Sunday 7th July 2019 Trinity 3 Sea Sunday

I Give To You A New Commandment   Peter Nardone

The anthem today is based on  John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you.  What makes this anthem particularly lovely is the Latin hymn Ubi caritas which is sung by the men after the ladies have sung through the New Testament words as a wonderful counter-tune below the ladies.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. Exsultemus et in ipso jucundemur. Timeamus et amemus Deum vivum. Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
















Peter Nardone - (Bach Cantatas Website)

[Where charity is true, God is there. The love of Christ has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be glad in him. Let us fear and love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love one another.]

Peter Nardone was born in Scotland in 1965 and studied organ and piano at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He later studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music, London. In 2012 he was Organist and Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral and artistic director of the Three Choirs Festival.  As a singer, he has sung with the Monteverdi Choir, Tallis Scholars, Kings Consort  and many others.

His compositions are mostly religious.


Crossing The Bar  Sir H Parry   Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was a British poet, and for much of Queen Victoria's reign was Poet Laureate



Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson by George Frederic Watts
Alfred Lord Tennyson, from Wikipedia

C H H Parry was born in Bournemouth in 1848 into a rich family and was educated at Eton where he also gained his music degree.  He went to study further at Oxford.  His music influenced other great English composers such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams.  He wrote his best music in his later years and this include his Songs of Farewell.  He died in Rustington in 1918, just before the end of the Great War.



Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
From Wikipedia

Sunday 30th June 2019 Trinity 2 St Peter and St Paul

Communion Service in F major  Herbert Sumsion

The choir sang the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei  from the setting.

Herbert Whitton Sumsion (14.1.1899 - 11.8.1995) was an English musician and organist at Gloucester Cathedral from 1928 -1967. As a major figure is the Three Choirs festival he had links with the major 20th century composers.  Although known primarily as a cathedral organist, his work was far ranging.

Give Us The Wings Of Faith  Ernest Bullock  Text Issac Watts

Sir Ernest Bullock (1890- 1979) was an English organist, composer and teacher. He was born in Wigan, Lancashire and joined the local church choir as a small boy.  Both his parents died when he was still a boy and the organist there, Edward Bairstow, under took his education, taking him as an articled pupil.  He went to the local Grammar School.  In 1906, Bairstow moved to Leeds and took Ernest along with his own three children. As a non residential student, he qualified with a degree in Music from Durham University in 1908 and obtained a Doctor of Music in 1914.  He qualified in 1909 as a fellow of the Royal College of Organists.

In 1928 he became organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey where he stayed until 1941 having involvement musically in  the coronation of King George VI. In 1941 he moved to Scotland, as Professor of Music in Glasgow. He is noted for his church music and in particular his anthems. 

Sir Ernest Bullock from Wikipedia

Give Us The Wings Of Faith was written by Issac Watts (1674-1748) who was the son of a schoolmaster and born in Southampton. He had a precocious talent and was studying Latin before he was four and writing verse by the age of seven. He went to London to study for the ministry at the age of sixteen.  He was an assistant minister and pastor in London before at the invitation of Sir Thomas Abney, moving to Abney Park and remaining there for the rest of his life.  He was a prolific writer and his collected works were first published in 1720. He is best known for his hymns which he often wrote to consolidate the meaning of his sermon, coming after he had preached. He published more than 800 hymns.  There is a monument to him in Southampton and also one in Westminster Abbey.

Issac Watts from hymntime.com

Sunday 23rd June 2019 Trinity1

Tantum Ergo  Louis Vierne

Tantum ergo is the incipit of the last two verses of Pange lingua.  This is a Medieval Latin hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas c. 1264. The Genitori genitoque and Procedenti ab utroque portions are adapted from Adam of Saint Victor's sequence for Pentecost.  An incipit, is the opening phrase,or in music the opening sequence of notes.
The singing of Tantum ergo occurs during veneration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic Church and other denominations that have this devotion. We sang it as out anthem at the end of Holy Communion.

Louis Vierne (1870 - 1937) was a french organist and composer.  He was born in Poitiers, with very poor vision due to congenital cataracts.  However it was discovered at a young age that he had a gift for music. He was schooled initially in the provinces and then went to the Paris Conservatoire. In 1892, he was assistant organist to Charles-Marie Widor and subsequently was organist at Notre Dame de Paris from 1900 until his death.  He suffered greatly from his own ill health, the loss of his brother and son during World War One and he almost lost a leg after a severe accident. Although his leg  was saved it took a year for him to relearn to use it to play the organ. His organ in Notre Dame was in a severe state of disrepair and he undertook a tour of America, playing to raise money for its refurbishment. This tour was a huge success but it took its toll on his health.

He was playing a recital at his organ in Notre Dame, and had completed the majority of the programme.  He suddenly pitched forward with his foot on the low E pedal and died with the note echoing through the great cathedral.  He had often said he wished to die at the console of the great organ of Notre Dame and so fulfilled his wish.  Maurice Durufle (another great french composer and organist)  was at his side as he died.

Vierne in about 1910 from Wikipedia

Sunday 16th June 2019 Trinity Sunday

Today was Matins.  We sang the Herbert Sumsion setting of Te Deum Laudamus in G.

This was written for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester 1935.

The Te Deum Laudamus is a very early Christian hymn of praise traditionally attributed to Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine.  It is sung as part of Matins.

Herbert Sumsion (14.1.1899 - 11.8.1995) was an English musician and organist at Gloucester Cathedral from 1928 -1967. As a major figure is the Three Choirs festival he had links with the major 20th century composers.  Although known primarily as a cathedral organist, his work was far ranging.

H Sumsion from Discogs

The anthem was Ye Servants of th'all bouteous Lord (Laudate Peuri) by Samuel Webbe Junior.  

This is a setting of Psalm 113, which is in regular use in Jewish, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant liturgies. It has been set to music often. 

Samuel Webbe (1768-1843) was the son of self taught musician Samuel Webbe.  He studied organ, piano and vocal composition, with his father and Muzio Clementi.  Like his father he had an active iterest in Glee clubs and composed many canons and glees.

Sunday 9th June 2019 Pentecost

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire       Thomas Attwood 1765 - 1838

This is based on Veni Creator Spiritus, with the lyricist John Cosin translating.  It is an office hymn for Pentecost.

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" and today's anthem.

Thomas Attwood from Wikipedia

21st April 2019 Easter Sunday

This Joyful Eastertide   Melody David Psalmen  Amsterdam 1685  Harmony Charles Wood 1866-1926  Words G R Woodward 1848-1934

Scripture References; st. 2 = 1 Cor. 15:51-52 ref. = 1 Cor. 15:14, 20 George R. Woodward (b. Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, 1848; d. Highgate, London, England, 1934) wrote the text of this Easter carol to fit the VRUCHTEN tune. The text expresses the joy Christ's resurrection brings to believers (st. 1); that joy provides a sense of security throughout our lives (st. 2) and gives confidence even in the face of death (st. 3). The hymn was first published in Woodward's Carols for Easter and Ascension (1894), which later became a part of the 1902 edition of his famous Cowley Carol Book. Educated at Caius College in Cambridge, England, Woodward was ordained in the Church of England in 1874. He served in six parishes in London, Norfolk, and Suffolk. He was a gifted linguist and translator of a large number of hymns from Greek, Latin, and German. But Woodward's theory of translation was a rigid one–he held that the translation ought to reproduce the meter and rhyme scheme of the original as well as its contents. This practice did not always produce singable hymns; his translations are therefore used more often today as valuable resources than as congregational hymns. With Charles Wood he published three series of The Cowley Carol Book (1901, 1902, 1919), two editions of Songs of Syon (1904, 1910), An Italian Carol Book (1920), and the Cambridge Carol Book (1924). Much of the unfamiliar music introduced in The English Hymnal (1906) resulted from Woodward's research. He also produced an edition of the Piae Cantiones of 1582 (1910) and published a number of his translations in Hymns of the Greek Church (1922). Liturgical Use: Easter season; funerals. --Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988

VRUCHTEN is originally a seventeenth-century Dutch folk tune for the love song "De liefde Voortgebracht." It became a hymn tune in Joachim Oudaen's David' s Psalmen (1685) as a setting for "Hoe groot de vruchten zijn." The tune is distinguished by the melismas that mark the end of stanza lines and by the rising sequences in the refrain, which provide a fitting word painting for "arisen." Although the melody has a wide range, it has become a popular Easter carol in modern hymnals. The harmonization by Dale Grotenhuis (PHH 4) makes for glorious part singing (many hymnals use a harmonization by Charles Wood). Use medium organ accompaniment, possibly with a trumpet stop or real trumpets. --Psalter Hymnal Handbook

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

He is remembered for his Anglican Church music.

Charles Wood from Wikipedia

George Radcliffe Woodward was an English Anglican priest who wrote mostly religious verse.  He fitted most to well known melodies usually from the Renaissance, and occasionally harmonised himself , but usually left this to his collaborator Charles Wood.  He was born n Birkenhead and educated in Elstree, then Harrow and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.  This Joyful Eastertide was published in "Carols for Easter and Ascension tide" in 1894.

Good Friday 19th April 2019

A Meditation in Words and Music for Good Friday

The service started with prayers.

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.’

Our biblical readings came from John's gospel, telling the Passion story.

John 19: 14-16 Jesus before Pilate

However interspersed between these and the hymns and motets were poems.

When Jesus Came To Golgotha  Studdert Kennedy

John 19: 16-27 Jesus is crucified

Drop, Drop Slow Tears   Orlando Gibbons

Drop, drop, slow tears is a devotional reflection, sung at Passiontide but not specific to that season. Like The King of love and Let all mortal flesh, it was a Vaughan Williams ‘marriage’: in The English Hymnal he joined a poignant text by the Jacobean poet and clergyman Phineas Fletcher to one of Orlando Gibbons’s hymn tunes (Song 46, published in 1623). Interestingly, poet and composer are linked by their connection with King’s College, Cambridge, where Gibbons was a chorister and Fletcher a student. Taken from hyperion-records.co.uk

Gibbons sang in the choir of Kings College Cambridge between 1598 and 1598, where his eldest brother was master of the choristers. He gained his Bachelor of Music in 1606. King James 1 appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and he was organist there from around 1615 until his death, being senior organist from 1623. He was also a keyboard player in the privy chamber of Prince Charles (later Charles 1) and organist at Westminster Abbey. He died suddenly at the age of 41.

He wrote a large number of pieces for keyboard, madrigals and many verse anthems.

John 19: 28-30 Jesus dies on the cross

Ah Holy Jesu   Johann Cruger 1598-1662 Words Johann Heermann 1585-1647

This is a German hymn for passion tide. It was written in 1630 and first published in Devoti Musica Cordis.

Johann Cruger was born the son of an Inn keeper in Gross Breesen and educated in the Lateinschule nearby. He composed numerous works and also wrote about music education.

Johann Cruger from Wikipedia

Johann Heermann  was born in Raudten. He started to write poetry at the age of 17. His earlier works were written in Latin with a few lines of German and based on the Gospels, but he then moved to German. Some of his works were set to music by J S Bach.

Johann Heerman from Wikipedia

Am I A Stone  Christina Rossetti

John 19: 31-37 Jesus is brought down from the cross

In Evil Long I Took Delight  John Newton

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

By Faith We Serve Him  Parminer Summon

The service concluded with prayers.