From the Organist & Choirmaster
On Friday at our Mass in observance of All Saints’ Day the parish choir will sing Harold Darke’s Communion Service in E ‘Collegium Regale.’ It is a beautiful setting of the texts of the ordinary of the Mass (the parts of the Mass that don’t change, the Kryie, Gloria in excelsis, Sanctus & Benedictus, and the Angus Dei).
Harold Edwin Darke was born in October 1888 in Highbury in North London. In 1903 he began at the Royal College of Music and was taught by great composers such as C.V. Stanford, Charles Wood, and Frank Bridge. His first position as organist came in 1904 at Stoke Presbyterian Church, he was only 16! During World War I, Darke served in the Royal Air Force. Upon coming back, he became organist at Saint Michael Cornell where he served for 50 years, except for a brief period in 1941 where he was placed at King’s College Cambridge to deputize for Boris Ord. He inaugurated the world’s longest running lunchtime organ recital series at Cornhill in 1916, it still runs today.
Darke is perhaps most famous for his 1909 setting of Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.” A poll of choral experts and choirmasters was conducted in 2008 voted “In the Bleak Midwinter” as the greatest Christmas carols of all time. Gustav Holst’s setting of the text was compared with Darke’s by Deputy Editor of BBC Music Magazine, Jeremy Pound, expressing, “While Gustav Holst’s charming setting of 1909 is widely loved by millions worldwide, it is the less well known but infinitely more stylish setting by Harold Darke from two years later that convincingly won the day in our poll.”
My mother, Leah our soprano lay clerk, and me before Evensong at King’s College in Cambridge in June of this year for our Choir Residency.
He composed three Communion Services, in E minor, F, and A minor. The choir will sing the E minor, which has the subtitle “Collegium Regale,” which is a distinction that the piece is “For King’s College.” Darke composed this setting while he was at King’s College during World War II. I find it to be a brilliant adaption of the texts of the Communion service, beginning with a mysterious Kyrie then bursting into a magnificent Gloria which is almost conversational in the prayers of the text, with the different parts of the choir singing certain parts until coming together like the beginning at the end to proclaim “For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord.” The Sanctus begins quietly with the upper and lower voices moving at different times on the text but coming together in the middle. The Benedictus begins with a tenor solo, introduces the choir at “Blessed is he the cometh,” to a unison “in the name of the Lord.” The organ enters with the choir and organ crescendoing at proclamations of “Hosanna!” finally leading to the grand Amen. The Agnus Dei begins in E minor with another solo leading to the choir’s response “have mercy upon us.” The second singing of “O Lamb of God” is sung by the sopranos, you can hear how this was written for the high voices of the boys’ at King’s. The last singing of the text is a cappella and feels vulnerable without the organ but it’s truly beautiful. The Angus ends in E major adding the g sharp in the tenor part at the word “peace.”
I hope you will join us Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for our liturgies of Allhallowtide.