From the Organist & Choirmaster
The Parish Choir is less than two weeks away from their UK Residency! This coming Sunday the Parish Choir will sing one of the Anthems that we have prepared to sing while in residency in the UK at Croydon Minster. When the Director of Music at Croydon Minster and I first connected, he informed me that our choir is the first American choir to sing at Croydon, a church that is almost 800 years old! He asked me if we could bring some American music into the church while we are there and after running through many options in our library, we both landed on David Hurd’s setting of a George Herbert poem called “Love.” It’s beautiful piece that takes an ancient text and uses very modern forms of composition like harsh dissonance, meter changes, and very free flowing patterns.
My post from a few weeks ago on Stanford mentioned Trinity College Cambridge, Herbert also studied there in the early 17th century, some 300 years before Stanford. Herbert’s life started out in linguistics and was chief orator of Trinity College until leaving to pursue holy orders in the Church of England in 1630, after which he spent the rest of his life as Rector in Bemerton near Salisbury where he preached, wrote poetry, and helped to rebuild an Anglican presence in this part of England.
“Love(III)” is, as the title suggests, the final of three poems Herbert wrote on love, specifically God’s love, these poems were published posthumously in 1633 in The Temple, a book that explores the tribulations and toil of Christianity. “Love(III)” examines the human conscience when it comes to approaching a dinner table, referring to the Eucharistic table we center our lives around. It is an extremely vulnerable poem that emits human emotions of unworthiness met by the “love,” or God, welcoming the guest to “sit and eat.” The text is as follows:
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin. But quick eyed Love observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, if I lacked anything.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here: Love said, “You shall be he. I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on thee.” Love took my hand and smiling did reply, “Who made the eyes but I?”
Truth, Lord but I have marred them: let my shame go where it doth deserve. “And know you not,” says Love, ‘who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.” So I did sit and eat.
David Hurd sets this text to a beautiful, deceptively difficult tune, in a modern American style which is dissonant and “classy.” It requires the choir’s attention to the choirmaster as they embark to embrace the emotions of the two characters in the poem by changing tempos, volume, and inflections. David Hurd is all over our Hymnal 1982 and is regarded as one of the most influential modern composers of Anglican Music in the United States. He was professor of Sacred Music and director of Chapel services at General Theological Seminary in New York City for 39 years, has degrees from High School of Music and Art, Juliard, and Oberlin; with honorary doctorates from Berkley at Yale, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He is also one of the worlds most visible and successful organist and composers of Church music who is African-American. Take a listen to this Sunday’s communion anthem!