blog.sinden.org

It's time once again for the annual broadcast of A Service for Advent with Carols, sung by the very fine Choir of St. John's, Cambridge.

You can listen the service for the next six days at the BBC, and we at Sinden.org highly recommend that you avail yourself of this opportunity.

You can download a PDF of the service at the College website.

This service is famed for many reasons. The singing is of the highest standard, and the liturgy is very thoughtfully conceived. The service is divided into four sections (The Message of Advent, The Word of God, The Prophetic Call, and The Christ-Bearer) mirroring the four weeks of Advent. In fact, the collects at the head of each of the first three sections is the Prayer Book collect for the respective Sunday of Advent. The fourth collect, however, either must come from a different source or was specifically composed for the service.

The seven Advent "O Antiphons" are evenly distributed throughout the four sections.

Highlights this year include:

• "There is a flower" by John Rutter. This a capella carol was composed specifically for John's as a sort of counterpart to his beter-known "What sweeter music", written for King's College.
  
  
• The energetic "Vigilate" by James Long (b. 1987), a new carol commissioned for the service.
  
  
• "A Spotless Rose" by Philip Ledger, who died just a few weeks ago.
  
  
• The return of Matthew Martin's Magnificat, which I thoroughly enjoyed when I first heard it on an Evensong webcast from May.
  
  
• "The Seven Joys of Mary" by William Whitehead which is just plain good fun.
  
  

Labels: Advent, James Long, John Rutter, Matthew Martin, Philip Ledger, St John's (Cambridge), William Whitehead