Music at All Saints Parish Sunday, December 16, 2007
Advent III
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
At the Offertory the choir will sing a great polyphonic anthem by the Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria: Ne timeas Maria (Do not be afraid, Mary). Victoria lived in the late 16th/early 17th centuries. He is known to have gone to Rome around 1564, where he joined the monastery founded by St. Ignatius Loyala as part of the fight against Lutheranism and Protestantism in general. But we can forgive him that because he was such a great composer of church music. He probably studied with Palestrina early on in Rome, and was later ordained as a priest. Twenty-two years after his arrival in Rome he returned to Spain, where he spent the rest of his life in the service of Empress Maria and as chaplain, composer, director of the choir and organist in a convent in Madrid.
The text of the anthem is taken from Luke, in the passage when the Angel tells Mary of her selection as God's choice to be his son's mother, and just before Mary's great hymn of thanksgiving, the Magnificat. "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with the Lord. See: you will conceive and give birth to a son; and he shall be called the Son of the Most High." (Luke 1:31-32)
At the Communion, the choir will sing a plainsong Annunciation hymn, The Word whom earth and sea and sky adore." It is Hymn 263 in The Hymnal 1982 if you would like to take a look at it before Sunday.
Hymns for Advent III
Hymn 438 - Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
Timothy Dudley-Smith's contemporary translation of the Magnificat text dates from 1961 and has become enormously popular both for its quality as poetry and for its adaptability to musical settings. Woodlands, composed in 1919 by Walter Greatorex, is one of two tunes using these words in our hymnal. It makes for an especially fine pairing.
Hymn 615 - "Thy kingdom come!" on bended knee the passing ages pray
The words written, in 1891, for the commencement of a theological school in Pennsylvania have been attached to the tune St. Flavian very happily in Episcopal hymnals ever since. It is a great Advent hymn.
No Advent would be complete for Episcopalians without today's concluding hymn, which was drawn from Roman sources: Hymn 59 - Hark, a thrilling voice is sounding. It first appeared in an Episcopal publication in a collection of sixty-five "Additional Hymns" authorized by the General Convention of 1865. The tune is by William Henry Monk (1823-1889). He was music director for almost four decades at St. Matthias, Stoke Newington, London, and was the first musical editor for Hymns Ancient and Modern, the historic English hymnal which sold 60 million copies.