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It's the Anglican Choral Tradition boiled down to a poster parody:

Labels: Anglicanism, singing

On October 10, 1843 the cornerstone of St. Paul's Church, Richmond was laid. The church would not open for services until 1845.

The following is a list of the deposits in the Corner Stone. The Holy Scriptures, Book of Common Prayer, American Almanac for 1843, Journal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia, held in the Monumental Church 17th, May 1843. Journal of the General Convention of the PRotestant Episcopal Church in the United States, for the year 1841, Sword's Pocket Almanac for 1843. Constitution and Canons of the Prot. Epis. Church, in the U.S., and in the Diocese of Virginia, printed for the Convention of Va., in 1840. The 30th, annual report of the Bible Society of Va., at the annual meeting held 4th, April 1843. Names of the contributors to the funds for the erection of the Church, with the amount of their contributions inscribed on parchment. Specimens of the gold, silver, and copper coin of the U. S. Religious and Political newspapers of the day.

Weddell, Elizabeth Wright. St. Paul's Church, Richmond, Virginia: Its Histoic Years and Memorials. Richmond: The William Byrd Press, Inc., 1931. Vol I, p. 16-17.

Labels: St Paul's (Richmond)

There's a wonderful connection between St. Paul's, Richmond, and the English composer Herbert Howells.

The priest, author, editor, educator, hymn writer, and lecturer (thanks Wikipedia!) Walter Russell Bowie was born in Richmond, baptized at St. Paul's and was rector of the church from 1911-1923.

Among Bowie's best known hymns are "O holy city seen of John" and "Lord Christ when first thou cam'st to men". Both hymn texts were set to music by Herbert Howells.

"O holy city seen of John" appears in the Hymnal 1982 at Hymn 582 to Howells's SANCTA CIVITAS (though it is probably more often sung to MORNING SONG, the tune for that text at Hymn 583).

"Lord Christ when first thou cam'st to men" is often rendered as "Lord Christ when first thou cam'st to earth" in modern hymnals, including Rejoice in the Lord, a hymnal edited by edited by Erik Routley.

Routley pairs this with NEWNHAM a wonderful hymn tune that I have never heard nor seen anywhere before this week.

Fittingly, Howells's tune is in minor.

And only Howells could write a tune that begins on III (G-flat Major) and moves to i (E-flat minor). Actually, I could go on about this tune at some length, but maybe that's another article for another time.

The text is clearly wildly successful -- and paired with this beautiful tune, even more so.

Having now studied the text more closely and in conjunction with this E-flat minor sound world, the sprightly D Major strains of MIT FREUDEN ZART (Hymn 598) are more than a little cloying and antithetical to the seriousness of what we're singing about.

• "upon a cross they bound thee" (this is our answer to Christ's coming!)
• "mocked thy saving kingship"
• thorns
• new thorns
• "robe of sorrow"
• "doomed to death"
• crucified
• dust
• refuse
• "night of hate and war"
• perish
• lose
• wounded hands
• dust (again! Is this a Lenten hymn?!)
• loss

Which of these things suggests a major key, exactly?

I suggest that we all take up the Howells tune, with appropriate copyright permissions cleared with Novello, of course, and hasten to teach this text-tune pairing to our congregations.

By the way, Bowie was born on this date in 1882. He lived until 1969, so I hope that he heard the Howells tunes for his two texts, which were written in 1962 (Groves Dictionary) or 1964 (Rejoice in the Lord).

I wonder what he thought about them?

Labels: Howells, Routley, St Paul's (Richmond), Walter Russell Bowie