This Sunday’s Mass will have significantly different external characteristics. In addition to our meeting in the banquet room at the Greencroft, we will be commencing our season from our beloved nave without the benefit of a choir assisting our worship. Every summer, the choir takes 4–5 weeks off, and tomorrow is the first of four Sundays during which singers will catch a breath (metaphorically).
If we were singing this week, we may have sung a setting of the text appointed as the Offertory Proper, a verse from Psalm 34: “O taste and see how gracious the Lord is: blessed is he that putteth his trust in him.” The setting we have sung four times in the past is by one of the greatest English composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). His brief setting of “O taste and see” was composed in 1953 for the coronation of Elizabeth II. It was also sung at her funeral.
There is a (very bad) audio recording of the coronation performance of the work. Below is a much, much better video of the singing of Vaughan Williams’s tender motet at the royal funeral in 2022.
“No composer in the twentieth century had a greater influence on the English-speaking church’s musical life — and on the presence of sacred texts in concert halls — than did Ralph Vaughan Williams.” That’s a claim I made in a Touchstone column back in 2017. I still think that’s true, and you can read why in “Taught by melodious sonnets.”
You can learn more about other music attached to the Eighth Sunday after Trinity on this page. Meanwhile, here’s a list of hymns selected for our first Sunday at the Greencroft:
PROCESSIONAL HYMN:
God Himself is with us (#477)
SERMON HYMN:
Thy kingdom come! on bended knee (#391)
(this hymn may be omitted due to time constraints in our temporary space)
COMMUNION HYMNS:
Wherefore, O Father (#205)
Humbly I adore thee (#204)
CLOSING HYMN:
Glorious things of thee are spoken (#385)