J. S. Bach composed two cantatas for use on the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. One of these includes the chorale we now know as “Jesu, Joy of man’s desiring.” Learn more here.

Stabat Mater dolorosa is a 13th-century poem about the suffering of Mary witnessing the suffering of her son. Reflections on the text’s significance and a collection of compositions from five centuries is on this page.

The Tears of St. Peter is a powerfully affective work for Holy Week by Orlande de Lassus. Read about it here, along with an introduction to his settings of the penitential Psalms.

“The depths of solemn grandeur” — Texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah have been traditionally sung during Holy Week. What internal orientation do we need to receive these texts fruitfully?

A list of pages that introduce music for use in Passiontide is here.

Palestrina’s setting of the Offertory for Palm Sunday evocatively presents an anguished text from Psalm 69 which anticipates Christ’s experience of betrayal.

The recordings of hymns made in our “Choir in Quarantine” series are all available on this page.

Interview with Thomas Forrest Kelly on the history of musical notation

“The Christian Singer from the Gospels to the Gothic Cathedrals” — a series of six lectures by Christopher Page

“Music, Imagination, and Experience in the Medieval World” — a series of six lectures by Christopher Page

Interview with Christopher Page on The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years

William Byrd’s setting of the Te Deum adorns this familiar text with a kaleidoscopic sequence of sound.

Poets & Translators whose words we sing

St. Ambrose (339-397)

John Keble (1792-1866)

John Mason Neale (1818-1866)

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

F. Bland Tucker (1895-1984)

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)