"The Little Church Around the Corner"
One East 29th Street, New York
MUSIC NOTES:
Trinity Sunday - May 26, 2002
The feasts of Pentecost and the Holy Trinity, celebrated respectively last Sunday and today, mark a turning point in the liturgical year. The momentous cycle framed by Advent and Easter has passed, roughly half of what the Rev'd Pius Parsch called The Church's Year of Grace. Pentecost and Trinity form a great arch that spans the remainder of the liturgical year up to Advent I, when the cycle begins anew.
The richness and complexity of Trinitarian theology is well exemplified in the ancient hymn St. Patrick's Breastplate. The text dates from the early eighth century, and is a feast for the imagination. A breastplate is a piece of mediaeval armor, and in the hymn represents the strong name of the Trinity to which St. Patrick (4th cent.) binds himself as he labors in his missionary activity among the Celtic peoples. Canon Donald Allchin, the distinguished Oxford theologian who was part of our parish's Table Talk series last fall, suggested that to understand St. Patrick's Breastplate is to understand the tradition of Celtic poetry, with its wonderful mix of the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine.
A thousand years later, another of the great hymns in praise of the Trinity was penned. Holy, Holy, Holy is one many hymn texts written by Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826), who as Bishop of Calcutta had episcopal responsibility for the whole of British India, a task which undoubtedly led to his early death at age 43. His text was set to the tune Nicea, one of 300 hymn tunes composed by John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876).
Today's service setting is by the Irish-born Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). A student of Brahms and Saint-Saëns, he became a renowned teacher, sought after by virtually every composer working in England during his lifetime. The service music is drawn from the Mass in C and Mass in F, and exemplifies not only Stanford's lyrical style and sure command of musical language, but also his sensitivity to liturgical considerations such as clarity and continuity of text, and brevity of the individual movements.
The Te Deum in F is part of a Morning Service composed by John Ireland (1879-1962) for St. Luke's Chelsea, where he was organist and choirmaster from 1904 to 1926. Like his teacher Stanford, Ireland established himself as a leading composer and teacher of his generation. His setting of the Te Deum is much more prayer-like than most musical renderings of this ancient text, many of which were composed to commemorate military victories, and thus are highly triumphalist.
The music of Kenneth Leighton (b.1929) is characterized by harmonic and rhythmic innovation, and integration of musical theory that departs from the tonal framework in which Stanford and Ireland were grounded. The anthem Let All the World in Every Corner Sing was written in 1965 for St. Matthew's Church Northampton, and is an excellent example of the vibrancy and energy of contemporary Anglican church music.
It is with this panoply of music ancient and modern that the Choir of Men and Boys completes another season of music at the Church of the Transfiguration.
The richness and complexity of Trinitarian theology is well exemplified in the ancient hymn St. Patrick's Breastplate. The text dates from the early eighth century, and is a feast for the imagination. A breastplate is a piece of mediaeval armor, and in the hymn represents the strong name of the Trinity to which St. Patrick (4th cent.) binds himself as he labors in his missionary activity among the Celtic peoples. Canon Donald Allchin, the distinguished Oxford theologian who was part of our parish's Table Talk series last fall, suggested that to understand St. Patrick's Breastplate is to understand the tradition of Celtic poetry, with its wonderful mix of the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine.
A thousand years later, another of the great hymns in praise of the Trinity was penned. Holy, Holy, Holy is one many hymn texts written by Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826), who as Bishop of Calcutta had episcopal responsibility for the whole of British India, a task which undoubtedly led to his early death at age 43. His text was set to the tune Nicea, one of 300 hymn tunes composed by John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876).
Today's service setting is by the Irish-born Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). A student of Brahms and Saint-Saëns, he became a renowned teacher, sought after by virtually every composer working in England during his lifetime. The service music is drawn from the Mass in C and Mass in F, and exemplifies not only Stanford's lyrical style and sure command of musical language, but also his sensitivity to liturgical considerations such as clarity and continuity of text, and brevity of the individual movements.
The Te Deum in F is part of a Morning Service composed by John Ireland (1879-1962) for St. Luke's Chelsea, where he was organist and choirmaster from 1904 to 1926. Like his teacher Stanford, Ireland established himself as a leading composer and teacher of his generation. His setting of the Te Deum is much more prayer-like than most musical renderings of this ancient text, many of which were composed to commemorate military victories, and thus are highly triumphalist.
The music of Kenneth Leighton (b.1929) is characterized by harmonic and rhythmic innovation, and integration of musical theory that departs from the tonal framework in which Stanford and Ireland were grounded. The anthem Let All the World in Every Corner Sing was written in 1965 for St. Matthew's Church Northampton, and is an excellent example of the vibrancy and energy of contemporary Anglican church music.
It is with this panoply of music ancient and modern that the Choir of Men and Boys completes another season of music at the Church of the Transfiguration.
