From the Organist & Choirmaster
As we approach Holy Week and prepare to journey with Christ during the church’s most sacred time, I’d like to offer a few notes about the music the parish choir will sing over the next week.
Beginning on Palm Sunday, the choir will once again sing the psalms to various Anglican chant tunes, and they will continue to do so throughout Holy Week. At the Offertory, Healey Willan’s arrangement of Hosanna to the Son of David, a great example of Willan’s composition style, demonstrating clean diatonic sections with a grand fugue of polyphony leading to the end. At Communion, an interesting piece by an American composer, Alan Petkner, who’s taken a theme from Faure’s Pavne and given it a familiar but unique take on the original theme. In the evening, there will be a Solemn Choral Evensong which begins at 5:30 pm in the Nave. Music for Evensong includes Stanford’s Beati quorum via, Howell’s Like as the Hart Desireth the Waterbrooks, Stanford’s Evening Service in Bb, and the great hymn Praise to the Holiest in the height, who’s text if from Cardinal John Henry Newman’s ‘The Dream of Gerontius.’
Tenebrae on Wednesday offers a reflective service of readings, plainsong psalmody, and a simple Christus factus est by Jacobus Handl.
Maundy Thursday the choir will sing Durufle’s setting of the ancient chant Ubi caritas, a brilliant example of Durufle’s twentieth century composition style. At the offertory, you will hear T. Tertius, Noble’s arrangement of the text “Go to dark Gethsemane,” it is a hauntingly beautiful anthem that differs greatly from the hymn tune “Petra” that is in the Hymnal 1982. You’ll also hear Tallis’ If ye love me, a great anthem for Maundy Thursday, as “Maundy” shortened from Mandatum, translates to “commandment” in English. The choir will sing Psalm 22 during the stripping of the altar to Anglican Chant tunes by Samuel Wesley and Henry Smart in the Coverdale translation.
On Good Friday, the lay clerks will sing the Passion Gospel from John. During the Veneration of the Cross, you’ll hear two anthems by the Italian Renaissance composer G.P.D. Palestrina, his Adoramus te Christe and O crux ave.
At the Great Vigil of Easter, we welcome Cathedral Brass of Birmingham! After the reading of the prophecies, you’ll hear Anglican Chant and Plainsong Canticles, after the last John Stainer’s God so loved the world from The Crucifixion. After the Litany of Saints and the Easter Acclamation, the brass and organ will “fire up” and help us festively celebrate the joy of the Resurrection as we sing Jesus Christ is risen today. The brass will join us throughout the service on hymns and the service music as well as Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah.
I do hope you will make plans to attend these great days of the Church’s year!
Cody