This Saturday, the Church will celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. Then on Sunday, we enter the two-week period of Passiontide. Given the dramatic character and theological significance of both points of reference in the Church calendar, it is not surprising that there is an abundance of music tied to both commemorations. The following pages on this site may thus be of interest: On this page, you can hear an interview with baroque violinist Fiona Hughes about a remarkable set of violin sonatas inspired by the fifteen mysteries in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Together, the works — composed by Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) — are known as the…
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Music for Passiontide, VI — Passion settings before Bach
If you have listened to musical settings of the story of the Passion, odds are it was one by Johann Sebastian Bach. Given Bach’s astounding achievement in both of the two extant Gospel-based Passions, it’s easy to forget that he didn’t invent the form. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood has observed that Bach’s “Olympian reputation invites avalanches to smother the achievements of distinguished forebears.” In the program notes to a recording of the St. Matthew Passion of Orlande de Lassus, baritone Greg Skidmore points out: setting the passion narrative to newly-composed music to be performed liturgically during Holy Week has been a constant practice in the Catholic church since the 14th century. Liturgically…
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Music for Passiontide, I — John Sheppard, Media vita
In the Church in England — before it was the Church of England, and thus before The Book of Common Prayer as we know it — many English parishes followed the liturgical practices prescribed in the Sarum Use, developed in the see of Salisbury. These parishes included in the prayers at Compline (i.e., the evening prayers) the singing of the Nunc dimittis, as does our Evening Prayer service. Beginning sometime in the 14th century, from the third Sunday in Lent until Passion Sunday, Compline services prefaced the singing of the Nunc dimittis with an antiphon which began: Media vita in morte sumus. In the midst of life we are in…