Music at All Saints Parish Sunday, December 2, 2007
Advent 1
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
At All Saints we sing The Great Litany in Procession twice a year, on the First Sundays of Advent and Lent. It is especially appropriate for Lenten use, but it is also a fitting way to acknowledge the beginning of the liturgical year (Advent I). The Litany, in the comprehensiveness of its concerns and the beauty of its language, is one of the great treasures of the Church. Its earliest English usage even pre-dates the creation of the first Book of Common Prayer. To quote from The Hymnal 1982 Companion, the monumental four-volume scholarly accompaniment to our hymnal, the Litany breaks down into four sections consisting of: "the invocation of the Trinity, the deprecations or petitions for deliverance from disaster and evil, the obsecrations of pleading of the person and merits of Christ, and the intercessions, concluding with the Agnus Dei... " when it precedes the Holy Eucharist, as it does at All Saints.
The simple chant tune associated with the Litany since the 16th century may have been composed by John Merbecke (or may not). The complementary harmonizations that the choir sings as it makes its stately way around the nave were composed by Thomas Tallis.
At the Offertory this week, the choir will sing Herbert Howells' lovely and gentle setting of part of the Psalm appointed for this day, Psalm 122, which has as its first line "I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the house of the Lord." Howells' setting makes uses of the 6th and 7th verses of this Psalm:
"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces.
Written in 1941, this work is the first of four motets published together in that year. Though Howells' compositional style was generally conservative, his response to text was keen-eared and sensitive, long-lined and melodically elegant. This motet is a fine example of all of these qualities.
Hymns for Advent I
#73 - The King shall come when morning dawns
The words of this familiar Advent hymn date from the early 20th century, but its original source is likely from ancient Greece. The tune St. Stephen is English from the late 18th century and was first associated with the words of the Psalm 23.
#542 - Christ is the world's true Light
This mission hymn's text is the work of George Wallace Briggs, a major British hymn writer of the second quarter of the 20th century. The tune, by Percy E.B. Coller, was submitted anonymously to the editors of The Hymnal 1940 and was identified immediately as a natural companion to this text, partly at least because of the fanfarelike opening of several of its lines, which made it a fine companion to Briggs' exuberant text.