arbiter of the sublime and master of his craft”. We sincerely hope that this beautiful music will enhance your worship during this Lenten season.

William Byrd (1543-1623) is known to have been a tenaciously loyal Roman Catholic in a country which was more or less militantly Protestant. It took some courage, therefore, for a composer to set Latin texts at all at that time. Actually to publish three Latin masses (one in 3 parts, one in 4 parts, and one in 5 parts) took a great deal more courage, yet Byrd did publish them between 1593 and 1595, just a year or two after they were written. The Masses were originally written with the pragmatic purpose of giving small amateur choirs settings of important texts which they could reasonably hope to master. The Mass for 3 Voices which we hear this morning is for alto, tenor and bass and will be sung by our choir leads.

Welford Russell (1900-1975) was a Canadian composer who is particularly remembered for his output of choral works. Born in Neepawa, Manitoba, Russell made a living as a surgeon and was notably a medical missionary in India from 1925-1941. He pursued musical activities in his spare time. He studied the organ in Ireland and pursued studies in music composition with Godfrey Ridout and singing with Weldon Kilburn at the Toronto (now Royal) Conservatory of Music. He published a Stabat mater and eight individual choral pieces, of which his part-song Who Is at My Window Who? has been widely performed.

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Lent 3 - Sunday March 8, 2015

• Organ Prelude: Ich ruf zu dir (I call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ) – J.S. Bach
• Opening Hymn 629 - Jesus, thy blood and righteousness (Walton)
• Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
• Psalm 19: 1-4 (Tone III.4) - The heavens declare the glory of God...
• Lenten Gospel Acclamation: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die, says the Lord.
• Offertory Hymn 603 - Holy Spirit, storm of love (Arfon Minor)
• Hymn during Communion 479 - O Christ, the master carpenter (Albano)
• Communion Motet: Expectans, expectavi – Charles Wood 
• Hymn 306 O for a thousand tongues (Richmond)
• Organ: Ich ruf zu dir (I call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ) – Herbert Collum

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Music Notes

There is an intriguing back-story to the text of today’s communion motet, “Expectans expectavi” (“I waited patiently for the Lord”). Although this Latin title alludes to Psalm 40, it is also the title of one of the last poems of Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915), a young Scottish poet and scholar who was killed in the second year of World War I by enemy fire at the Battle of Loos. Like his contemporary and fellow poet, Wilfred Owen (also felled, three years later, on the Western Front), Sorley wrote brilliant, bitter verse about the savagery and futility of war (“When you see millions of the mouthless dead/Across your dreams in pale battalions go . . .”). In 1919, composer Charles Wood (1866-1926) set to music the final two stanzas of Sorley’s “Expectans expectavi,” creating a moving anthem that, in part, memorialized the lost generation of British youth slaughtered in The Great War. And while the first three stanzas of Sorley’s poem are a sardonic assessment of years wasted in frivolity, these final verses, interpreted through Wood’s uplifting music, manifest the poet’s inextinguishable belief that fathoms deep, beneath the superficial banality of his life, dwells the God-found chamber of his soul that “Unwitting, I keep white and whole.”

Next Sunday (March 15) three of our lead singers (alto, tenor, bass) will sing a special setting of the communion service – William Byrd’s “Mass for 3 Voices”. Byrd (1543-1623) has been called “the greatest English composer, an arbiter of the sublime and master of his craft”. We sincerely hope that this beautiful music will enhance your worship during this Lenten season.

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LENT 2 - 1 March 2015

• Organ: Voluntary in F minor (first movement) – Maurice Greene
• Opening Hymn 546 “God moves in a mysterious way”
• Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
• Psalm 22: 22-26 - Praise the Lord you that fear him
• Gospel Acclamation
• Offertory Hymn 375 “At the Name of Jesus”
• Anthem: Lord, let me know mine end – Maurice Greene
• During Communion: The Lenten Prose
• Concluding Hymn 347 “The God of Abraham praise”
• Organ: Voluntary in F minor (second movement) – Maurice Greene

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Music Notes

Born in London, the son of a clergyman, Maurice Greene was a choirboy at St Paul's Cathedral, and later became organist there. Greene went on to the position of organist at the Chapel Royal; in 1730 he became Professor of Music at Cambridge University, and in 1735 he was appointed Master of the King's Musick.

His compositions are largely in the Georgian style, particularly the longer anthems such as his acknowledged masterpiece which we'll hear this morning, “Lord, Let Me Know Mine End”. In this anthem. Greene sets a text full of pathos with a moving duet in the middle of the work. For the text of his work, Greene chose parts of the 39th Psalm, in which David meditates on man's frailty, and applies for pardon and deliverance by considering that there is really no solid satisfaction to be had in this world. That if it offers nothing but vanity, may God deliver us from seeking our part of it, and that we are comforted by the fact that we have a God we can go to, who welcomes us, and in whom we can trust.

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LENT 1 - February 22, 2015

• Organ: Introit (from ‘Messe Basse’) – Louis Vierne 
• Opening Hymn  175 “Forty days and forty nights”
• Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
• Trisagion 
• Psalm 25: 1-4 (Tone I.4) To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul
• Gospel Acclamation:
  We do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. 
• Offertory Hymn 330 O praise ye the Lord
• Anthem: Teach me, O Lord – Thomas Attwood
• Communion Hymn  633 Lord Christ, we praise your sacrifice
• Concluding Hymn 170 The glory of these forty days
• Organ: Prelude Lent – Alphonse Schmitt

Music Notes

British composer Thomas Attwood was the son of a musician in the royal band, and in 1783 he was sent to study in Naples and Vienna at the expense of the Prince of Wales, who had been favourably impressed by his skill at the harpsichord. In Vienna, he became a favorite pupil of Mozart. In 1796 he was appointed organist of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in the same year he was made composer to the Chapel Royal. In 1838, as Attwood was composing an anthem for the coronation of Queen Victoria, he died, and he is appropriately buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, in a crypt under the pipe organ.

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) and Alphonse Schmitt (1875-1912) were contempories in Paris, where Vierne presided over the organ at Notre Dame Cathedral and Schmitt at St. Philippe de Roule.

View/download music list including hymn, anthem and psalm texts -  see here »

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Ash Wednesday - February 18, 2015

• Opening Hymn  175 “Forty days and forty nights”
• Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
• Trisagion 
• Psalm 103: 8-11, 17,18 - The Lord is full of compassion and mercy
• Gospel Acclamation:
  A pure heart create for me, O God, and give me again the joy of your help 
• Offertory Hymn 614 “Forgive our sins as we forgive”
• Communion Hymn 511 “Lord Jesus think on me”
• Communion Motet: Lord, for thy tender mercies’ sake – Richard Farrant
• Concluding Hymn 345 “King of glory, King of peace”

View/download music list including hymn, anthem and psalm texts -  see here »

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The Last Sunday of Epiphany (Transfiguration) - February 15, 2015

• Organ: Lento – Frank Bridge
• Opening Hymn 337 “God, your glorious presence”
• Service Music: John Merbecke
• Psalm 50: 1-6 The Lord the God of gods has spoken:
• Gospel Alleluia: This is my Son my Chosen: listen to him! 
• Offertory Hymn 387 “All praise to thee”
• Communion Hymn “We have come at Christ’s own bidding”
• Communion Motet: O nata lux (O Light of Light) – Thomas Tallis
• Concluding Hymn 374 “Alleluia! Sing to Jesus”
• Organ: Menuetto – John Ireland

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View/download music list including hymn, anthem and psalm texts -  see here »

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