Alleluias of Saint James (Let all mortal flesh keep silence) Words Liturgy of St James Music Trad. French melody arr. A. J. Greening
This is a translation from the Greek Liturgy of St James. It is usually set to the traditional French tune of Picardy. Today's arrangement of this hymn tune was verses 1 and 3 in unison and verses 2 and 4 sopranos and tenors being the leader and altos and basses the follower singing in canon, but to a slightly different tune.
Most people will recognise this as the hymn "Let all mortal flesh keep silence".
This was sung at our 10 am service. For various reasons the choir was depleted to 4 of us.
Then in the evening when we were a much larger group, our anthem was:
O Salutaris Hostia Gioachino Rossini (1792 - 1868) Words by St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 74)
O SALUTARIS Hostia
Quae caeli pandis ostium.
Bella premunt hostilia;
Da robur, fer auxilium.
O SAVING Victim opening wide
The gate of heaven to all below.
Our foes press on from every side;
Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, theologian, and philosopher. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Catholic theology and Western philosophy.
Thomas was a proponent of natural theology and the father of a school of thought (encompassing both theology and philosophy) known as Thomism. He argued that God is the source of the light of natural reason and the light of faith. He embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle and sought to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity. Among his best-known ideas include his Five Ways for proving the existence of God, his virtue ethics, and his sacramental theology. In addition to its vast influence on Catholic thought, his philosophy has influenced modern virtue ethics, aesthetics, and cognitive theory.
Thomas's best-known work is the unfinished Summa Theologica, or Summa Theologiae (1265–1274), which is a comprehensive guide to the theology of the Catholic Church. His body of work also includes the Disputed Questions on Truth (1256–1259), the Summa contra Gentiles (1259–1265), and numerous commentaries on Christian Scripture and on Aristotle. He is also known for his Eucharistic hymns, which form a part of the Church's liturgy.
Thomas has been described as "the most influential thinker of the medieval period" and is generally considered to be one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. As one of the 38 Doctors of the Church, he is known by multiple titles, including Doctor Angelicus ("Angelic Doctor"), Doctor Communis ("Universal Doctor"), and Doctor Humanitatis ("Doctor of Humanity").
St Thomas Aquinus taken from Wikipedia
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer and conductor of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. While he gained most of his fame for his 39 operas, he also wrote many pieces of chamber music, piano, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.
Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most popular works, including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Domenico Cimarosa and Giovanni Paisiello. He also composed opera seria works such as Tancredi, Otello and Semiramide. All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (half the music of which was later reused for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell.
Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life has never been fully explained; contributory factors may have been ill-health, the wealth his success had brought him, and the rise of spectacular grand opera under composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote relatively little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays, regularly attended by musicians and the artistic and fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the entertaining pieces Péchés de vieillesse. Guests included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Joseph Joachim. Rossini's last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle (1863).
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