Wednesday 13th February 2024 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)

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 11th February 2024 Sunday before Lent

 Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face To Face   Percy Whitlock (1903-1946) Words H Bonar (1808-1889)

Percy William Whitlock (1 June 1903 in Chatham, Kent – 1 May 1946 in Bournemouth), was an English organist and post-romantic composer.
Percy Whitlock studied at London's Royal College of Music with Charles Villiers Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams. From 1921-1930, Whitlock was assistant organist at Rochester Cathedral in Kent. He served as Director of Music at St Stephen's Church, Bournemouth for the next five years, combining this from 1932 with the role of that town's borough organist, in which capacity he regularly played at the local Pavilion Theatre. After 1935 he worked for the Pavilion Theatre full-time. A tireless railway enthusiast, he wrote at length and with skill about his interest. Sometimes, for both prose and music, he used the pseudonym "Kenneth Lark." He worked closely with the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra; the orchestra's conductor from 1935-1940 was Richard Austin, whose father Frederic Austin dedicated his Organ Sonata to Whitlock.
Whitlock was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1928. Near the end of his life, he lost his sight altogether, and he died in Bournemouth a few weeks before his 43rd birthday. For decades afterwards he remained largely forgotten. This neglect has eased in recent times, in particular through the activities and publications of the Percy Whitlock Trust, founded in 1983. The Percy Whitlock Trust was wound up in 2017, due to the expiry of copyright on Whitlock's compositions, and its assets and archive transferred to the Royal College of Organists.

Percy Whitlock from the Percy Whitlock Trust

Here O My Lord, I See Thee Face To Face is number 2 of 3 Introits, published in 1929.

Horatius Bonar (known to his friends as Horace Bonar) was the son of James Bonar (1758-1821), Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, and his wife Marjory Pyott Maitland. The family lived in the Broughton district of Edinburgh. He was educated in Edinburgh.
He came from a long line of ministers who served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland. One of eleven children, his brothers John James and Andrew Alexander were also ministers of the Free Church of Scotland He married Jane Catherine Lundie in 1843 and five of their young children died in succession. Towards the end of their lives, one of their surviving daughters was left a widow with five small children and she returned to live with her parents.
In 1853, Bonar received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Aberdeen.
He died at this home, 10 Palmerston Road in the Grange, 31 July 1889. They are buried together in the Canongate Kirkyard in the lair of Alexander Bonar (and his parents), near the bottom of the eastern extension.

All information from Wikipedia.

H Bonar from Wikipedia

Sunday 4th February 2024 Candlemass

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D   Charles Wood

Today, the choir sang only the Nunc Dimittis, otherwise known as The Song Of Simeon as he sees Jesus being presented in the temple and knows that Jesus is the Messiah.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel
(Luke 2.29-32)
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church 

Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in D is a choral setting by the Irish composer Charles Wood of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for the Anglican service of Evening Prayer. Scored for four-part choir and organ, it was written in 1898. It is also known as Evening Service in D major.

Wood won an organ scholarship to the University of Cambridge where he became the organist at Caius and, later, a fellow of the college, having graduated with a doctorate in music. He set the combination of Magnificat and Nunc dimittis several times for the Evening Prayer of the Anglican Church, taking the words from the Book of Common Prayer. Evensong is a traditional daily service combining elements of vespers and compline. Wood's setting in D is his earliest, and has been regarded as his most popular version of the canticles. It has been said, together with the Evening Service in B-flat by Stanford, to mean for many "the epitome of Church of England worship".

Magnificat (Song of Mary) and Nunc dimittis (Song of Simeon) are biblical canticles. Simeon sings the Nunc dimittis ("Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace") when Jesus is presented in the temple (Luke 2:29–32). Each canticle is concluded by a doxology. The canticles are part of the daily service of Evening Prayer in the Anglican church and have been set to music often.

Wood set the text for a four-part choir and organ. He set each canticle as one movement. Both are concluded by the same doxology.

In the Nunc dimittis, set in triple meter and marked Adagio, the basses alone sing most of the canticle text of the old Simeon. After the first line, the upper voices echo the text "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace" in homophony. After the second line, the upper voices repeat their first echo, but now in E major. After the third line, the upper voices repeat the last words, "Thy people Israel", ending in A major, and followed by the doxology.

Taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 28th January 2024 Epiphany 3

 Ave Verum Op 65 No 1  Faure 

Yet another Ave Verum, but this is written for Soprano and Alto voices (the tenors and basses get a rest). Although the start of the piece seems unfamiliar, the soprano and alto canon is in more familiar territory (O Jesu, Jesu dulcis - ).

Ave verum corpus, natum de Maria Virgine,

Vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine,

Cujus latus perforatum vero fluxit cum sanguine;

Esto nobis praegustatum, mortis in examine.

O pie, O dulcis Jesu, Fili Mariae.

Tu nobis miserere. Amen.

Hail, true body, born of Mary Virgin,

truly suffering, was sacrificed on the cross for mankind,

From whose pierced side flowed with true blood;

Be for us a foretaste In our final judgment.

O pious, O sweet Jesus, Son of Mary.

You have mercy on us. Amen.

Gabriel Urbain Fauré 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 small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the Ecole 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, Fauré 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

Sunday 21st February 2024 Epiphany 2

 "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 from thy sins    Thomas Attwood  (1765-1838)

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 sin

Sunday 14th January 2024 The Baptism of Christ

  The Lamb      Music John Tavener (1944 - 2013), Words William Blake (1757-1827)

Tavener was born in Wembley, London.  He was a music scholar at Highgate School, where a fellow scholar was John Rutter. The school choir was often used by the BBC when they needed a boys' choir. He began to compose whilst at school and was also a pianist good enough to perform with the National Youth Orchestra. In 1961 he was organist and choirmaster at St John's Presbyterian church, Kensington, a post he held for 13 years. He went to the Royal Academy of Music in 1962 where he decided to concentrate on composition and gave up the piano.

He came to prominence with his Cantata "The Whale" in 1968. In 1971 he began teaching at Trinity College of Music in London. In 1977 he converted to Russian Orthodox Church.  Orthodox liturgy became a major influence on his composition.  

"The Lamb" written in 1982 for his nephew's third birthday has become a choral classic.  It was composed in a single afternoon for unaccompanied SATB choir, using William Blake's poem.

He was knighted in 2000 for his services to music. John Rutter describes Tavener as having the "very rare gift" of being able to "bring an audience to a deep silence."

William Blake was largely unrecognised during his life, he is now considered to be one of the seminal figures of poetry and art in the Romantic age. He was born in Soho and although his family were English Dissenters, he was baptised.  The Bible  was a profound influence on his work. In 1772 Blake was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver, for 7 years. At the end of his term aged 21, he became a profession engraver.  He had been taught an outmoded style and it is thought that this tuition held him back from greatness during his lifetime. 

In 1779, Blake began as a student at the Royal Academy where he was somewhat rebellious against Joshua Reynolds.

In 1800, Blake moved to Felpham, illustrating poetry by William Hayley.  He was unhappy in his work and returned to London after 3 years.

William Blake
Wikipedia

Sunday 24th December 2023 Christmas Eve

 Torches  John Joubert (1927- 2019) From the Galacician

John Pierre Herman Joubert (20 March 1927 – 7 January 2019) was a British composer of South African birth, particularly of choral works. He lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, England, for over 50 years. A music academic in the universities of Hull and Birmingham for 36 years, Joubert took early retirement in 1986 to concentrate on composing and remained active into his eighties. Though perhaps best known for his choral music, particularly the carols Torches and There is No Rose of Such Virtue and the anthem O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing, Joubert composed over 160 works including three symphonies, four concertos and seven operas.

Early life and education

Strubenholm, the home of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, from which Joubert graduated in 1944 – photographed in June 2006.

Joubert was born on 20 March 1927 in Cape Town, South Africa. His ancestors on his father's side were Huguenots, French Protestants from Provence who settled at the Cape in 1688. His mother's ancestry was Dutch. Joubert was educated at Diocesan College in Rondebosch, South Africa, which was founded by the Anglican Church and maintained a high standard of music-making. He originally hoped to become a painter, and did a fair amount of art at school. However, at about the age of 15 years, he gradually became interested in music, though as a composer rather than a performer. "It was always going to be something creative. Oddly enough, the visual arts haven't been as great a stimulus as literature. I was also interested in writing. In fact, I was bored by everything at school except writing, art and music!" In school, he came under the guidance of the musical director Claude Brown, whose teaching he regarded as "an indispensable foundation to my subsequent musical career". According to Joubert, "through Brown, I learned all the Elgar choral works even before I heard them properly in full orchestral performance. Not only that idiom, but the idiom of Anglican church music generally. Parry and Stanford, and all the usual blokes." Through his teacher's encouragement, Joubert was able to participate in choral performances with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra under William J. Pickerill, and subsequently to hear his works featured in performance.

After graduating from the South African College of Music in 1944 he began studying musical composition privately with William Henry Bell, an Englishman well known locally as a composer of distinction. Bell exerted the greatest influence on his composition. In 1946 he was awarded a Performing Right Society Scholarship in composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Here, his principal teachers were Theodore Holland, Howard Ferguson and Alan Bush. During his four years at the Academy he won a number of prizes for composition, notably the Frederick Corder prize and the 1949 Royal Philharmonic Society prize.

Professional career

In 1950 Joubert was appointed to a lectureship in music at the University of Hull, having graduated in the same year with a Bachelor of Music (B.Mus.) degree from the University of Durham. His works soon began to be performed and to attract favourable attention. His carol Torches (Op. 7a, 1951) (written for his wife Mary's pupils and based on a Galician (Eastern Europe) carol, it was published in 1961 in the first volume of Carols for Choirs) and the anthem O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing (Op. 7b, 1952) (which won the 1952 Novello Anthem Competition), achieved almost instant popularity. Concerning Torches, Joubert recalled, "I've even had carol-singers come to the door and singing it, without knowing the composer lives inside." Together with the carol There is No Rose of Such Virtue (Op. 14, 1954), the three choral works have become classics of the Anglican repertoire. Works in other genres followed, mostly as the result of commissions from institutions such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Birmingham Festival Choral Society (named for the Birmingham Triennial Festival, the Royal Philharmonic Society and the BBC, and from musical festivals such as the Three Choirs Festival. By the end of his 12 years at Hull Joubert had composed, in addition to choral music, his Violin concerto (Op. 13, 1954), Symphony No. 1 (Op. 20, 1955), piano concerto (Op. 25, 1958), the full-length opera Silas Marner (Op. 31, 1961) (after the novel by George Eliot), and a body of chamber music including String quartet No. 1 in A-Flat (Op. 1, 1950), a string trio (Op. 30, 1958) and an Octet (Op. 33, 1961).

Joubert moved to Moseley, Birmingham, in 1962 to take up a Senior Lectureship at the University of Birmingham; he was later made Reader in Music. In 1979 he was a visiting professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. The number and scope of his works increased, and among those composed during the following decades were two further full-length operas, Under Western Eyes (Op. 51, 1968) and Jane Eyre (Op. 134) (based on the novels by Joseph Conrad and Charlotte Brontë respectively), Symphony No. 2 (Op. 68, 1970), various large-scale choral works with orchestras including the oratorio The Raising of Lazarus (Op. 67, 1970) and Herefordshire Canticles (Op. 93, 1979), a second and third piano sonata (Op. 71, 1972; Op. 157), a second and third string quartet (Op. 91, 1977; Op. 112, 1986), song cycles with piano and/or instrumental ensembles, and accompanied and unaccompanied smaller-scale choral music. On the wide scope of his work, Joubert has commented: "I've never really wanted to be pigeonholed as a composer. I've always wanted to write anything that I was either asked to, or wanted to write. I've never wanted to specialise, although I have to a certain extent been pigeonholed already. I'd rather not be looked upon as sort of limited in that way."

The Aston Webb Building of the University of Birmingham. Joubert lectured at the University between 1962 and 1986, and remained an Honorary Senior Research Fellow there. In July 2007, the University conferred on him an Honorary Doctorate of Music (D.Mus.).

In 1986 Joubert took early retirement from the University to concentrate on composition, although he maintained his ties by becoming an Honorary Senior Research Fellow there in 1997. He was conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Music (D.Mus.) by the University of Durham in 1991, and received another from the University of Birmingham on 18 July 2007. He was Composer in Residence at the Peterborough Cathedral Festival in 1990 (which also commissioned his Six Short Preludes on English Hymn Tunes, for chamber organ (Op. 125, 1990), and at the Presteigne Festival in 1997, and served as the chairman of the Birmingham Chamber Music Society for 25 years.

Joubert remained active as a composer. 2007 was the year of his 80th birthday, and was celebrated with a series of concerts, the "Joubertiade 2007", throughout the United Kingdom. These included world premières of the complete version of the oratorio Wings of Faith (Op. 143, 2000, 2003) which was performed by the Ex Cathedra choir, soloists and Academy of Vocal Music, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Jeffrey Skidmore on 22 March 2007 at The Oratory, Birmingham; and a new Oboe Concerto performed by oboist Adrian Wilson and the Orchestra of the Swan conducted by David Curtis on 12 July 2007 at Lichfield Cathedral. The celebrations culminated in the world première of Five Songs of Incarnation (Op. 163, 2007) for tenor and choir which was commissioned through Joubertiade 2007 and performed on 24 November 2007 at St. Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham. In the same year, Lyrita released a celebratory CD of a recording (originally taped in 1994) of Joubert's Symphony No. 1 played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vernon Handley.

Personal life

Joubert and his wife Mary, a pianist, had a daughter Anna, who is a cellist, and a son Pierre, a violinist. He had four grandchildren: Matthew, John, Naomi and Alexander. He died on 7 January 2019, aged 91. Both Birmingham Bach Choir and Ex Cathedra sang at his funeral.

 

John Joubert text and picture from Wikipedia