Music Update for the Week of September 27

(Homepage photo credit: Ira Lippke).

On Sunday, September 27, Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue keeps the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. Music for the 11am Festal Eucharist and 4pm Festal Evensong will include works by Walton, Harris, Howells and Bairstow.

Sunday September 27

11am Festal Eucahrist

  • Service: Missa Brevis, William Walton (1902-1983)
  • Psalm: 103:17-22 Anglican Chant (Tranchell)
  • Anthem: Faire is the heaven, William Harris (1883-1973)
  • Anthem: Let all mortal flesh keep silence, Edward Bairstow (1874-1946)

4pm Festal Evensong

  • Responses: Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
  • Psalm: 34 Anglican Chant (South)
  • Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: The Dallas Canticles, Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
  • Anthem: ‘A Sequence for St. Michael’, Herbert Howells

Tuesday, September 29

5:30pm Festal Eucharist

  • Service: Missa Brevis, Jonathan Dove (b. 1959)
  • Anthem: Factum est silentium in caelo, Richard Dering (c. 1580-1630)

Wednesday, September 30

5:30pm Choral Evensong

  • Introit: Michael, coeli signifer, Jacobus Handl (1550-1591)
  • Responses: Richard Shephard (b. 1949)
  • Psalm: 147, 148 Anglican Chant (Stanford, Willcocks)
  • Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: The St. Mark’s Service, Gerald Near (b. 1942)
  • Anthem: Non omnis qui dicit mihi, Domine, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

Thursday, October 1

5:30pm Choral Evensong

  • Introit: Michael, coeli signifer, Jacobus Handl (1550-1591)
  • Responses: Richard Shephard (b. 1949)
  • Psalm: 6, 7
  • Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis: E minor, Daniel Purcell (1664-1717)
  • Anthem: Lord, how long wilt thou be angry, Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Notes

William Walton (1902-1983) was a chorister atChrist Church Cathedral, Oxford, and entered the world of choral composition at the age of 15 with the beautiful miniature ‘Drop drop slow tears’. Over the following sixty years he produced a wide range of music, from film scores and concertos to chamber music and oratorios. He wrote relatively few pieces for the Anglican liturgy yet all of them, unusually for one composer, continue to be widely performed (and admired) in church music circles the world over.
The Missa Brevis was written in 1966 for the Friends of the new Coventry Cathedral. A highly-effective setting of the text, it is infused with the harmonic and melodic originality which characterizes all of Walton’s music, and with less than ten minutes of music in total, is very much a ‘Missa Brevis.’