Sunday 9th February 2025 4th before Lent

The Call   Ralph Vaugh Williams  from Five Mystical Songs  text George Herbert

George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists." He was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He sat in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.

After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him "a most glorious saint and seer".

He was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.

Taken from Wikipedia.

Ralph Vaughan Williams  (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Teutonic influences.

Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.

Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams's personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last symphony months before his death at the age of eighty-five. His works have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire, and all his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been recorded.

Taken from Wikipedia.

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 joys in love.

Sunday 2nd February 2025 Evensong

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis   Stanford in C

Taken from Wikipedia.

The Magnificat (Latin for "[My soul] magnifies [the Lord]") is a canticle, also known as the Song of Mary, the Canticle of Mary and, in the Byzantine tradition, the Ode of the Theotokos . It is traditionally incorporated into the liturgical services of the Catholic Church (at vespers) and of the Eastern Orthodox churches (at the morning services). It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn. Its name comes from the incipit of the Latin version of the canticle's text.

The text of the canticle is taken directly from the Gospel of Luke (1:46–55) where it is spoken by Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. In the narrative, after Mary greets Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist, the latter moves within Elizabeth's womb. Elizabeth praises Mary for her faith (using words partially reflected in the Hail Mary), and Mary responds with what is now known as the Magnificat.

Within the whole of Christianity, the Magnificat is most frequently recited within the Liturgy of the Hours. In Western Christianity, the Magnificat is most often sung or recited during the main evening prayer service: Vespers in the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and Evening Prayer (or Evensong) in Anglicanism. In Eastern Christianity, the Magnificat is usually sung at Sunday Matins. Among Protestant groups, the Magnificat may also be sung during worship services, especially in the Advent season during which these verses are traditionally read.

The Nunc dimittis, also known as the Song of Simeon or the Canticle of Simeon, is a canticle taken from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verses 29 through 32. Its Latin name comes from its incipit, the opening words, of the Vulgate translation of the passage, meaning "Now let depart". Since the 4th century it has been used in services of evening worship such as Compline, Vespers, and Evensong.

The title is formed from the opening words in the Latin Vulgate, “Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine" ("Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord"). Although brief, the canticle abounds in Old Testament allusions. For example, "Because my eyes have seen thy salvation" alludes to Isaiah 52:10.

According to the narrative in Luke 2:25-32, Simeon was a devout Jew who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the ceremony of redemption of the firstborn son (after the time of Mary's purification: at least 40 days after the birth, and thus distinct from the circumcision), Simeon was there, and he took Jesus into his arms and uttered words rendered variously as follows:

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.

 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

Through the Day Words by T Kelly (1769-1854) Music from Thomas Morley's First Book of Ayres (1600) adapted by Rev H W Sparking

The words are taken from an anthem for Compline, a service at the end of the day, set to music by Thomas Morley. It is set for two voices.

Through the day thy love has spared us;

Now we lay us down to rest;

Through the silent watches guard us,

Let no foe our peace molest:

Jesu thou our guardian be;

Sweet it is to trust in thee.

Pilgrims here on earth and strangers,

Dwelling in the midst of foe,

Us and ours preserve from danger, 

In thine arms we may repose,

And when life's sad day is past,

Rest with thee in heav'n at last.

Thomas Morley (1557 – early October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, singer and organist of the Renaissance. He was one of the foremost members of the English Madrigal School. Referring to the strong Italian influence on the English madrigal, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that Morley was "chiefly responsible for grafting the Italian shoot on to the native stock and initiating the curiously brief but brilliant flowering of the madrigal that constitutes one of the most colourful episodes in the history of English music."

Living in London at the same time as Shakespeare, Morley was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.

Morley was active in church music as a singer, composer and organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He was also involved in music publishing. From 1598 up to his death he held a printing patent (a type of monopoly). He used the monopoly in partnership with professional music printers such as Thomas East.

Morley was born in Norwich, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. He may have been a Roman Catholic, but he was able to avoid prosecution as a recusant, and there is evidence that he may have been an informer on the activities of Roman Catholics.

It is believed that Morley moved from Norwich to London sometime before 1574 to be a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral. Around this time, he studied with William Byrd, whom he named as his mentor in his 1597 publication A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. Byrd also taught Morley's contemporary, Peter Philips. In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St. Paul's in London. His young son died the following year in 1589. He and his wife Susan had three more children between 1596 and 1600.

In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, but never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play during the playwright's lifetime. However, given that the song was published in 1600, there is evidently a possibility that it was used in stage performances.

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional colour, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now Is the Month of Maying" (which is actually a ballett); he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Bandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and is still an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.

Thomas Morley was buried in the graveyard of the church of St Botolph Billingsgate, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666, and not rebuilt. Thus his grave is lost.

Sunday 2nd January 2025 Candlemass or The Presentation in the Temple

Nunc Dimitis in C  C V Stanford

The Nunc dimittis, also known as the Song of Simeon or the Canticle of Simeon, is a canticle taken from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verses 29 through 32. Its Latin name comes from its incipit, the opening words, of the Vulgate translation of the passage, meaning "Now let depart". Since the 4th century it has been used in services of evening worship such as Compline, Vespers, and Evensong.

The title is formed from the opening words in the Latin Vulgate, “Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine" ("Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord"). Although brief, the canticle abounds in Old Testament allusions. For example, "Because my eyes have seen thy salvation" alludes to Isaiah 52:10.

According to the narrative in Luke 2:25-32, Simeon was a devout Jew who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the ceremony of redemption of the firstborn son (after the time of Mary's purification: at least 40 days after the birth, and thus distinct from the circumcision), Simeon was there, and he took Jesus into his arms and uttered words rendered variously as follows:

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.

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

Sunday 26th January 2025 Third Sunday of Epiphany

Ave Verum Corpus  Text Innocent VI  Music David Terry

Another version of the famous anthem, this time by a modern composer/, David Terry about whom I have not been able to find anything.

During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the Eucharist during the consecration at Mass. It was also used frequently during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Latin

Ave verum corpus, 

natum de Maria Virgine,

vere passum, immolatum

in cruce pro homine

cuius latus perforatum

fluxit aqua et sanguine:

esto nobis prægustatum

in mortis examine.

O Iesu dulcis, O Iesu pie,

O Iesu, fili Mariae.

Miserere mei. Amen.

 

Hail, true Body, 

born of the Virgin Mary,

having truly suffered, sacrificed

on the cross for mankind,

from whose pierced side

water and blood flowed:

Be for us a foretaste [of the Heavenly banquet]

in the trial of death!

O sweet Jesus, O holy Jesus,

O Jesus, son of Mary,

have mercy on me. Amen.

Taken from Wikipedia

The prayer is a meditation on Jesus's Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, and ties it to the redemptive meaning of suffering in the life of all believers.

Sunday 22d December 2024 Service of Nine Lessons and Carols

Up! Good Christen Folk, And Listen  G. R. Woodward (1848-1934)  Melody from Piae Cantones (1582)  harmonised by G.R. Woodward

Piae Cantiones ecclesiasticae et scholasticae veterum episcoporum (in English Pious ecclesiastical and school songs of the ancient bishops) is a collection of late medieval Latin songs first published in 1582. It was compiled by Jacobus Finno, a clergyman who was headmaster of the cathedral school at Turku. Publication was undertaken by Theodoricus Petri Rutha of Nyland, who lived from about 1560 to about 1630. He came from an aristocratic family in Finland, and was educated at Rostock.

The collection Piae Cantiones was published in Greifswald, duchy of Pomerania, Germany, and includes 74 Latin and Swedish/Latin songs that were sung at the time in Finnish cathedral schools, most notably in the cathedral school at Turku. Most of them are religious in nature but some, for example Tempus adest floridum, are secular school songs. The lyrics in the collection testify to the moderate nature of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. Although some Catholic nuances have been purged, many songs still carry strong traces of the cult of Virgin Mary (e.g. Ave Maris Stella). Although published as late as 1582, the melodies of Piae Cantiones are medieval by nature. The origin of the songs and melodies varies. Many originate from Central Europe but quite a few seem to have been written in Nordic countries.

In 1625 the collection was re-published with 13 further songs.

Later versions of this collection were compiled by Finns Henricus Fattbuur and Mathias Tolia. A Finnish translation of Piae Cantiones (1616) was done by Hemminki of Masku (Hemming), who earlier (1605) had published a remarkable Finnish hymnal. The songs of Piae Cantiones were popular in Finnish schools until the 19th century but fell gradually into disuse. However, a newly[when?] awakened interest in this old music has made them quite popular and they form part of the standard repertoire of many Finnish and Swedish choirs. Many of Hemming's translations are present (with some modernization) in the official book of anthems of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.

Piae Cantiones in English

In 1853 the British ambassador to Sweden, G. J. R. Gordon, returned to Britain with a copy of the 1582 edition, which he presented to John Mason Neale, well known for his interest in early music. He in turn passed it on to Thomas Helmore whom he knew to be expert in the interpretation of the mensural notation in which the tunes were given. On receiving the tunes in modern notation Neale translated the texts into English, or in a few cases wrote completely new texts. Neale and Helmore published 12 of these tunes in that same year with the title Carols for Christmastide, and the following year 12 more as Carols for Eastertide. The Christmas set included Christ was born on Christmas Day from Resonet in laudibus, Good Christian men, rejoice from In dulci jubilo, and Good King Wenceslas as completely new words for the spring carol Tempus adest floridum. The Easter set included Let the song be begun from Personent hodie.

In Helmore's 1854 The Hymnal Noted, Divinum mysterium became, with words inspired by Prudentius' poem Corde natus ex parentis, Of the father sole begotten. Subsequent settings were made by these and other authors, such as Puer nobis nascitur (Unto Us is Born a Son) and Gaudete.

In 1910 an edition of the original, entitled Piae Cantiones: A Collection of Church & School Song, chiefly Ancient Swedish, originally published in A.D. 1582 by Theodoric Petri of Nyland, was published in England by the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, with a preface and notes by George Ratcliffe Woodward.

A number of pieces translated from Piae Cantiones were arranged by Sir David Willcocks, Reginald Jacques and John Rutter and published in their popular 1961 collection, Carols for Choirs, and in subsequent volumes in this series.

Taken from Wikipedia

George Ratcliffe Woodward (27 December 1848 – 3 March 1934) was an English Anglican priest who wrote mostly religious verse, both original and translated from ancient authors. The best-known of these were written to fit traditional melodies, mainly of the Renaissance. He sometimes harmonised these melodies himself, but usually left this to his frequent collaborator, composer Charles Wood.

Woodward was born at 26 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, North West England, and educated at Elstree School, then located in Elstree, Hertfordshire, then Harrow School. In 1867 he won a Sayer Scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating in 1872, third class in the Classics Tripos.

On 21 December 1874 he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of London, to serve as Assistant Curate at St Barnabas, Pimlico. In September 1882 he moved to St Mary and All Saints, Little Walsingham with Houghton St Giles, in Norfolk. Woodward played the cello, and the euphonium, sometimes in procession. Other hobbies included bellringing and beekeeping and he also published and printed booklets of his own verse. In 1889 he married Alice Dorothy Lee Warner, at St Barnabas, Pimlico, having moved to Chelmondiston, near Ipswich, in 1888.

In 1893, Woodward published Carols for Christmas-Tide, Series II. His wife Alice died in October 1893, and was buried in Walsingham. In 1894, Woodward published Carols for Easter and Ascension-tide, with one original composition: This joyful Eastertide. In 1894 Woodward resigned as Rector of Chelmondiston, to return to St Barnabas', Pimlico, as Assistant Priest and Precentor.

Woodward helped create the St Barnabas Choral Society, and continued his interests in carols and plainsong. In 1897 he published Hymns and Carols for Christmas-tide, and in 1898 produced Legends of the Saints, and then in 1902 and 1903 The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and Poemata. In 1899 Woodward left St Barnabas to edit the Cowley Carol Book, which was published in 1901 and 1919.

In 1904 Songs of Syon was published, and In 1910 Woodward’s edition of Piae Cantiones, compiled for the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society. In 1917, he jointly wrote The Acathist Hymn of the Holy Orthodox Church in the Original Greek Text and done into English Verse. In 1920, collaborating with Charles Wood, An Italian Carol Book was published. In 1922, Hymns of the Greek Church.

In 1924, Woodward and Wood published A Cambridge Carol Book: Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter and Other Seasons. It included "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and "Past Three O'Clock". The same year Woodward received an honorary Lambeth Doctorate in Music. Woodward died at 48 West Hill, Highgate on 3 March 1934. His interment was at Little Walsingham, Norfolk, on 8 March 1934, at 2 PM.

Taken from Wikipedia

Jesus Christ The Apple Tree  Words from Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs compiled by Joshua Smith (New Hamoshire, 1784)   Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (also known as Apple Tree and, in its early publications, as Christ Compared to an Apple-tree) is a poem, possibly intended for use as a carol, written in the 18th century. It has been set to music by a number of composers, including Jeremiah Ingalls (1764–1838), Elizabeth Poston (1905–1987) and John Rutter.

The first known publication, beginning The Tree of Life My Soul Hath Seen, was in London's Spiritual Magazine in August, 1761. This credits "R.H." as the submitter and presumed author. R.H. has been shown most likely to refer to Rev. Richard Hutchins, a Calvinist Baptist clergyman then in Long Buckby, Northamptonshire. Another early printing, which cannot be dated and could be earlier, is an English broadsheet. This broadsheet uses the term "Methodists," which certainly places it after about 1730, when the term first came into use at Oxford University, and probably substantially later, when the religious movement had spread.

The hymn's first known appearance in a hymnal, and in America, was in 1784 in Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians compiled by Joshua Smith, a lay Baptist minister from New Hampshire. It became prevalent in American publications but not English ones. Consequently, American authorship was sometimes assumed despite the lack of evidence.

The song may be an allusion to both the apple tree in Song of Solomon 2:3 which has been interpreted as a metaphor representing Jesus, and to his description of his life as a tree of life in Luke 13:18–19 and elsewhere in the New Testament including Revelation 22:1–2 and within the Old Testament in Genesis. Apple trees were commonly grown in England and there was an old English tradition of wassailing or wishing health to apple trees on Christmas Eve. The song is now performed by choirs around the world, especially during the Christmas season as a Christmas carol.

Another motivation of the song may have been to Christianize old English winter season songs used in wassailing the apple orchards — pouring out libations or engaging in similar ceremonies to seek fertility of the trees.

Joshua Smith (1760–1795) was an early American hymn compiler and Baptist minister in New Hampshire, USA.

Smith was born in 1760 and was a Baptist lay minister in New Hampshire. Smith authored Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs, a book of hymns first published in either 1784 or 1791 featuring and popularizing well-known folk songs such as "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree". The book was published in Norwich and Exeter, New Hampshire. By 1803 at least eleven more editions were published. Many of his pieces were set to music by Jeremiah Ingalls, another New England composer. Smith lived in Canaan and Brentwood, New Hampshire, where he was active in the local Baptist congregations. Smith died of consumption in 1795.

Elizabeth Poston (24 October 1905 – 18 March 1987) was an English composer, pianist and writer.

Poston was born in Highfield House in Pin Green, which is now the site of Hampson Park in Stevenage. In 1914 she moved with her mother, Clementine Poston, to nearby Rooks Nest House where E. M. Forster had lived as a child. Poston and Forster subsequently became good friends. After attending Queen Margaret's School, York and studying with pianist Harold Samuel, she attended the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, where both Peter Warlock and Ralph Vaughan Williams encouraged her talents and where she studied composition with Julius Harrison. She won a prize from the RAM for her one movement Violin Sonata, which was subsequently broadcast by the BBC on 9 July 1928, with Antonio Brosa as soloist and Victor Hely-Hutchinson piano.

When she graduated from the RAM in 1925 seven of her songs were published, and in 1928 she published five more. Poston went abroad between 1930 and 1939, where she studied architecture and collected folksongs. She was also a respected performer, premiering Walter Leigh’s Concertino for harpsichord and strings in 1934.

Wartime and the BBC

When she returned to England at the beginning of World War II Poston joined the BBC and became director of music in the European Service. During the war she is said to have carried out secretive work as an agent; at the BBC she apparently used gramophone records to send coded messages to allies in Europe. During the war she also played the piano at the National Gallery lunchtime concerts organised by Myra Hess.

Poston left the BBC briefly in 1945, but returned in 1946 at the invitation of Douglas Cleverdon to advise on the creation of the BBC Third Programme. She subsequently became one of the youngest composers to be represented on the network at its opening, with her incidental music for John Milton's Comus.

Composition

Poston composed scores for radio and television productions – over 40 for radio alone – and collaborated with C. S. Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Terence Tiller and other writers. She wrote the score for the 1970 BBC television production of Howards End (broadcast on 26 December 1970 as Play of the Month, now lost[) while living in Rooks Nest House, which was the setting for the novel.

Her carols, especially Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (1967) and The Boar's Head Carol (1960), remain widely performed. The Nativity (1950), a sequence of newly composed carols and adaptations from folk songs or Medieval manuscripts retelling the Christmas Story, was premiered as a radio feature produced by Terence Tiller, but had an afterlife as an extended choral work for concert performance. It's one of two extended choral works of hers to have been recorded. The other is An English Day Book, a 20-minute sequence of sacred and profane poetry settings relating to different times of the day and year. It includes a setting of Sweet Suffolk Owl by Thomas Vautor that has achieved separate popularity. A new recording was issued in 2024. There are also anthems, mostly dating from the 1950s, such as the four movement Song of Wisdom (1956), written for Yardley Grammar School in Birmingham.

The Concertino da camera on a Theme of Martin Peerson (1957) is a significant example of her music for chamber ensembles, and has been recorded. A Swiss radio broadcast of her 1960 Trio for flute, viola and harp can be heard on YouTube, and a new recording of the Trio by the Korros Ensemble was released in 2021. A six-minute work for string orchestra, Blackberry Fold: Requiem for a Dog, received its first broadcast in February 1976.

In total there are over 300 compositions, some still to be discovered. Poston's extensive archives are now housed at the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies in Hertford.

Writing and editing

In addition to composing, Poston was an academic, writer and editor. In 1947 she created a five-part lecture series on Peter Warlock for the BBC. Much later, she defended his reputation in a very personal broadcast talk.

She wrote articles and programme notes for the Arts Council of Great Britain and was the editor of a number of vocal music anthologies, including The Children's Song Book (1961), which was described as "a little autobiography, reflecting her own delight in songs since the earliest she remembers from the age of two". The book contains five of her own original settings, including a short song version of Jesus Christ the Apple Tree that was the germ of her famous choral piece, fully realised six years later. There were also three Penguin collections – The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols (two volumes, 1965 and 1971), and (with Alan Lomax) The Penguin Book of American Folksongs (1964) – as well as (with David Holbrook) The Cambridge Hymnal (1970).

Later career

Poston was the president of the Society of Women Musicians 1955–1961.

She continued to live at Rooks Nest House until her death at the age of 81 in 1987.A catalogue of her works by her friend Dr John Alabaster published in 2018 lists some two dozen of her compositions considered lost. One of them, the Festal Te Deum, first performed in 1959, was rediscovered in 2018.

Text and picture from Wikipedia

The Angel Gabriel from heaven came. Sabine Baring-Gould  Basque traditional arr. Edgar Pettman.

This is a Basque Christmas folk carol based on the annunciation of the Virgin Mary by Archangel Gabriel.  It was collected by Charles Bordes (1863 -1909) a french music teacher and composer and paraphrased into English by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) an Anglican priest and collector of folk songs. It is commonly sung to an arrangement by Edgar Pettman (1866-1943) English organist, choral conductor and music editor.

Myn Lyking  Words 15th Century  R.R. Terry (1865-1938)

"Lullay, mine liking" is a Middle English lyric poem or carol of the 15th century which frames a narrative describing an encounter of the Nativity with a song sung by the Virgin Mary to the infant Christ. The refrain is an early example of an English lullaby; the term "lullaby" is thought to originate with the "lu lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by" or "bye bye", another lulling sound (for example in the similarly ancient Coventry Carol).

There are a number of surviving medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus which take the form of a lullaby, of which this is probably the most famous example. Written by an anonymous hand, the text is found uniquely in Sloane MS 2593, a collection of medieval lyrics now held in the British Library.

Originally intended to be sung, no evidence of the work's musical setting survives, and since its rediscovery and the musical possibilities suggested by the text have led to diverse interpretations by numerous composers including Philip Stopford, Edgar Pettman, Peter Warlock, R. R. Terry, Gustav Holst, Ronald Corp, David Willcocks, Philip Lawson and Richard Rodney Bennett.

These are sometimes titled "I saw a fair maiden" whereas "Myn Lyking" is used in the versions by R.R. Terry and Ronald Corp (as the first of the latter's Three Medieval Carols).

Sir Richard Runciman Terry (3 January 1864 – 18 April 1938) was an English organist, choir director, composer and musicologist. He is noted for his pioneering revival of Tudor liturgical music.

Richard Terry was born in 1864 in Ellington, Northumberland. At the age of 11 he started playing the organ at the local church. He was educated at various schools in South Shields, St Albans and London. In 1881 Terry was living in Jarrow and working as a Pupil Teacher. Terry then spent seventeen months as a non-collegiate person at Oxford (October 1887 to May 1889) and two years at Cambridge (1888–90), where he went as a non-collegiate student but became a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge. There he also became a music critic for The Cambridge Review. At Cambridge, he was much influenced by the Professor of Music, Charles Villiers Stanford and the King's Chapel organist Arthur Henry Mann who taught him the techniques of choral singing and the training of boys' voices.

Terry left Cambridge in 1890 without taking a degree. He was appointed School Master: Teacher of Music, Organist and School Choir Master at Bedford County School, (renamed Elstow School in 1907) Kempston, Bedfordshire. He was the organist at St. John's Cathedral, Antigua in 1892. Terry then taught and was Director of Music at Highgate School from September 1895 to December 1895. Terry became a Catholic in 1896, the year he was appointed organist and director of music at the Roman Catholic Benedictine Downside School in Somerset. It was here where he began the work of reviving the Latin music of Tudor English composers such as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. He was greatly inspired by the revival of Gregorian chant by Dom Prosper Guéranger at Solesmes Abbey in France, which was to be an important part of the Downside musical repertoire.

In 1899 Terry took his Downside choir to Ealing, for the opening of the new Benedictine church, where they sang William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices and motets by Palestrina, Philips and Allegri. The archbishop of Westminster, cardinal Herbert Vaughan, was the preacher on the occasion and he decided that he would have Terry as his Master of Music at the newly built Westminster Cathedral.

Terry's time at Westminster Cathedral was marked by admiration and praise, as well as frustrations. In 1911, he received a honoris causa degree of Doctor of Music at Durham University, and in the same year, during the International Music Congress, a special session was held in the Cathedral of early English church music, sung by the Cathedral Choir.

While Terry's relation with Cardinal Vaughan was excellent, it was less so with his successor, Cardinal Francis Bourne. Bourne's different view on church music, a continual shortage of financial means to support the choir, the decrease in the number of lay clerks during and after the World War I, together with Terry's engagements in other things outside the Cathedral led to a prolonged period of tension.

Terry was forced to resign from the Cathedral in 1924, after coming under increasing criticism for his erratic behaviour and neglect of duty, including: neglecting administrative work, taking off without leave for weeks at a time, cancelling choir rehearsals without notice, dismissing Lay Clerks without proper procedure, taking on too many engagements outside his Cathedral work and tensions due to his inconsistent approach to congregational singing at the Cathedral. Nonetheless, during this time he was able to establish a choral tradition of great merit at the Cathedral, developing a repertoire of both Gregorian chant and polyphonic music. The choir's particular focus on renaissance polyphony is believed to have influenced the emerging school of 20th century English composers and the performance of church music in England.

The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians credits Terry with the revival of much English church music, including Peter Philips' Cantiones sacrae, Byrd's three and five part masses and Gradualia and Cantiones sacrae, Tallis' mass and lamentations, William Mundy's Mass Upon the Square and many motets by Thomas Morley, Christopher Tye and others. Much of this work resulted in his editing and publishing performing editions of this music including 24 motets in Novello's series of Tudor motets. He also published the first modern editions of Calvin's first psalter of 1539 and the Scottish Psalter of 1635. In 1912 he edited the Westminster Hymnal.

In 1921, in an obvious departure from his church music, he edited the Curwen edition of 'The Shanty Book (Part 1)'. The foreword was written by Sir Walter Runciman, acknowledging that the time of the shanty was over, along with sail-powered merchant ships. Terry's 'Introduction' gives an excellent insight into the shanty as the sailor's work song, deferring to the well-known shanty collection by Capt. W.B Whall 'Sea Songs, Ships and Shanties' (1910 & 1912), above other accounts written between 1887 and 1920. The collection of 30 shanties also includes explanations for their use at sea, and his extensive comments give us a deal of valuable information about a particular aspect of social and maritime history.

Following his resignation from Westminster Cathedral he went on to work as a musical editor, journalist and academic. He was the initial editor of the Oxford University Press series Tudor Church Music, although by the time this series was completed he had been ousted from the editorship. He was awarded a knighthood for his services to music in the 1922 Dissolution Honours.

Composer

Terry was also a composer of church music, most notably of hymn tunes, several of which are in use today. These include Highwood (to the words 'Hark, what a sound'), Billing (setting 'Praise to the holiest in the height'), and many carols, including the popular Myn Lyking, one of a set of 12 original carols published in 1912. Terry was a central figure in the revival of the carol, establishing regular carol singing at Westminster Cathedral and publishing more of his own carols in the 1920s, including the Three Cradle Songs (published in 1924, though dating from 1905-1907).

All of his original compositions are choral, and include anthems, motets and masses. His largest single composition was the four-part Mass of St. Gregory for choir and organ, composed in 1896. The motet Tu es Petrus, written for the Cardiff Catholic Choral Society in 1914, was his last substantial composition.

Taken from Wikipedia

Ding Dong! Merrily On High   16th Century French Melody harmonised by Charles Wood (1866-1926)  Words by G R Woodward (1848-1934)

The present setting of Ding dong! merrily on high is the well-known one with words by G R Woodward and a catchy sixteenth-century French tune harmonized by Charles Wood. The tune is taken from a dance manual called Orchésographie, published in Langres in 1588 by a canon named Jehan Tabourot, who used as a pseudonym the anagrammatic form, Thoinot Arbeau. In the book the dance is described as a ‘branle de l’official’—implying particular vibrancy and exuberance. Charles Wood (1866–1926) was a product of the Royal College of Music and studied composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford whom he succeeded as professor of music at Cambridge in 1924. Vaughan Williams was among his pupils. His best-known pieces are his anthems, which include O Thou the central Orb and Expectans expectavi.

from notes by Wadham Sutton © 1993

George Ratcliffe Woodward (27 December 1848 – 3 March 1934) was an English Anglican priest who wrote mostly religious verse, both original and translated from ancient authors. The best-known of these were written to fit traditional melodies, mainly of the Renaissance. He sometimes harmonised these melodies himself, but usually left this to his frequent collaborator, composer Charles Wood.

Woodward was born at 26 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead and educated at Elstree School, then located in Elstree, Hertfordshire, then Harrow School. In 1867 he won a Sayer Scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating in 1872, third class in the Classics Tripos.

On 21 December 1874 he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of London, to serve as Assistant Curate at St Barnabas, Pimlico. In September 1882 he moved to St Mary and All Saints, Little Walsingham with Houghton St Giles, in Norfolk. Woodward played the cello, and the euphonium, sometimes in procession. Other hobbies included bellringing and beekeeping and he also published and printed booklets of his own verse. In 1889 he married Alice Dorothy Lee Warner, at St Barnabas, Pimlico, having moved to Chelmondiston, near Ipswich, in 1888.

In 1893, Woodward published Carols for Christmas-Tide, Series II. His wife Alice died in October 1893, and was buried in Walsingham. In 1894, Woodward published Carols for Easter and Ascension-tide, with one original composition: This joyful Eastertide. In 1894 Woodward resigned as Rector of Chelmondiston, to return to St Barnabas', Pimlico, as Assistant Priest and Precentor.

Woodward helped create the St Barnabas Choral Society, and continued his interests in carols and plainsong. In 1897 he published Hymns and Carols for Christmas-tide, and in 1898 produced Legends of the Saints, and then in 1902 and 1903 The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and Poemata. In 1899 Woodward left St Barnabas to edit the Cowley Carol Book.

In 1904 Songs of Syon was published, and In 1910 Woodward’s edition of Piae Cantiones, compiled for the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society. In 1917, he jointly wrote The Acathist Hymn of the Holy Orthodox Church in the Original Greek Text and done into English Verse. In 1920, collaborating with Charles Wood, An Italian Carol Book was published. In 1922, Hymns of the Greek Church.

In 1924, Woodward and Wood published A Cambridge Carol Book: Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter and Other Seasons. It included "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and "Past Three O'Clock". The same year Woodward received an honorary Lambeth Doctorate in Music. Woodward died at 48 West Hill, Highgate on 3 March 1934. His interment was at Little Walsingham, Norfolk, on 8 March 1934, at 2 PM.

taken from Wikipedia

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

Sunday 22nd December 2024 Fourth Sunday of Advent

 The Angel Gabriel from heaven came. Sabine Baring-Gould  Basque traditional arr. Edgar Pettman.

This is a Basque Christmas folk carol based on the annunciation of the Virgin Mary by Archangel Gabriel.  It was collected by Charles Bordes (1863 -1909) a french music teacher and composer and paraphrased into English by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) an Anglican priest and collector of folk songs. It is commonly sung to an arrangement by Edgar Pettman (1866-1943) English organist, choral conductor and music editor.

Sunday 15th December 2024 Third Sunday in Advent Matins

 Jubilate Deo in B flat Stanford

Taken from the Novello  Copy

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford has a perverse relationship with posterity.  Remembered today largely for his choral miniatures, this restless symphonist was the unwilling Janus of British music.  A significant presence on the European scene in his own lifetime, he was an outspoken critic of Wagner, Strauss and modernism in general. Nevertheless, as a formalist with flair and skill, his influence catalysed much of the great English music of the 20th century.  As fellow composer George Dyson said: "In a certain sense the very rebellion he fought was the most obvious fruit of his methods."

The Jubilate in B flat displays the composers trademark mastery of thematic structures.

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

How Beautiful Upon the Mountains   from "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion"

John Stainer 1840-1901 Words Isaiah 52 v. 7

Stainer was born in Southwark, London, the son of a cabinet maker. He was a chorister at  St Paul's Cathedral at the age of 10 and at 16, appointed organist at St Michael's College, Tenbury.  In 1960, he became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was allowed to study for a degree so long as it did not interfere with his duties and in 1864 gained his BA, and 2 years later his MA.  He was eventually an examiner for Oxford music degrees.

In 1872 he was appointed organist at St Paul's cathedral, in 1877 an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, and an examiner for the Doctor of Music degrees for Cambridge and London Universities.  He received his knighthood from Queen Victoria in 1888.

John Stainer (Wikimedia Commons)