Sunday 4th December 2022 Advent 2

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)

Sunday 27th November 2022 Advent 1

In Night's Dim Shadows Lying  Words Charles Coffin  Music from the Katholisches Gesangbuch  Arr George Guest

SATB Choir - accompanied or a cappella. A beautiful strophic setting of this Advent text by Charles Coffin (1676-1749). Used as an introit, an anthem, part of your Lessons and Carols service, communion music ... the possibilities abound.

In night’s dim shadows lying,

Our limbs fast lock’d in sleep,

to thee, with faithful sighing,

Our souls their vigil keep.

Desire of every nation,

Hear, Lord, our piteous cry;

Thou Word, the world’s salvation,

Uplift us where we lie.

Lord, be thine Advent hasten’d,

Lest sin thy people mar;

The gates which Adam fasten’d —

The gates of heav’n, unbar.

Son, to thine endless merit,

Redeemer, Saviour, Friend,

With Sire and Holy Spirit

Be praises without end. Amen.

Charles Coffin was born 4 October 1676 at Buzancy, Ardennes in the Duchy of Rheim and educated at College du Plessis. In 1701, he was appointed chief assistant to Charles Rollin, principal of the Collège de Beauvais. He succeeded Rollin as principal in 1712. That same year he was entrusted with the funeral oration for Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the father of Louis XV. In 1718. he became rector of the University of Paris, a post which he held until his death.

Hymns

Coffin published in 1727 some of his Latin poems, for which he was already noted, and in 1736 the bulk of his hymns appeared in the Paris Breviary of that year, an edition of which was published in 1838 at Oxford by John Henry Newman. 1736 also saw the publication of Coffin's Hymni Sacri Auctore Carolo Coffin, and in 1755 a complete edition of his Works was issued in 2 vols.

The Hymni Sacri included a poem adapted from the original chant, Jordanis oras prævia, which Rev. John Chandler later translated to the hymn On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry set to the tune Winchester New for use at Matins during Advent. Chandler also translated Coffin's The Advent of Our King.

Among his other works is an ode in praise of the wines of Champagne. This work is a version of a similar poem in which Bénigne Grenan, professor at Harcourt College, praised the pre-eminence of Burgundy wine, and that one of Charles Coffin's Jansenist friends, Marc-Antoine Hersan, had had fun reciting one evening at a dinner.

Jansenism

While the papal bull Unigenitus condemned Jansenism, many in France interpreted it as an attack on the prerogatives of the French church. The University of Paris and the provincial Parlements were hotbeds of opposition. The University was known to harbor Jansenist sympathizers; the Parlement of Paris went so far as to threatened to confiscate the temporalities of the Archbishop. As rector of the University and clerk to the Parlement of Paris, even Coffin's hymns were viewed by some with suspicion.

Death

Coffin died of pneumonia in Paris 20 June 1749. Due to his persistence in appealing against the apostolic constitution Unigenitus, under instructions from the Archbishop, who wished to make an example, the parish rector of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, refused to administer last rites to him, or give him a Christian burial Robert Darnton observed that, "To deny the final absolution of sins to Christians on their deathbed was, in the eyes of many, to send them straight to Purgatory, an unforgivable abuse of royal and ecclesiastical authority.” Four thousand Parisians joined the funeral procession. Because the crown had supported the suppression of the Jansenists, Danton notes that the religious rite took on political overtones. The Parlement of Paris subsequently issued an official and strong “remonstrance” to the king. Richard J. Janet sees the resulting popular demonstrations as contributing to the growing disenchantment with the monarchy that would later play into the coming Revolution.

Coffin left a legacy to the college of Beauvais, and founded awards at the University of Paris.

Taken from Wikipedia

George Guest was born in Bangor, Gwynedd. His father was an organist and Guest assisted him by acting as organ blower. He became a chorister at Bangor Cathedral and subsequently at Chester Cathedral, where he took organ lessons from the sub-organist, Dr. Roland Middleton. He passed the examinations for ARCO in 1940 and FRCO in 1942. By this time he had become the organist and choirmaster of Connah's Quay parish church, Flintshire.

Being proud of his Welsh roots, from the 1970s onwards, Guest took a personal interest in the Cambridge University Welsh Society (Cymdeithas Y Mabinogi), sponsoring many of its events and providing a welcome face for Welsh students away from home.

At the age of 18 he was called up for military service, and joined the Royal Air Force, being posted to India in 1945. On leaving the services in 1947 he took up the post of sub-organist at Chester Cathedral. The cathedral organist, Malcolm Boyle, encouraged him to apply for the organ scholarship at St John's College, Cambridge, for which he was successful.

At Cambridge he studied under Robin Orr, who had served as organist and choirmaster at St. John's College since 1938. In Guest's final year as Organ Scholar, Robin Orr announced that he intended to retire, and the College Council offered the post to Guest, who took over the position in 1951.

Within five years of Guest becoming organist and choirmaster, the whole future of the choir at St. John's College came into question, with the proposed closure of the day school which provided the choristers. Guest, with the support of his predecessor, persuaded the College to fund a Choir School.

Under George Guest's direction, the choir built up a formidable reputation, challenging the supremacy of the choir of King's College, Cambridge. Guest introduced a more "continental" tone into the choir, as George Malcolm was doing at Westminster Cathedral.

The choir began broadcasting on the BBC in the early 1950s and started making recordings in 1958. By the time of Guest's retirement in 1991, the choir had recorded sixty LPs or CDs under his direction.

For many years from 1972 the BBC broadcast Evensong from St. John's College on every Ash Wednesday, and the Advent Carol Service each year since 1981. During George Guest's tenure, the choir undertook many overseas tours.

In 1987 Guest was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Herbert Howells and Michael Tippett are among the many composers who wrote liturgical settings for the St. John's College choir whilst George Guest was organist and choirmaster. They also include the French composer Jean Langlais, who wrote a setting of the psalm Beatus vir for the choir: a rare occurrence of a Continental composer writing for the English cathedral tradition.

Organ Scholars who studied under George Guest include:

Sir David Lumsden (Southwell Minster, New College, Oxford, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, London)

Brian Runnett (organist, Norwich Cathedral)

Jonathan Bielby (organist, Wakefield Cathedral)

Jonathan Rennert (St Michael's, Cornhill)

David Hill (choral director) (sub-organist, Durham Cathedral; organist, Westminster Cathedral; organist, Winchester Cathedral; organist and choirmaster, St John's College, Cambridge; now Chief Conductor, BBC Singers)

Robert Huw Morgan (University Organist, Stanford Memorial Church)

Adrian Lucas (organist, Worcester Cathedral)

Andrew Lumsden (Southwark Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Lichfield Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral)

Sir Stephen Cleobury (King's College, Cambridge)

John Scott (St Paul's Cathedral, London, and subsequently St Thomas Fifth Avenue, New York City)

Andrew Nethsingha (Truro Cathedral; Gloucester Cathedral; Organist and Director of Music, St John's College, Cambridge)

Preceded by

Robin Orr

Director of Music, St John's College, Cambridge

1951–1991 Succeeded by

Christopher Robinson

George Guest was a guest on Desert Island Discs in 1976 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/a5168c08#p009n0jz). He was a lifelong supporter of Chester City FC. The famous British baritone Simon Keenlyside was a chorister and subsequently a choral scholar in the choir of St John's College, Cambridge while George Guest was the choirmaster there. Actor Clive Mantle was another chorister at St. John's.

Taken from Wikipedia

George Guest on Desert Island Discs

Sunday 20th November 2022 Christ The King

Above All Praise And Majesty   Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)

Above All Praise And Majesty is a joyful,majestic piece suitable for Christ The King, Ascension and Easter. 

This is the third of six anthems for 8 part chorus (Opus79) written for the Domchor, Berlin.

Felix Mendelssohn is a German born composer, organist, conductor and pianist. He was a grandson of the philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn and so born into a prominent Jewish family.  However he was brought up without religion until the age of seven when he was baptised as a Reformed Christian. he was recognised early as a musical prodigy, but his family did not seek to capitalise on his talent. Mendelssohn revived interest in the music of J S Bach. He had quite conservative tastes in his composition which set him apart from his contemporaries, such as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz. He founded the Leipzig Conservatoire.

From Wikipedia

Sunday 13th November 2022 Remembrance Sunday

My Soul, There is a Country,  from Songs of Farewell by C H H Parry (1818-1918)  Words Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)

This is the first of Parry's "Songs of Farewell" written about the needless suffering in war. It changes tempo from slow and somber to a more lilting, uplifting, dance like quality, back and forth during the piece. The choir sang it accompanied by our Director of Music.

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

Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in Silex Scintillans in 1650, with a second part in 1655. In 1646 his Poems, with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished was published. Meanwhile he had been persuaded by reading the religious poet George Herbert to renounce "idle verse". The prose Mount of Olives and Solitary Devotions (1652) show his authenticity and depth of convictions. Two more volumes of secular verse followed, ostensibly without his sanction, but it is his religious verse that has been acclaimed. He also translated short moral and religious works and two medical works in prose. In the 1650s he began a lifelong medical practice.

It was not until the writing of Silex Scintillans that Vaughan received significant acclaim. The period shortly preceding the publication of the first volume of the work (1650) marked an important period of his life. Certain indications in the first volume and explicit statements in the preface to the second volume (1655) suggest that Vaughan suffered a prolonged sickness that inflicted much pain. Vaughan interprets this experience as an encounter with death that alerted him to a "misspent youth". Vaughan believed he had been spared to make amends and start a new course not only in his life but in the literature he would produce. He described his previous work as foul and a contribution to "corrupt literature". Perhaps the most notable mark of Vaughan's conversion is how much it is credited to George Herbert. Vaughan claims he is the least of Herbert's many "pious converts". It was during this period of Vaughan's life, around 1650, that he adopted the saying "Moriendo, revixi" – by dying, I gain new life.: p132 

The first volume of Silex Scintillans was followed by The Mount of Olives, or Solitary Devotions (1652), a prose book of devotions providing prayers for various stages in the day, for prayer in church and for other purposes. It appears as a "companion volume" to the Book of Common Prayer, to which it alludes frequently, although it had been outlawed under the Commonwealth. The work was also influenced by Lancelot Andrewes's Preces Privatae (1615) and John Cosin's Collection of Private Devotions (1627). Flores Solitudinis (1654) contains translations from the Latin of two works by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, one by a 5th-century Bishop of Lyon, Eucherius, and by Paulinus of Nola, of whom Vaughan wrote a prose life.

Vaughan practised medicine, perhaps as early as the 1640s. He attached to the second volume of Silex Scintillans (1655) a translation of Henry Nollius's Hermetical Physick. He went on to produce a translation of Nollius's The Chymists Key in 1657.

Taken from Wikipedia.

Henry Vaughan

Saturday 29th October 2022 Mass for All Souls

 Requiem Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Taken from the service sheet.

Gabriel Fauré, born in 1845, was appointed titular organist a La Madeleine, Paris, in 1896 and director of the Paris Conservatoire in 1905.

Fauré started to think about the composition of a requiem in 1885 after the death of his father.  Unlike Berlioz and Verdi he removed the Dies Irae sequence, which he considered over theatrical.  Hence the Offertorium comes up much sooner than is usual in a requiem mass setting.  He permits himself only a brief reference to the “day of wrath” in the Libera me baritone solo.

Gabriel Faure
Gabriel Fauré by John Singer Sargent [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"

Fauré’s Requiem happily lends itself to a liturgical performance by amateur choirs, being particularly popular with English choirs, with the organ taking the place of the orchestra. This seems to have been recognised early on its life, coinciding as it did with liturgical experimentation in the Church of England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – experiments now adopted and sanctioned for universal use with the introduction in 1980 of the Alternative Service Book and more recently the Common Worship services. These owe their formation to the proposed 1928 Prayer Book and the English Missal (1933) and their structure, including additions to the Book of Common Prayer, fit best with Fauré’s arrangement of sections. The 1928 Prayer Book and English Missal largely formalised a variety of liturgical practices which had been used in sung Communion services previously. 

The service is an act of worship, to include remembrance of the departed, and may sound something like a similar service in an English church at about the time of Faurés death in November 1924, when sections of his requiem were sung at his funeral at La Madeleine.

Faure in 1907 from Wikipedia

Our baritone soloist for this service was Martin Elliot.

Sunday 23th October 2022 Trinity 19

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

Henry Bull died in 1577.  He was an eminent theological writer.  In 1553 when Mary I came to the throne, he with the help of a conspirator snatched a censer from the hand of an officiating priest and was expelled from Magdalen. He was quiet during the rest of her reign, but came back to prominence on the ascension of Elizabeth I. He was also the editor of Christian Praiers and Holy Meditacions which appeared first by 1570, from which the text of our anthem today was taken.

Sunday 16th October 2022 Trinity 18

O Lord, Increase Our Faith  H. Loosemore

Henry Loosemore was born in Devon.  He was a chorister and afterwards a lay clerk in one of the Cambridge colleges. At some time he was organist at King's College. In 1660 he became organist at Exeter Cathedral.  He died suddenly in 1670 whilst in Exeter. 

O Lord Increase Our Faith has incorrectly been attributed to Orlando Gibbons in the past, and in Gibbon's version, has the word "our" replaced by "my".  However a manuscript was found of Loosemore's which allowed the correct attribution and also the correction of the text.