Sunday 1st June 2025 Ascensiontide Family Service and Evensong

God Is Gone Up  William Croft  1678 - 1727  Organ part Vincent Novello

Croft was born at the Manor House, Nether Ettington, Warwickshire. He was educated at the Chapel Royal under the instruction of John Blow, and remained there until 1698. Two years after this departure, he became organist of St. Anne's Church, Soho and he became an organist and 'Gentleman extraordinary' at the Chapel Royal. He shared that post with his friend Jeremiah Clarke.

In 1707, he took over the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal post, which had been left vacant by the suicide of Jeremiah Clarke. The following year, Croft succeeded Blow (who had lately died) as organist of Westminster Abbey. He composed works for the funeral of Queen Anne (1714) and for the coronation of King George I (1715).

In 1724, Croft published Musica Sacra, a collection of church music, the first such collection to be printed in the form of a score. It contains a Burial Service, which may have been written for Queen Anne or for the Duke of Marlborough. Shortly afterwards his health deteriorated, and he died while visiting Bath aged 48.

One of Croft's most enduring pieces is the hymn tune "St Anne" written to the poem Our God, Our Help in Ages Past by Isaac Watts. Other composers subsequently incorporated the tune in their own works. Handel used it, for instance, in an anthem entitled O Praise the Lord and also Hubert Parry in his 1911 Coronation Te Deum. Bach's Fugue in E-flat major BWV 552 is often called the "St. Anne", due to the similarity (coincidental in this case) of its subject to the hymn melody's first phrase. Croft also wrote various violin sonatas, which are not nearly as often performed as is his religious music, but have been occasionally recorded.

Perhaps Croft's most notable legacy is the suite of Funeral Sentences which have been described as a "glorious work of near genius". First published as part of the Burial Service in Musica Sacra, the date and purpose of their composition is uncertain. The seven Sentences themselves are from the Book of Common Prayer and are verses from various books of the Bible, intended to be said or sung during an Anglican funeral. One of the sentences, Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, was not composed by Croft, but by Henry Purcell, part of his 1695 Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary. Croft wrote:

"...there is one verse composed by my predecessor, the famous Mr Henry Purcell, to which, in justice to his memory, his name is applied. The reason why I did not compose that verse anew (so as to render the whole service entirely of my own composition) is obvious to every Artist; in the rest of that service composed by me, I have endeavoured as near as I could, to imitate that great master and celebrated composer, whose name will for ever stand high in the rank of those who have laboured to improve the English style..."

Croft's Funeral Sentences were sung at George Frederic Handel's funeral in 1759, and have been included in every British state funeral since their publication. They were used at the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002, Baroness Thatcher in 2013 and Prince Philip in 2021.

Picture source:Wikimedia

"God is gone up" is an appropriate anthem to sing at Ascensiontide.  

God is gone up with a merry noise

and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet.

This was sung at the Family Service and also Choral Evensong.

Magnificat and Nunc DImitis  Thomas Morley

This rendition of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis is sung more like a psalm. 

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.

Life

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.

Taken from Wikipedia

Sunday 11th May 2025 Fourth Sunday of Easter

 Brother James's Air (Marosa)  arr. Gordon Jacob   Music inscribed to William Hendry

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. This air is perhaps the most beautiful of the many that came to him spontaneously.

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 20th April 2025 Easter Sunday

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

This is a joyful Easter anthem for SATB choir.

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

God hath brought His Israel Into joy from sadness;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But today amidst the twеlve Thou didst stand, bestowing 

That Thy peace which evermore Passeth human knowing.

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

Life and career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taken from Wikipedia

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

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

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

Taken from Wikipedia

Friday 18th April 2025 Good Friday

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

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

Ouseley
Picture from Wikipaedia

Lamentation 1:12

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

    Look around and see.

Is any suffering like my suffering

    that was inflicted on me,

that the Lord brought on me

    in the day of his fierce anger?

Were You There?  Arr. Francis Westbrook 1903 - 1975

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

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

Sunday 13th April 2025 Palm Sunday

  O Saviour Of The World  Arthur Summerville

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

Sir Arthur Sumervill
Picture from Hyperion.

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

Selsey Chamber Choir, Concert

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

 Picture of Faure by Singer via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday 6th April 2025 Fifth Sunday of Lent Passion Sunday

  O Saviour Of The World  John Goss 1800 - 1880

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

Sir John Goss from Wikipedia

Works

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

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

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

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

Taken from Wikipedia