Sunday 17th November 2024 2 before Advent

The Call (One of Five Mystical Songs)  R Vaughan Williams

These are a collection of songs composed between 1906 and 1911 based on poems by the Welsh born English poet, George Herbert (1593-1633) who was also an Anglican priest.  There are four poems, Easter being divided into two from his 1633 collection "The Temple: Sacred Poems".  Vaughan Williams was an aethiest, but it did not stop him from setting these overtly religious poems to music.  Vaughan Williams conducted its first performance at the Three Choirs Festival in
Worcester 14th September 1911.  Originally it was composed for Baritone solo with various  accompaniments.

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death. 

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest. 

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love. 

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)  was born to a wealthy family but with a good moral code and progressive social outlook.  He always sought to help his fellow citizens. He also thought his music should be available and accessible by everyone. He developed late musically not really finding himself until in his thirties. He studied with Maurice Ravel 1907-1908 and this helped him clarify the texture of his music and rid him of Teutonic influences.  He is one of our best known symphonists  encompassing a wide range of moods from the utterly tranquil to ranging fury, mysterious to exuberant. He was strongly influenced by Tudor and folk music.  He was deeply affected by the First World War in which he served. His body of work is vast and his music remains popular and widely performed.

From Wikipedia,

 

Sunday 10th November 2024 3rd before Advent Remembrance Sunday

They Shall Grow Not Old  Leslie Russell  Words Laurence Binyon

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

This is a short but very moving anthem set to one verse of a poem by Laurence Binyon, "For The Fallen".

Dr Leslie Russell, Senior Music Inspector for the London County Council founded the London Schools Symphony Orchestra in 1951.

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1891. He worked for the British Museum from 1893 until his retirement in 1933. In 1904 he married the historian Cicely Margaret Powell, with whom he had three daughters, including the artist Nicolete Gray.

Moved by the casualties of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, Binyon wrote his most famous work "For the Fallen", which is often recited at Remembrance Sunday services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In 1915, he volunteered as a hospital orderly in France and afterwards worked in England, helping to take care of the wounded of the Battle of Verdun. He wrote about these experiences in For Dauntless France, re-released as a centenary edition in 2018 as The Call and the Answer. After the war, he continued his career at the British Museum, writing numerous books on art.

He was appointed Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1933. Between 1933 and his death in 1943, he published his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. His war poetry includes a poem about the London Blitz, "The Burning of the Leaves", regarded by many as his masterpiece.

Today Binyon's most famous poem, "For the Fallen", is often recited at British Remembrance Sunday services; is an integral part of Anzac Day services in Australia and New Zealand and of 11 November Remembrance Day services in Canada. The "Ode of Remembrance" has thus been claimed as a tribute to all casualties of war, regardless of nation.

Laurence Binyon by William Strang 1901

Taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 3rd November 2024 All Saints

Give Us The Wings Of Faith   Words Issac Watts  Music Ernest Bullock

This anthem was written for All Saints' Day, the words from a hymn by Isaac Watts.

Sir Ernest Bullock (1890-1979) was not primarily a composer, but an educationalist and organist.  He was born in Wigan, where he became organist at his parish church. He was then assistant organist at Leeds Parish Church in 1907.  In 1908, he received his Bachelor of Music from the University of Durham, gaining his Doctor of Music in 1914. In 1912, he was assistant organist at Manchester Cathedral.  After WW1 he was organist at St Michael's College, Tenbury, almost immediately moving to Exeter as cathedral organist in 1919.  In 1928 he succeeded Sir Sidney Nicholson as Master of Choristers in Westminster Abbey.  He provided music for the coronation of King George VI, writing most of the fanfares for that and also the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.
 In 1941, Bullock went to Glasgow as the Gardiner Professor in Music at the university. In 1952 he became director of the Royal College of Music.  He was knighted in 1951 and he retired in 1960.
Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was born in Southampton, the son of a committed religious nonconformist. His father, also Isaac was twice incarcerated for his beliefs.  He received a classical education at the King Edward VI school, but was barred from attending Oxford or Cambridge universities as they were restricted to Anglicans. He went to the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington in 1690. He was pastor of a large independent chapel in London where he helped train preachers.  However, his religious opinions were more ecumenical than was usual for a nonconformist. He promoted education and scholarship rather than preaching for a particular sect. He is famous for the writing of the words of hymns. He promoted hymn singing and his prolific hymn-writing helped to usher in a new era of English worship.

Isaac Watts, by unknown artist {Wikimedia commons]

 

Saturday 2nd November 2024 All Souls Day

Requiem Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Gabriel Fauré, born in 1845, was appointed titular organist a La Madeleine, Paris, in 1896 and director of the Paris Conservatoire in 1905.

Fauré started to think about the composition of a requiem in 1885 after the death of his father.  Unlike Berlioz and Verdi he removed the Dies Irae sequence, which he considered over theatrical.  Hence the Offertorium comes up much sooner than is usual in a requiem mass setting.  He permits himself only a brief reference to the “day of wrath” in the Libera me baritone solo.

Gabriel Fauré

Fauré’s Requiem happily lends itself to a liturgical performance by amateur choirs, being particularly popular with English choirs, with the organ taking the place of the orchestra. This seems to have been recognised early on its life, coinciding as it did with liturgical experimentation in the Church of England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – experiments now adopted and sanctioned for universal use with the introduction in 1980 of the Alternative Service Book and more recently the Common Worship services. These owe their formation to the proposed 1928 Prayer Book and the English Missal (1933) and their structure, including additions to the Book of Common Prayer, fit best with Fauré’s arrangement of sections. The 1928 Prayer Book and English Missal largely formalised a variety of liturgical practices which had been used in sung Communion services previously. 

The service is an act of worship, to include remembrance of the departed, and may sound something like a similar service in an English church at about the time of Faurés death in November 1924, when sections of his requiem were sung at his funeral at La Madeleine.

Faure in 1907 from Wikipedia

Sunday 27th October 2024 Trinity 22

Tantum Ergo  Déodat de Séverac  (1873-1921)

Tantum ergo is the incipit of the last two verses of Pange lingua.  This is a Medieval Latin hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas c. 1264. The Genitori genitoque and Procedenti ab utroque portions are adapted from Adam of Saint Victor's sequence for Pentecost.  An incipit, is the opening phrase, or in music the opening sequence of notes.

The singing of Tantum ergo occurs during veneration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic Church and other denominations that have this devotion. We sang it as out anthem at the end of Holy Communion.

Déodat de Séverac was born into a fairly wealthy family in Saint Felix de Lauraguais, his father was a painter, musician and landowner. De Séverac spent three years in the Law Faculty of Toulouse where he also took piano and harmony lessons before he entered the Schola Cantorum in Paris (1893) where he studied composition under Vincent d'Indy. His compositions include symphonic poems, chamber music, songs, piano and organ music, theatre music and choral music. Interestingly his earliest and latest works were religious in nature, but he always retained a strong identity with his roots: the history, culture and language of Languedoc countryside. Although Debussy, with whom he was a friend, criticised his restricted style, his music enjoys a reputation for the directness of its expression and its life. Gabriel Fauré said about Heliogabale, de Séverac's lyrical tragedy, "Séverac has something to say and says it quite simply. Many people have nothing to say, and do their utmost to disguise the vacuum..."

Last paragraph taken from the RSCM Classics copy of this anthem.

Déodat de Séverac
taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 15th September 2025 Trinity 16

Benedictus in C    C V Stanford

This is the Canticle of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist,  and is taken from Luke's Gospel (Luke 1:68-79) It is sung daily at Morning Prayer.

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) thought to be one of our great British composers was actually Irish, born in Dublin, although educated at The University of Cambridge and then studied music in Leipzig and Berlin.

Whilst an undergraduate, he was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge and was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life.  He was also Professor of Music at Cambridge.  His pupils included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams whose fame went on to surpass his own.

He is best remembered for his sacred choral compositions for church performance in the Anglican tradition. Along with Hubert Parry and Alexander Mackenzie, he was thought responsible for the renaissance of music in the British Isles. 

C V Stanford in 1921 from Wikipedia

Ye Servants of th'all Bounteous Lord   Samuel Webbe Junior

This is a two verse anthem scored for SATB suitable for all occasions. It is a joyful anthem praising God eternally.  This is a setting of Psalm 113, which is in regular use in Jewish, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant liturgies. It has been set to music often. 

Samuel Webbe the younger (1768–1843) was an English music teacher and composer and was the son of Samuel Webbe (1740–1816), he was born in London, and studied the organ, piano, and vocal composition under his father and Muzio Clementi.

Webbe in his active interest in glee clubs followed in the footsteps of his father, and composed many canons and glees. In 1798 he moved to Liverpool, as organist to the Paradise Street Unitarian Chapel, where John Yates (1755–1826) was minister.

Around 1817 Webbe joined John Bernard Logier in London, teaching the use of the chiroplast. There Webbe became organist to the chapel of the Spanish embassy, before returning to Liverpool, where he was appointed organist to St. Nicholas and to St. Patrick's Roman Catholic chapel. He died at Hammersmith on 25 November 1843.

Webbe published, with his father, A Collection of Original Psalm Tunes, 1800. He was also the author of anthems, madrigals, and glees, besides a Mass and a Sanctus, and a Chant for St Paul's Cathedral. He wrote settings for numerous songs and ballads. About 1830 he published Convito Armonico, a collection of madrigals, glees, duets, canons, and catches, by well-known composers.

Webbe married Diana Smith in 1803. Their son Egerton Webbe (1810–1840) wrote on musical subjects; and their daughter Louisa married Edward Holmes.

Taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 8th September 2024 Patronal Festival

As befits our patronal festival, all the hymns today were about the Virgin Mary. Our anthem was

Ave Maria Opus 67 No 2 Fauré 

This is a unison piece first published in 1895. Today it was sung by the ladies only.

Ave Maria gratia plena

Dominus tecum

Benedicta tu in mulieribus

Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei

Ora pro nobis peccatoribus

Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae

Amen

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and in the hour of our death. Amen.

The Ave Maria is one of the most recognizable and well-known prayers throughout the Western world, known to many people who are not Christian or religious at all. Its content inspired leagues of composers and musicians to write some of their most memorable works. 

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.

Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, he was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.

Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.

Taken from Wikipedia