This series loomed larger in my formation than perhaps I realized, and I recently delved back into this catalog for the first time in many years. In retrospect, this series served both as inspiration for a career in Anglican choral music and a kind of “bucket list.” I have made note of those pieces that I have yet to perform.
The English Anthem, Volume 1
Short Anthems
HADLEY My beloved spake WOOD Hail, gladdening Light
Standard-length Anthems
BAIRSTOW Let all mortal flesh keep silence FINZI God is gone up GARDINER Evening Hymn IRELAND Greater love hath no man STAINER I saw the Lord STANFORD Beati quorum via
Long Anthems
BAIRSTOW Blessed city, heavenly Salem NAYLOR Vox dicentis: Clama WESLEY Blessed be the God and Father
The English Anthem, as this first album is called, was released without a “Volume 1” designation, continuation of this series perhaps not yet being conceived.
The long, sinuous lines of Balfour Gardiner’s Evening Hymn are also right at home here, with the additive sounds bubbling at a slower simmer.
Much of the music here happens at its own unhurried pace. It’s never unmusical, but one is always aware of the effects of the ample reverberation of St. Paul’s. In places, this reverb time is used to tremendous effect. At the opening of Naylor’s “Vox dicentis,” Scott dovetails the second entrance perfectly with the slow diminishing of the previous fortissimo chord at the back of the nave.
Aspirations
Of the works I’ve never performed (Bairstow, Hadley, Stainer, Naylor):
- Bairstow tops the list. I feel like I know this piece so well that I must have done it at some point in the past, but I can’t recall an occasion when I have.
- Stainer's “I saw the Lord” still lurks around in my planning notes for Trinity Sunday. It might surface one of these days.
- Naylor: I thought about this one recently, but it didn’t make the cut. Without a favorable acoustic, this is probably not as effective.
- Hadley: this one doesn’t do it for me. Your mileage may vary.
Labels: Bairstow, Balfour Gardiner, Charles Wood, Finzi, Hadley, John Ireland, John Scott, Naylor, St Paul's (London), Stainer, Stanford, The English Anthem series (Hyperion), Wesley
Really the word "hymn" refers to the words. But for most people the music comes to mind just as quickly, if not more so.
Of course, a congregation needs both words and music to sing a hymn. Otherwise I guess they could just mumble some poetry together, or, alternatively, hum something for a while.
Note to self: write some intentionally wordless hymns. Approach publishers.
But sometimes a melody is written for words that so encapsulates their sentiment that the result is stirring, compelling, and nothing short of miraculous: a triumph of the great symbiotic art of hymnody.
Words
Walter Russell Bowie's two hymn texts are provocative and "have been judged as among the finest by an American author written in the first half of this century" (Hymnal 1982 Companion). They are "Lord Christ, when first thou cam'st to earth", and "O holy city, seen of John".
Walter Russell Bowie was a Social Gospel progressive who was baptized at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia in 1883 (just 21 years after Jefferson Davis was baptized there). He would serve as rector of the parish from 1911-1923. Just prior to assuming this rectorship, Bowie was asked for a hymn based on Revelation 21 by Henry Sloane Coffin for the collection Hymns of the Kingdom of God (1910). The result is "O holy city, seen of John".
One of Bowie's stanzas, however, seems not to have been handed down in most versions of the hymn. It appears in the original hymn text as stanza 2:
Hark, how from men whose lives are held more cheap than merchandise; from women struggling sore for bread, from little children's cries, there swells the sobbing human plaint that bids thy walls arise!
Music
I'm particularly fascinated with the connection between Howells and the marvelous words of Bowie because Howells is, quite simply, my favorite composer of twentieth century church music, and I was the organist of St. Paul's, Richmond for five years (2010-2015). It was a delight to relish this tune (and sing it often) in a parish so closely linked with Bowie.
I have written before about the two Herbert Howells hymn tunes for the both of the published hymn texts of Walter Russell Bowie (Bowie, Walter Russell - connection to Herbert Howells). Mostly, I wrote of my perplexity that the tune in the Hymnal 1982 for Bowie's "Lord Christ" is in a major key (Hymn 598)! But today, on Howells's birthday, no less, I want to turn to the other tune, SANCTA CIVITAS.
Howells's tune, written in 1962, is extraordinary. In fact, Erik Routley, the prolific church music scholar, names it one of "Six Great Moments in Twentieth-century Hymn Music"
- Vaughan Williams's KING'S WESTON, found at Hymn 435 (this article refers to hymns in the Hymnal 1982)
- Cyril Vincint Taylor's ABBOT'S LEIGH, found at Hymn 523
- A tune by Jean Langlais: DIEU NOUS AVONS VU TO GLOIRE (um, does anyone know this one?)
- Herbert Howells's SANCTA CIVITAS, found at Hymn 582 (but not completely)
- Michael Dawney's FELINFOEL (yeah, no idea about this one either)
- And Richard Dirksen's VINEYARD HAVEN, found at Hymns 392 and 557
Tangent: Routley's work on hymns is always provocative. Of the six he names three are "bestsellers", one is mostly hiding in plain sight (Howells), and two of them I've never heard, nor can I find. There's more here to research, as always!
Howells's name for the tune, SANCTA CIVITAS, is Latin for "Holy City," making the text-tune connection clear. But more than that, the name is surely a reference to the large choral work by Vaughan Williams with that name. It was, after all, a close encounter with Vaughan Williams himself at the 1910 Three Choirs Festival that set Howells firmly on the path of being a composer.
Howells manages the melodic modality masterfully, with the music meandering from D minor to an F Major finish. The intervening notes between stanzas (they are in the original hymn but, most unfortunately, edited out of the Hymnal 1982) raise the Tonic to the Mediant so that the successive stanza can fall into place without a hitch.
There is what I believe to be an intentional seamlessness to the hymn accompaniment that arises when these inter-stanza passing tones are used (as in the wonderful recording from St. Clement embedded above). This is up to interpretation, to some degree. I can find another recording that does not treat the accompaniment this way.
If the "seamless" approach is what Howells had in mind, this is by no means a new technique, though it is an innovation on it. Think of the hymn tune ENGELBERG, written by Stanford, Howells's mentor, in 1904. The single, solitary "thump" allows the hymn accompaniment to be continuous, which has the affect of somewhat blurring the line between the strophic hymn form and something through-composed. And this is, in fact, the common modern-day performance practice with this tune. Howells's innovation is to simply expand that pedal thump into a treble "doo-doo" — which, incidentally, builds more time into the "join" between the stanzas for a breath but without making the interlude needlessly fussy.
Still with me? Good, because we haven't even brought up the final stanza yet. Howells gives this text the full treatment with a slightly altered harmonization and supremely musical descant. Not a single note is wasted, and the sopranos' expertise is fully demanded — this is not a trivial sing! But the result, to my ear, is so completely and utterly thrilling.
A melody of great sweep and dignity, with a descant for the final verse [sic] which gives the impression of having been conceived along with the tune and of being a natural efflorescence of it.English Church Music, Royal School of Church Music, 1965
Consider the final stanza and the city that rises "in the mind of God". It is of divine imagination. And this inspired descant catches our souls and flings them heavenward where we chance to dream of things eschatological and that poorly-understood sentiment in the Lord's Prayer "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven".
The unchurched Howells finds a way to join what we would call Bowie's Anglo-Catholic Socialism if he weren't in fact a Southern Churchman Social Gospelist.
Another thing that is lost in our modern hymnals is editorial direction. Howells, who never fails to give descriptive language, here gives "With warmth, but moving easily". I can't quibble at all with the St. Clement recording above, but I do want to note that it is a choral recording. I think that for a full congregation, the organ will want to provide a bit more "fire" for the warmth. The word "ardente" from the anthem "Like as the hart" comes to mind.
I suspect that, for many parishes, this tune is hiding in plain sight. If we did a survey I think we would find that the American tune on 583 is sung for these words more than 582. And there is precdent for a Howells tune having a slow start. MICHAEL first appeared in The Clarendon Hymnal in 1936 and was neglected for over thirty years. Though it doesn't appear in Routley's "Six Great Moments", it doesn't need to. It exploded in popularity, and it now has a Triple Platinum Hymnal hanging in its living room.
But perhaps SANCTA CIVITAS tends to be overlooked because the Hymnal 1982 doesn't present the hymn tune as Howells intended.
We can fix this.
I implore you in choirs and on organ benches: buy this hymn from Novello, or play it out of Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Your congregations will allow you two little extra notes, I promise.
And Howells wants it that way.
Labels: Dirksen, Engelberg, Henry Sloane Coffin, Howells, hymn, Hymn 392, Hymn 523, Hymn 557, Hymn 582, Hymn 598, Hymnal 1982, Langlais, Routley, St Paul's (Richmond), Stanford, Walter Russell Bowie
I first heard Robert Glasper when we were both students at Houston's High School for Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) about ten years ago.
Since then, he's gone on to make a name for himself and was the subject of this article in the Washington Post in 2012: "Pianist finds the right notes between hip-hop and jazz".
This article is the source of the quotation that appeared in my post from yesterday ("Glasper, Robert - music in the present"). Here it is in full:
“I think everybody stopped trying to outdo each other and everybody started paying homage,” he says. “I love all my jazz masters and my elders that came before me, but I always say that people have killed the living to praise the dead. It’s like, ‘Yo, I’m here.’”
Reading it in full gave me more food for thought, especially about music in the church.
It's very easy to "pay homage" to all the great music of the past. And in fact I think many music lists of many churches fail to move past the expected and the very familiar.
While the "Yo, I'm here" sentiment has limited value in the liturgy, there is something to be said for forging a way ahead that pays homage to the past but also moves the conversation forward.
Music can't remain static. The repertoire should not remain the same. If the Holy Spirit is still in operation today then fresh voices must be given airtime.
Finding a balance between the established canon and new voices should be a struggle in jazz just as it should be in church music. The two should be held in creative tension.
We in the church can learn a lot from jazz, a form of music whose very being thrives on fast-paced real-time creativity, conversation, and improvisation.
The modern "symphonic" approach to church music, first found in the music of Charles Villiers Stanford and then redefined by Herbert Howells, continues to provide a foundation for much of the sacred music being written now.
So, the ultimate tension is that "paying homage" is itself a way forward.
Labels: Howells, HSPVA, improvisation, Jazz, Robert Glasper, Stanford
We had a bit of fun with the musical selections at Westminster Cathedral last week, but the pope's visit to London, and specifically to Westminster Abbey was a big deal.
Highlights, from the Abbey's YouTube channel. The Dean points out the 20th century martyrs over the west door of the Abbey. These 10 minutes are recommended ecumenical viewing:
The choir sings some great rep for the service, solidly Anglican, of course. Beati Quorum Via of Stanford as dignitaries arrive, "Prevent us, O Lord" of Byrd as men in red smocks run around looking for something to do, and a new work by Gabriel Jackson that is really really conservative.
For me, Henry G. Ley's chant in D Major is the icing on the cake. This was the first Anglican chant I ever accompanied (to Psalm 29), and it holds a special place in my heart.
Prevent us, O Lord
Beati Quorum Via
New work by Gabriel Jackson
Sounds a bit dated, doesn't it?
Let's try again, shall we?
Fun! Sounds like he may have been eavesdropping in Westminster Cathedral at the MacMillan rehearsals.
Psalm 138 (Ley)
Stanford in A, Magnificat
I have to admire the work of Philip Stopford in getting so many of these videos online. If you haven't heard of him, you just have.
That is all.
Labels: Anglicanism, Byrd, church music, Ley, Roman Catholocism, Rowan Williams, Stanford, Westminster Abbey
The BBC broadcast of Evensong this week is from the Eddington Festival of Music within the Liturgy.
Grant proposal: If anyone reading this has some money to give me, I'd love to blog from the festival next year.
Don't miss the this service which includes Stanford's double-choir Latin setting of the Magnificat (it's an interesting combination of Bach-motet-style and "I've been workin on' the railroad") and the festival commission: "Most glorious Lord of Lyfe" by Francis Jackson. Jackson celebrates his 92nd birthday in October.
Last year's commission was a setting of the Lord's Prayer by Nico Muhly.
There are a couple of great chants by Wesley.
The priory church is also home to the first performance of the "Eddington Service" of Grayston Ives. It was originally accompanied on the smallish organ heard on this broadcast.
Labels: church music, Francis Jackson, liturgy, Nico Muhly, Stanford, Wesley
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