Sunday 20th April 2025 Easter Sunday

Come, Ye Faithful   Music R.S. Thatcher  Words St John Damascene tr. J.M. Neale

This is a joyful Easter anthem for SATB choir.

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain Of triumphant gladness;

God hath brought His Israel Into joy from sadness;

'Tis the Spring of Souls today, Christ hath burst His prison, 

And from three days sleep in death As a Sun hath risen

Queen of seasons, bright With the day of slendour,--Alleluia!

With the royal feast of feasts, Comes its joy to render;--Alleluia!

Comes to glad Jerusalem, Who with true affection--Alleluia--

Welcomes in unwearied strains Jesus' Resurrection.--Alleluia!

Neither might the gates of death, Nor the tomb's dark portal, 

Nor the watchеrs, nor the seal, Hold Thee as a mortal; 

But today amidst the twеlve Thou didst stand, bestowing 

That Thy peace which evermore Passeth human knowing.

Sir Reginald Sparshatt Thatcher (11 March 1888 – 6 May 1957) was an English musician, composer, teacher and musical administrator. He was assistant music-master at Clifton College, 1911; director of music, Royal Naval College, Osborne, 1914; director of music at Charterhouse School, 1919 and Harrow School, 1928–36. He was appointed as Sir Adrian Boult's deputy in the BBC music department in 1937, and was principal of the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), London, from 1949 to 1955.

Life and career

Thatcher was born at Midsomer Norton, Somerset, the son of a brewer at Welton, Midsomer Norton, and one of fifteen children. He was educated privately, and then won an open organ scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London. From there he progressed to Worcester College, Oxford, as organ scholar in 1907. He graduated in 1910, and then took a doctorate in music.

After leaving Oxford Thatcher's first post was assistant music master at Clifton College, from 1911. Thatcher was appointed director of music at the Royal Naval College, Osborne in 1914, but during the First World War he joined the army, and was awarded the Military Cross and the OBE. In 1915 he married Ruth Trethowan; they had one daughter and one son. The latter was killed in action in 1942. After the war Thatcher served successively as director of music at Charterhouse School (1919–28) and Harrow School (1928–36).

In 1937 Sir Adrian Boult, who combined the roles of director of music at the BBC and chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was in need of a deputy to take over day-to-day administrative work, leaving him freer to concentrate on the orchestra. Thatcher, an old friend from their university days, became Boult's deputy director. Thatcher's nature was unassertive and sensitive, and although, with Boult's support, he was several times offered the post of director, he always refused. During the Second World War, when the BBC had to be evacuated from London, Thatcher organised three successive moves for the music department, first to Evesham, then Bristol and finally to Bedford. As The Times put it, "he left for the quieter life of the RAM in 1943".

At the RAM Thatcher first held the post of warden; he was promoted to vice-principal in 1945, and on the death of the principal, Sir Stanley Marchant, in 1949, Thatcher was appointed as his successor. The Times obituarist said of his tenure:

He took an active part in London's musical life; a wise committee man he served the Musicians Benevolent Fund, the Royal Musical Association as treasurer, the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Royal College of Organists, of which he was president from 1954 to 1956, and the Incorporated Society of Musicians.

The obituarist added that Thatcher's term of office at the academy was "marked by the urbanity towards staff, students, and strangers that he had inherited from Merchant".

Thatcher was the composer of the anthem, Come ye faithful. Portraits of him by Walter Stoneman and Elliott & Fry hang in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His portrait was also painted by Rodrigo Moynihan.

Thatcher was knighted in 1952. Ill health led him to retire in from the RAM 1955, and he died at his home in Cranleigh, Surrey, two years later, at the age of 69. His widow survived him, and died in 1981.

Taken from Wikipedia

John of Damascus or John Damascene, born Yūḥana ibn Manṣūr ibn Sarjūn, was an Arab Christian monk, priest, hymnographer, and apologist. He was born and raised in Damascus c. AD 675 or AD 676; the precise date and place of his death is not known, though tradition places it at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem, on 4 December AD 749. A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and music, he was given the by-name of Chrysorroas (Χρυσορρόας, literally "streaming with gold", i.e. "the golden speaker"). He wrote works expounding the Christian faith, and composed hymns which are still used both liturgically in Eastern Christian practice throughout the world as well as in western Lutheranism at Easter.

He is one of the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church and is best known for his strong defence of icons. The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption due to his writings on the Assumption of Mary. He was also a prominent exponent of perichoresis, and employed the concept as a technical term to describe both the interpenetration of the divine and human natures of Christ and the relationship between the hypostases of the Trinity. John is at the end of the Patristic period of dogmatic development, and his contribution is less one of theological innovation than one of a summary of the developments of the centuries before him. In Catholic theology, he is therefore known as the "last of the Greek Fathers".

The main source of information for the life of John of Damascus is a work attributed to one John of Jerusalem, identified therein as the Patriarch of Jerusalem. This is an excerpted translation into Greek of an earlier Arabic text. The Arabic original contains a prologue not found in most other translations, and was written by an Arab monk, Michael, who explained that he decided to write his biography in 1084 because none was available in his day. However, the main Arabic text seems to have been written by an unknown earlier author sometime between the early 9th and late 10th century. Written from a hagiographical point of view and prone to exaggeration and some legendary details, it is not the best historical source for his life, but is widely reproduced and considered to contain elements of some value. The hagiographic novel Barlaam and Josaphat is a work of the 10th century attributed to a monk named John. It was only considerably later that the tradition arose that this was John of Damascus, but most scholars no longer accept this attribution. Instead much evidence points to Euthymius of Athos, a Georgian who died in 1028.

Taken from Wikipedia

Friday 18th April 2025 Good Friday

 "Is it nothing to you"  Ouseley (1825 - 1889)

Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley was born in London and showed a prodigious faculty for music, composing his first opera at the age of eight! In 1844 he inherited the baronetcy and also went to Christ Church, gaining his BA in 1846 and his MA in 1849.  He was ordained the same year as gaining his MA and served as curate in St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge.  He was throughout his life conflicted by his aristocratic heritage and his performance of Anglican music, considered to be below someone of his standing. In 1850 he took the degree of Mus. B at the University of Oxford, 4 years later the degree of Mus.D.  In 1855 he was Heather Professor of Music at Oxford until 1889.  In 1856 he founded and endowed with his own money, St Michael's College, a model choir school in the Anglican tradition.  He was also its first Warden. His works are little known today, but his most notable student was Sir John Stainer.

Ouseley
Picture from Wikipaedia

Lamentation 1:12

“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

    Look around and see.

Is any suffering like my suffering

    that was inflicted on me,

that the Lord brought on me

    in the day of his fierce anger?

Were You There?  Arr. Francis Westbrook 1903 - 1975

This is an old American Spiritual,  first published in 1899, but likely composed by enslaved African - Americans.  It was the first spiritual to be published in an American hymnal.

Francis Westbrook, taken fromm Praise.org.uk  b Thornton Heath, Surrey 1903, d Harpenden, Herts 1975. Whitgift (now Trinity) Middle Sch, Croydon; Didsbury Theol Coll Manchester; ordained 1930 (Wesleyan Methodist). Distinguished pianist; BA (London), FRCO, MusD (Manchester, while in circuit ministry). Prof at London Coll of Music 1968–75; Principal, Williams Sch of Church Music, 1971–75. Held office at RSCM and Methodist Ch Music Soc; edited The Choir 1948–64. 2 tunes and 20 arrangements in The School Hymn Book of the Methodist Church 1950, which he helped to edit, as also Hymns and Songs, 1969. H&S had 6 of his tunes, Praise for Today (1974) had 3. Other music includes cantatas, motets, and anthems. Methodist though he was, FBW commended John Merbecke’s plainsong Music for the Congregation at Holy Communion (1550, some 6 years after JM compiled the first-ever English Bible concordance) as a work ‘which for simplicity and beauty has never been surpassed’; he also believed that, unlike N American churches, British ones did not offer their members ‘anything that deserves to be called a hymn book’—since they hand out no more than word-books! (Or often, not even that.) Fred Pratt Green’s tribute in verse, among Ten Friends, begins ‘Of all the people I have known well, you were the nearest to being a genius.’

Sunday 13th April 2025 Palm Sunday

  O Saviour Of The World  Arthur Summerville

Sir Arthur Somervell was born in the Lake district, son of Robert Miller Somervell, the founder of K Shoes. He studied composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford at King's College Cambridge. For 2 years he studied music at the High School for Music in Berlin, and following that from 1885-1887 at the Royal School of Music in London under Parry. In 1894 he became a Professor at The Royal School of Music, in 1901, he was appointed Inspector of Music at the Board of Education and Scottish Education Department and in 1902 received the Doctor of Music degree from the University of Cambridge. He achieved success during his lifetime for his choral works, but is now mostly remembered for his song cycles. He had a conservative style showing influences from Mendelssohn and Brahms.  He was also very active in music education. He was knighted in 1929.

Sir Arthur Sumervill
Picture from Hyperion.

"O Saviour of the World" is a suitable anthem for Lent, Holy Week or Communion, The words are from the Anglican Order for the Visitation of the Sick.

Selsey Chamber Choir, Concert

Selsey Chamber Choir, in association with Arts Dream Selsey, presents “In Paradisum”, a spring concert based around the well-known and well-loved Requiem of Gabriel Fauré. He wrote this work “for the pleasure of it” and we wish our audience the greatest of pleasure in hearing it. Included in our presentation are other works by well-known composers, including the serenely beautiful Pie Jesu of Andrew Lloyd-Webber. We are proud to have soloists from the choir, and to be accompanied by organ recitalist, Linden Innes-Hopkins, who from childhood knows Selsey well. We invite you to join us on Saturday 12th April at 3pm in St. Peter’s Church, Selsey, as we aim to lift your spirits and gladden your hearts.

 Picture of Faure by Singer via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday 6th April 2025 Fifth Sunday of Lent Passion Sunday

  O Saviour Of The World  John Goss 1800 - 1880

Sir John Goss was a boy chorister in The Chapel Royal and later a pupil of Sir Thomas Attwood, organist at St Paul's cathedral.  He spend a short time in the chorus of an opera company before being organist at a number of churches, finally at St Paul's where he worked hard to improve the musical standards. His works are mostly vocal, both sacred and secular.  From 1827 until 1874, he was a professor at The Royal Academy of Music teaching harmony.  He taught Arthur Sullivan and John Stainer who succeeded him as organist at St Paul's.

Sir John Goss from Wikipedia

Works

In the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, W. H. Husk and Bruce Carr write of Goss, "His glees enjoyed long popularity for their grateful vocal writing. As a church composer his reputation came later, through the grace and the careful word-setting of his anthems, composed mostly after 1850." They quote a contemporary as saying that Goss's music "is always melodious and beautifully written for the voices, and is remarkable for a union of solidity and grace, with a certain unaffected native charm." Judith Blezzard, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, writes:

Goss was one of the most important early Victorian church composers, his anthems and services being most notable for their flexibility of phrasing, attention to detail in word-setting, and sense of proportion and balance. … In 1852 his anthem "If we believe that Jesus died", written for the funeral of the duke of Wellington, created a profound impression. In 1854 he produced the anthem "Praise the Lord, o my soul" for the bicentenary festival of the sons of the clergy. … Some of his anthems, including "The Wilderness" (1861), "O taste and see" (1863), and "O saviour of the world" (1869), have held a modest but enduring place in the repertory of English church music.

Blezzard adds that Goss is chiefly remembered for his two most famous hymn tunes: "Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven" (1869) and "See, Amid the Winter's Snow" (1871).

In the Dictionary of National Biography in 1890, J A Fuller Maitland wrote, "The best of Goss's works are distinguished by much grace and sweetness, underlying which is a solid foundation of theoretic and contrapuntal science. It is difficult to resist the assumption that at least some part of this happy combination was inherited, through Attwood, from Mozart. Goss was the last of the illustrious line of English composers who confined themselves almost entirely to ecclesiastical music." Among Goss's works, Fuller Maitland singled out for particular praise the glee "Ossian's Hymn to the Sun", and the anthems "The Wilderness," "O taste and see," and "O Saviour of the World".

Taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 30th March 2025 Fourth Sunday of Lent Mothering Sunday Refreshment Sunday

  John Stainer “God so loved the world” from “The Crucifixion”

“The Crucifixion: A Mediation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer” was composed in 1887 and first performed on 24^th February of that year. It was dedicated to his friend and pupil W Hodge and the choir of Marylebone Church.  It is a sacred oratorio for tenor and bass soli, SATB choir and organ. W J Sparrow Simpson wrote the libretto.  The work has been dismissed in the past, even Stainer himself calling it “rubbish” but it is continued to be a staple of church music since its first performance, especially around Easter. “God so loved the world” is one of the choral pieces, but the text can be used at any time in the church calendar, as it is reflecting part of the Eucharist.

Words:  Based on John 3:16-17

God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. 

Sir John Stainer (1840 – 1901) was an English composer and organist.  He was very popular during his life, but now little of his music is performed other than “The Crucifixion”. He was the Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, and his training of choristers and organists set standard that remain influential today.

He was born in Southwark, London, son of a cabinetmaker.  He was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral at the age of ten. At sixteen he was appointed organist at St Michael’s College, Tenbury.  He was later organist at Magdalen College, Oxford and the St Paul’s Cathedral. Whilst at Magdalen he was allowed to study as long as it did not interfere with his duties as organist.  He chose to do so and in 1864 gained his BA with his MA coming 2 years later. Due to poor eyesight he had to retire from St Paul’s whist in his forties and returned to Oxford to take up his chair. Queen Victoria honoured him with his knighthood in 1888 for his services to British music, the same year he retired from St Paul’s. He died unexpectedly whilst holidaying in Italy.

picture from Wikipedia

Sunday 9th March 2025 Lent 1

  "Turn thy face from my sins" by Thomas Attwood (1765 - 1838)  based on Psalm 51 vv 9-11.

Attwood was born in London, the son of a musician in the royal band. He became a chorister in the Chapel Royal by the age of nine.  He was sent abroad to study at the expense of the Prince of Wales (later George IV) who was impressed by his skill at the harpsichord.  He was a favourite pupil of Mozart. He returned to London in 1787.

In 1796 he was made organist of St Paul's and the same year composer of the Chapel Royal.  For George IV's coronation he wrote the anthem "I was glad".

Much of his work is forgotten, only a few anthems regularly performed including "Turn thy face from my sins".

                                                                  Taken from Wikipedia

ed including "Turn thy face from my sin