English Choral Music
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Last Sunday our principal reading in church was from John 3. For that reason the subject of this week’s post has been echoing round my head for the last few days: the setting of John 3.16-17 which forms the 9th movement of Stainer’s Crucifixion. Often dismissed as among the less fortunate outputs of a Victorian… Read more
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Continuing through Lent, I have been listening to Tallis’s settings from the Lamentations attributed to Jeremiah. Understood to have been written in the 1560s and setting the Latin vulgate (despite the English church’s general adoption of the vernacular), the setting in part one is of the first two verses of the first lamentation and the… Read more
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It seems potentially unjust that we are in the second year of weekly blog posts before I first reflect on a work by the giant of English Choral Music that Charles Williers Stanford undoubtedly is: giant of English Choral Music despite being Irish in origin. Probably early works, his three motets (opus 38) are unusual… Read more
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The figure of John the Baptist was, perhaps, a potential embarrassment to the early Christians: why would Jesus have implied subordination to the proclamation of another? Why would He seek baptism for repentance? And yet, all four Gospels mention him, and imply approbation. Nevertheless, and increasingly with the passage of time (if one accepts the… Read more
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Returning to Britain in 1942 from the United States, where he had initially been advised to remain at the outbreak of the Second World War, Benjamin Britten composed both his Hymn to St Cecelia to a text by W. H. Auden and a set of seven Christmas Carols for women’s voices and harp. He had… Read more
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During this season of Advent we are watching and waiting. Watching for signs of the Kingdom of God as we await His glorious παρουσία (however we might discern or imagine the details of what this might mean). There seems to be a lot of waiting in many aspects of our lives, and perhaps there is… Read more
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I remember when, as a young Director of Music in a parish church, I was teaching my choir Charles Wood’ anthem ‘O Thou the central orb’, one of my sopranos said to me “I’m sure this is very lovely, but what does it actually mean?” Some might consider that a very fair question; indeed, at… Read more
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For the post within the octave of All Saints’ Day I have been thinking about Ernest Bullock’s setting of Isaac Watts’ text Give us the wings of faith to rise: Give us the wings of faith to risewithin the veil, and seethe saints above, how great their joys,how bright their glories be. We ask them… Read more
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Another whole repertoire of theological music that this blog has not yet explored is the evening service, the staples of Anglican choral music: settings of the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis for Evensong. Of so many options for selection setting these well-known texts, with which shall we start? During the second world war a music… Read more
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I have only recently been introduced to the less secular music of the composer probably best known musically for his scores for the early carry-on films, and arguably even better known as a detective writer under his pen name of Edmund Crispin. R. Bruce Montgomery was, however, a former Oxford organ scholar, and wrote church… Read more
Theology in Music 