Sunday 30th April 2023 Fouth after Easter

Communion Service in Fmajor   Harold E Darke

Today the choir sang the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agneus Dei from the Darke Communion service.

This setting was dedicated to the Rev. John H Ellison M.V.O. Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, E.C.

Harold Edwin Darke (1888-1976) was born in Highbury, London.  His first post as organist was at Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead from 1906 - 1911.  He became organist at St Michael's, Cornhill in 1916 and stayed there until 1966, leaving for a short time to deputise for Boris Ord as Director of Music at King's College, Cambridge during the second World War.  Darke started lunchtime concerts at St Michel's in 1916 and these are the thought to be the longest running lunchtime organ concert series in the world.

He is best known for his setting of Christina Rossetti's poem "In the bleak midwinter".  His othr music still performed are his Communion Services in E minor, F major and A minor, and his Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis in F major.

Brother James's Air (Marosa)  arr. Gordon Jacob

James Leith Macbeth Bain (1860-1925) was a minister, hymn writer and poet known to his peers as Brother James.  He was born in Pitlochry where he was a pupil teacher before going to Edinburgh Free Church College and the Edinburgh Established Church College.  His ministry took him to Liverpool and then to London as a spiritualist minister. He is best known for Brother James's Air which is usually set to The Lord's My Shepherd.

Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) is best known as a composer for wind band and instructional texts. He was a prisoner of war in 1917 and was one of only 60 survivors of the 800 in his battalion. On his release he initially studied journalism, but changed to composition, theory and conducting at the Royal College of Music. Because of a cleft palate and a childhood hand injury he was very limited as a performing musician, but found his forte as a composer especially for wind instruments.  He was considered to be conservative in style, but famously said "the day that melody is discarded altogether, you may as well pack up music...".

gordonjacob.net

Sunday 23rd April 2023 Third Sunday after Easter

 This Joyful Eastertide  Melody from "David's Psalmen" Amsterdam 1685, Harmony Charles Wood (1866 -1926) , Words G R Woodward (1848 - 1934)

This is an Easter carol first published in 1894 in "Carols for Easter and Ascensiontide".  George Radcliffe Woodward was an Anglican priest who wrote many religious verses often set to music by his friend Charles Wood. He was born in Birkenhead and graduated in 1872 from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Two years later he was ordained by the Bishop of London. In 1924 he received an Honorary Lambeth Doctorate in Music.

Charles Wood (1866-1926) was born in Ireland. He was a treble chorister in the nearby St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. He received his early education in the cathedral choir school and also studied the organ under Robert Turle and Dr Thomas Marks. In 1883, he was one of the inaugural students of the Royal College of Music, studying composition under Charles Villiers Stanford and CHH Parry. After four years he continued his studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. In 1889 he was appointed as organ scholar in Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1994 and Director of Music and organist. Following the death of Stanford in 1924 Wood took over the role of Professor of Music in Cambridge.

He is remembered for his Anglican Church music.

Sunday 9th April 2023 Easter Day

This is the day  (Haec dies)   Thomas Morley 1557-1603?

voice parts adapted from "A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke " 

edited and arranged by Anthony Greening.

This is a short antem suitable for Easter day and any Sunday.

"This is the day which the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it.

You are my God and I will thank you.

Alleluia."

Thomas Morley, (born 1557/58, Norwich, England—died October 1602, London), composer, organist, and theorist, and the first of the great English madrigalists.

Morley held a number of church musical appointments, first as master of the children at Norwich Cathedral (1583–87), then by 1589 as organist at St. Giles, Cripplegate, in London, and by 1591 at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1592 Morley was sworn in as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

It is highly probable that Morley converted to Roman Catholicism early in life, perhaps under the influence of his master, William Byrd. By 1591, however, Morley had defected from the church, for in that year he engaged in espionage work among the English Roman Catholics in the Netherlands.

About that time, Morley evidently began to recognize the possibilities that were offered by the new popularity of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, for he began publishing sets of madrigals of his own composition. Morley published 25 canzonets (“little short songs,” as he referred to them) for three voices in 1593; in 1597 he published 17 for five voices, and 4 canzonets for six voices in the same year. His first madrigals—a set of 22—appeared in 1594, and 20 ballets were published in 1595. The latter were modeled on the balletti of Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi but expressed more elaborate musical development and a stronger sense of harmonic direction than Gastoldi’s. Morley excelled in the lighter and more cheerful types of madrigal or canzonet.

Among his works are a considerable proportion of Italian madrigals reworked and published by Morley with no acknowledgment of the original composers—a practice not uncommon at the time. In 1598 Morley brought out a volume of English versions of selected Italian madrigals; and in that same year he was granted a monopoly to print music in England for 21 years. His textbook, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), provides knowledge of the theoretical basis of composition of Morley’s own time and that of earlier generations.

Morley’s compositions are written in two distinct styles that may be chronologically separated. As a pupil of Byrd he was trained in the premadrigalian English style of broad and strong polyphony; his volumes of the 1590s, however, exhibit his mastery of Italian madrigal style and are characterized by a direct effectiveness, gentle harmonic warmth, springy rhythms, and clarity of texture.

Morley edited The Triumphes of Oriana (published 1603), a collection of 25 madrigals by various composers. His last volume of original compositions was The First Booke of Ayres (1600). Morley’s body of work also includes services (primary music of the Anglican liturgy), anthems, motets, and psalms. The six-voice motets “Laboravi in gemitu meo” and “De profundis clamavi” are considered among his best works.

Taken from Britannica.com

Sunday 26th February 2023 First Sunday of Lent

O Lord My God  Samuel Sebastian Wesley 

This is known as King Solomon's prayer based on 1 Kings 8.

O Lord my God,

Hear thou the prayer thy servant prayeth,

Have thou respect unto his prayer?

Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place,

And when thou hearest Lord, forgive.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (14 August 1810 – 19 April 1876) was an English organist and composer. Wesley married Mary Anne Merewether and had 6 children. He is often referred to as S.S. Wesley to avoid confusion with his father Samuel Wesley.

Biography

Born in London, he was the eldest child in the composer Samuel Wesley's second family, which he formed with Sarah Suter having separated from his wife Charlotte. Samuel Sebastian was the grandson of Charles Wesley. His middle name derived from his father's lifelong admiration for the music of Bach.

After singing in the choir of the Chapel Royal as a boy, Samuel Sebastian embarked on a career as a musician, and was appointed organist at Hereford Cathedral in 1832. While there he married the sister of the Dean, John Merryweather. S.S. Wesley was, like his father Samuel Wesley, a Freemason. He was initiated in Palladian Lodge No.120 in Hereford on 17 September 1833. He moved to Exeter Cathedral three years later, and joined St George's Lodge No.129 Exeter on 10 December 1835. He subsequently held appointments at Leeds Parish Church (now Leeds Minster) (from 1842), Winchester Cathedral (from 1849), Winchester College and Gloucester Cathedral (1865-1876). In 1839 he received both his Bachelor of Music degree and a Doctor of Music degree from Oxford. He became a Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music in 1850. He died at his home in Gloucester on 19 April 1876 aged 65. He is buried next to his daughter in St. Bartholomew's Cemetery in Exeter by the old City Wall. There are memorial tablets to him in Exeter Cathedral and Winchester Cathedral, and his memorial at Gloucester Cathedral is in stained glass.

Famous in his lifetime as one of his country's leading organists and choirmasters, he composed almost exclusively for the Church of England, which continues to cherish his memory. His better-known anthems include Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace and Wash me throughly. He also wrote several rather late examples of verse anthems, which contrast unison and contrapuntal sections with smaller, more intimate passages for solo voice or voices. Blessed be the God and Father, The Wilderness and Ascribe unto the Lord are of considerable length, as is his Service in E.

The popular short anthem Lead me, Lord is an extract from Praise the Lord, O my soul. Several of his pieces for solo organ have enduring value and continue to be played in recitals now and then.

Of his hymn tunes the best-known are "Aurelia" and "Hereford." "Aurelia" has been widely adopted in the United States, and is regularly heard there. Usually now sung to the words "The Church's One Foundation", Wesley composed the tune for the hymn "Jerusalem the Golden", hence the name "Aurelia".

One notable feature of his career is his aversion to equal temperament, an aversion which he kept for decades after this tuning method had been accepted on the Continent and even in most of England. Such distaste did not stop him from substantial use of chromaticism in several of his published compositions.

While at Winchester Cathedral Wesley was largely responsible for the Cathedral's acquisition in 1854 of the Father Willis organ which had been exhibited at The Great Exhibition, 1851. The success of the Exhibition organ led directly to the award of the contract to Willis for a 100-stop organ for St George's Hall, Liverpool built in 1855. Wesley was the consultant for this major and important project, but the organ was, arguably, impaired for some years by Wesley's insistence that it be tuned to unequal temperament.

Wesley, with Father Willis, can be credited with the invention of the concave and radiating organ pedalboard, but demurred when Willis proposed that it should be known as the "Wesley-Willis" pedalboard. However, their joint conception has been largely adopted as an international standard for organs throughout the English-speaking world and those exported elsewhere.

Taken from Wikipedia

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Ash Wednesday

Lord For Thy Tender Mercy's Sake  Music could be by either Farrant or John Hilton. This arrangement is by Anthony Green. Words from Bull, Christian Prayers and Holy Mediaition (1568)

Unfortunately due to a lack of singers, we were unable to sing this anthem.

Richard Farrant (c. 1525 – 30 November 1580) was an English composer, musical dramatist, theatre founder, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The first acknowledgment of him is in a list of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal in 1552. The year of his birth cannot be accurately determined. During his life he was able to establish himself as a successful composer, develop the English drama considerably, found the first Blackfriars Theatre, and be the first to write verse-anthems. He married Anne Bower, daughter of Richard Bower who was Master of the Chapel Royal choristers at the time. With Anne he conceived ten children, one of whom was also named Richard.

Queen Elizabeth I

As a member of the Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Farrant was active in ceremonies surrounding the royal family. He began his work with the Chapel Royal around 1550 under the reign of Edward VI. Fortunately, for Farrant, this is a time that saw huge developments in Latin Church Music. Composers like William Byrd and Christopher Tye were busy expanding and elaborating on the Church Music of the day. In Farrant's twelve years with the Chapel Royal, he was able to participate in funerals for Edward VI and Mary I, and coronations for Mary I and Elizabeth I. After his work there, he took up a post as lay vicar and organist at St. George's Chapel at Windsor.

For Farrant, the post at Windsor became a permanent one that he retained for the rest of his life. Along with this, he also acquired the position of Master of the Chapel Royal choristers in November 1569. Having the choirs of both of these institutions at his disposal gave him an outlet to showcase all of his compositions and plays. In fact, every winter he was able to produce a play for the Queen herself. These positions also allowed him to move back to London in 1576 and begin a public theater of sorts where he rehearsed some of his choir music openly. It was soon after, in 1580, that he died, having left his house to his wife.

Unlike many composers of his day that stuck to only music composition, Farrant also wrote many plays. One of his most important contributions to drama in England is of course the creation of the first Blackfriars Theatre. This eventually became one of the most important places in London for drama to develop during the Renaissance. Farrant is also one of the earliest and most well known composers that began to mix the two mediums of music and drama. It was this uncommon mixture that allowed him to begin to develop the composition style of 'verse.' This becomes prominent in a lot of his pieces including the anthems When as we sat in Babylon, Call to remembrance and Hide not thou thy face.

John Hilton (the elder) (1565 – 1609(?)) was an English countertenor, organist and composer of mainly sacred works.

Hilton is best known for his anthems "Lord, for Thy Tender Mercy's Sake" (which may actually be by one of the Farrants) and "Call to Remembrance".

Hilton was born in 1565. By 1584 he was a countertenor at Lincoln Cathedral. At the start of 1594 he became organist at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was the father of John Hilton the younger, also a composer, which makes definitive assignation of their combined sacred works problematic; whereas his only secular work appears to have been the madrigal Fair Oriana, beauty's Queen, which he wrote for The Triumphs of Oriana.

He died, probably in Cambridge, prior to 20 March 1609.

Henry Bull (died 1577) was an English Protestant theological writer. He is now remembered as an ally of John Foxe in documenting the Marian exiles and recent religious history.

A native of Warwickshire, Bull was a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1535, and full fellow and B.A. in 1540. He was a prominent reformer in the college, in a group that included Thomas Cooper, Robert Crowley and John Foxe. He became rector of Courtenhall in early 1553.

When Mary I of England came to the throne later in 1553, Bull, with the help of Thomas Bentham, snatched a censer from the hand of the officiating priest and was expelled from Magdalen. A visitation of the college was held and, on 23 October 1553, the visitors deprived Bull of his fellowship. Anthony Wood says that he went into exile, which cannot be documented, but Strype states that he lived quietly at home as a Protestant.

After the accession of Elizabeth I of England, Bull held benefices, according to Wood. He collected correspondence and manuscripts, that were kept by Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and worked in parallel with Foxe's Actes and Monuments.

Bull edited the Apology of Bishop John Hooper (1562) and, in the same year, Hooper's Exposition of Psalm xxiii. Other commentaries of Hooper's on three psalms appeared in Certeine comfortable Expositions of … Master John Hooper on Psalms 23, 62, 72, 77, gathered by Mr. H. B. (1580). He was also the editor of Christian Praiers and Holy Meditacions which appeared first by 1570; an earlier work from Bull's collection was Lidley's Prayers (1566). Christian Praiers was reprinted later in the century, and by the Parker Society.

The major martyrological collection, Certain Most Godly, Fruitful and Comfortable Letters of such True Saintes and Holy Martyrs as in the Late Bloodye Persecution Gave their Lyves, was published in 1564, as by Miles Coverdale. In effect, it was by Bull.

Bull translated from Martin Luther A Commentarie on the Fiftene Psalmes called Psalmi Graduum, printed by Thomas Vautroullier (1577), with a preface by Foxe.

Biographies from Wikipedia

Sunday 19th February 2023 Sunday Next Before Lent

Benedictus in C and O For A Closer Walk With God   C V Stanford

The Benedictus was composed in 1909 as part of Stanford's Morning and Evening Service together with the Office of Holy Communion Op 115.  Stanford was given the choice to hear one of his services sung at Matins at York Minster in 1923 when he was a guest of the organist, Edward . "He chose the one in C", Bairstow recalled, "for he said he had never heard it!"

William Cowper is the author of this hymn, “O for a Closer Walk with God” which he composed in 1769. The inspiration for this hymn was Genesis 5:24, “And Enock walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” Another was Amos 3:3, “Godliness is walking with God: which shows reconciliation to God, for can two walk together except they be agreed?”

This hymn was written during the serious illness of his beloved aunt, Mrs. Unwin.

William Cowper

Taken from christianmusicandhymns.com

O for a closer walk with God,

A calm and heavenly frame;

A light to shine upon the road

That leads me to the Lamb!

Return, O holy dove, return,

Sweet messenger of rest;

I hate the sins that made thee mourn,

And drove thee from my breast.

So shall my walk be close with God,

Calm and serene my frame;

So purer light shall mark the road

That leads me to the Lamb.

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.

Charles Villiers Stanford from Wikipedia

Sunday 12th February 2023 Second Sunday before Lent

O Lord God  Percy C Buck  The Collect for Sexagesima  

This is an anthem published in 1918 for the boys of St Paul's Cathedral. It is in two parts. Today it was sung by the soprano and alto section of the choir.

O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do:

Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Sir Percy Carter Buck (25 March 1871 – 3 October 1947) was an English music educator, writer, organist, and composer.

Early life and education

Percy Buck was born in West Ham, London, and studied at Merchant Taylors' School, the Guildhall School of Music under Charles Joseph Frost (1848-1918) and Francis Davenport, and then at Royal College of Music, where his teachers were Walter Parratt, C.H. Lloyd and Hubert Parry.

Career

From 1891 until 1894 he was organ scholar at Worcester College, Oxford, where he became friends with William Henry Hadow, Classics Tutor there at the time, who became the first editor of the Oxford History of Music in 1896. Buck was appointed organist at Wells Cathedral (1896–99), then Bristol Cathedral (1899–1901). He became director of music at Harrow School in 1901 and held that post until 1927. While at Harrow, Buck served on the editorial board of the ten-volume anthology Tudor Church Music.

From 1910 to 1920, Buck was Professor of Music at Trinity College, Dublin; this was a non-residential post, succeeding Ebenezer Prout. His pupils during this period included Ina Boyle. In 1919 Sir Hugh Allen invited him to join the staff of the Royal College of Music, where he set up a teacher's training course, contributing his own lectures on psychology. In 1925, Buck became the King Edward Professor of Music in the University of London.

In 1926 he started the RCM Junior Department with Miss Angela Bull, a "feeder system" for students financed by the London County Council. Several successful students have gone through this program and it continues to this day. From 1927 to 1936, he was music adviser to the London County Council, where he developed new facilities for further training of children with special talent, and where he overhauled the music in the curriculum of schools. Buck received a knighthood in 1937 on retiring from the University of London, while continuing his duties at the Royal College, supervising teachers and taking the occasional composition student, including Madeleine Dring for two years from 1938.

Personal life

Buck married Lucy Bond, daughter of the surgeon Thomas Bond. She died in 1940, aged 68. There were three sons (one killed in World War I) and two daughters. But during his time at Harrow Buck began a clandestine and long-term relationship with Sylvia Townsend Warner, whose father was a History master at the school. He was 41, she was 19. From 1917 Warner, who was to pursue a career as a poet and novelist after the publication of her first novel, Lolly Willowes in 1926, also worked as one of the editors of Tudor Church Music.

Percy Buck died at the Stoneycrest Nursing Home, Hindhead, Surrey, after a short illness.

Works

Musical compositions

Buck's compositions include a piano quintet (Op. 17), a string quintet (Op. 19), a violin sonata (Op. 21), and a piano quartet (Op. 22). These were all unpublished, and many of his early manuscripts were later destroyed in World War II during an air raid. The three organ sonatas - Op. 3 (1896), Op. 9 (1902) and Op. 12 (1904) were published in Leipzig and so survived, along with some piano works and songs. The orchestral work Croon, in the style of an Irish lullaby, was performed at The Proms in September 1917. There was also an orchestral overture, Coeur de Lion Op. 18.

Buck composed a number of hymn tunes - fourteen of them were included in the 1916 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern - most notably Gonfalon Royal, written in 1913 as a setting for the Christian hymn "The Royal Banners Forward Go", to be sung at Harrow School (Gonfalon is a Norman word for a banner).

Writings

He is possibly best remembered today for his writing and editing. He edited The English Psalter (London, 1925) with Charles Macpherson. The Oxford Song Book of English national and folk songs for schools was issued in 1929, followed by The Oxford Nursery Song Book in 1934. His books include The Scope of Music (1924, derived from the Cramb lectures he delivered in Glasgow the previous year), and Psychology for Musicians (1944), written long before the subject became fashionable in the 1960s. He was on the editorial board for OUP's Tudor Church Music and revised the first two volumes of the Oxford History of Music (1929 and 1932), also contributing a new introductory volume (1929).

The Organ: a Complete Method for the Study of Technique and Style (London, 1909)

Unfigured Harmony (Oxford, 1911)

Organ Playing (London, 1912)

The First Year at the Organ (London, 1913)

Acoustics for Musicians (Oxford, 1918)

The Scope of Music (Oxford, 1924)

A History of Music (London, 1929)

The Oxford Song Book Volume 1 (1929)[14]

The Oxford Nursery Song Book (Oxford, 1933)[15]

Psychology for Musicians (London, 1944)

Taken from Wikipedia.