Since our Gospel reading is the account from St. Matthew of Jesus’s baptism, our service features two hymns that are centered around the baptism and the Baptist. Our Processional Hymn is one we could have sung during Advent, but I saved it for this week. Despite his profound role in the history of redemption, John the Baptist doesn’t have a lot of hymnody connected with him, at least not in our Hymnal. But we do have “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry.” The text is by Charles Coffin (1676-1749), who was noted in his lifetime for his Latin poetry. John Henry Newman published a collection of a number of Coffin’s…
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First Sunday after Epiphany (January 13, 2019)
On the Sunday after Epiphany, our congregation will sing as its processional hymn “All people that on earth do dwell” (#278). The text for this familiar hymn is a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 100, which — along with Psalm 93 and Psalms 95-99 — celebrate God’s rule over all of Creation. The Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 40 declared that the glory of the Lord would be revealed, “and all flesh shall see it together.” Likewise, the angels told the shepherds that the joy introduced by Christ’s birth “shall be to all people.” As we sang last week on Epiphany, the coming of the wise men from the east signaled the…
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The Music of Epiphany: Saw you never, in the twilight
Other than “We three kings,” there aren’t many hymns or carols that are commonly associated with Epiphany. One hymn that we sing on average every other year (but we should probably sing it every year) is “Saw you never, in the twilight” (The Hymnal, #50). This hymn (originally entitled “The Adoration of the Wise Men”) was one of almost 400 hymns and poems written by the wife of an Irish bishop, Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895). Among her better known hymns are “All things bright and beautiful,” “Once in Royal David’s city,” “There is a green hill far away,” and “He is risen, He is risen!” Mrs. Alexander was especially concerned to write…
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Recommended recording: Incarnation (The Gabrieli Consort)
During the twelve days of Christmas, I’ve been recommending recordings of Christmas music. This is the twelfth and last “review,” and I realize that many readers have probably stopped listening to Christmas music by now. But you can still make notes for next year’s listening (and gift-buying). Several days ago, I discussed an album of music by Michael Praetorius and others, a recording that reconstructed what a Christmas-day service at a major church in central Germany around 1620 might have sounded like. Today I’ve got another recording by the Gabrieli Consort, conducted by Paul McCreesh. It’s called Incarnation, and the title of the album is a clue that the program…
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Epiphany (January 6, 2019)
The star of Christmas becomes the star of Epiphany as the Magi arrive in Bethlehem. The Greek word behind our English “epiphany” means literally a “showing forth.” What is shown to these Oriental travelers is not simply the presence of God in human form, but — what they were seeking — the “King of the Jews.” And their coming to honor him is a sign that the King of the Jews is in truth the King of all kings. During Advent, we sang “Savor of the nations, come,” Epiphany is the season in which the universality of Christ’s rule is celebrated. It seems that this aspect of Christ’s birth is…
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Recommended recording: Cristóbal de Morales Christmas motets
In the past four years, our choir has been privileged to sing five different pieces by a sadly neglected composer from the Spanish Renaissance, Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500-1553). Born in Seville, Morales was hailed during his lifetime as “la luz de España en la music” (“the light of Spain in music”). He was clearly the most famous Spanish composer before Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) and probably one of the most widely performed composers throughout Christendom in the middle of the sixteenth century. Between 1535-1545, he sang in the choir of the Sistine Chapel. His time in Rome may have some bearing on the fact that his compositional style seems…
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Recommended Recording: Christmas with the Tallis Scholars
This album explores a wide range of Medieval and Renaissance Christmas music, including carols, motets, and masses. There are composers from England, Spain, Germany, France, and the Low Countries. There are familiar pieces (e.g. Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen by Michael Praetorius [1571-1621], the same harmonization we sing as “I know a rose-tree springing,” #17 in our Hymnal) and some remarkable and rarely heard gems (e.g., the seven-part motet Beata es Virgo Maria by Philippe Verdelot [1480? -1532?]). All of the music in this 2-1/2 hour collection has been issued on previous Tallis Scholars albums, but the producers have done the world a great favor by serving them up in one feast.…
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Recommended recording: Make we joy (Holst & Walton)
While composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) is best known for his orchestral suite, The Planets, he also composed quite a bit of choral music, including several hymns. (Three of his compositions or arrangements are in our Hymnal, but the only one we regularly sing is his setting of Christina Rossetti’s “In the bleak mid-winter.”) Holst was conducting village choirs and choral societies by the age of eighteen, and during his studies at the Royal College of Music, his teachers included Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) and Hubert Parry (1848-1918), two giants in the Anglican choral tradition. Although he spent six years as a chorister in the Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford…
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Recommended recording: Song of the Nativity (The Sixteen)
The choral ensemble The Sixteen has recorded a number of albums of Christmas music. They include music from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque composers, as well as venerable arrangements of well-known carols. In 2006, they issued A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection, followed in 2010 by A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection, Volume II. Under the wise leadership of conductor Harry Christophers, all of these recordings demonstrate discipline and taste shaped by decades of performance of less familiar and more demanding repertoire. In 2016, The Sixteen issued an album called Song of the Nativity which included seven traditional carols as arranged in the 1928 first edition of the Oxford Book of Carols (which for some of…
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Recommended recording: Praetorius Mass for Christmas morning
Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) played a profound role in shaping the Lutheran musical tradition as it developed from the late Renaissance into the early Baroque. The son of a devout pastor who had studied with Martin Luther, Praetorius has often been called the “conservator of the chorale,” the Lutheran chorale being the fundamental building block of music in this rich tradition — a musical ecosystem that produced J. S. Bach. In addition to his work as an organist and prolific composer, Praetorius was also a significant music theorist. This 1994 album of Christmas music reconstructs a Lutheran liturgy as it might have been heard at one of the major churches in central…