Sunday, March 22, 2015

Holy Week

March 29 2015 - Palm Sunday
  • Organ: Intrada (from Miniature Suite) – John Ireland
  • Processional Hymn 181 “All glory, laud and honour”
  • Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
  • Psalm 31: 9-16 - Have mercy on me O LORD for I am in trouble;
  • Gospel Acclamation
    Christ was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.
    But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all names.
  • Hymn 184 “My song is love unknown”
  • Hymn during Communion 189 “Alone thou goest forth, O Lord”
  • Communion Motet: O Domine Jesu Christe – Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)
  • Hymn 187 “As royal banners are unfurled”
  • No concluding organ music today.
     
  •  Music Notes:
    John Ireland (1879-1962) was a British composer, organist and teacher in the early and mid 20th century. Apart from a few compositions for the organ, Ireland’s main contributions to church music are his anthem “Greater love hath no man” and the wonderful tune we sing today to the hymn “My song is love unknown”.
     
April 2 2015 - Maundy Thursday
  • Opening Hymn 487 “Where charity and love prevail”
  • Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
  • Psalm 116: 1, 12-17
    I love the LORD because he has heard the voice of my supplication
  • Offertory Hymn 75 “With the body that was broken” 
  • Hymn during Communion 54 “Bread of the world, in mercy broken” 
  • Communion Motet: Ave verum corpus – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
April 3 2015 - Good Friday
  • Crux fidelis – King John of Portugal
    Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis: nulla silva talem profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulce pondus sustinet.
    Faithful cross, above all other, One and only noble tree: None in foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thy peer may be. Sweetest wood and sweetest iron, Sweetest weight is hung on thee!

  • View/download music list including anthem and psalm texts - see here »

Visit St. Barnabas on the Danforth (at Chester Station) map » or visit the website here »

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Lent 5 - March 22 2015

  • Organ: Méditation (from Messe de Mariage) - Jean Francaix (1912-1997)
  • Opening Hymn 564 Lead us, heavenly Father
  • Psalm  51: 1-3, 10-13
  • Lenten Gospel Acclamation: If anyone serves me he must follow me; wherever I am, there must be my servant also, says the Lord.
  • Litany
  • Offertory Hymn 185 Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle
  • Hymn during Communion 49 Draw near and take
  • Communion Motet: Ave verum corpus - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Hymn 438 O Jesus, I have promised
  • Organ: Largo (from Suite profane) - Jean Francaix (1912-1997)

  • View/download music list including anthem and psalm texts - see here »

Visit St. Barnabas on the Danforth (at Chester Station) map » or visit the website here »

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Lent 4 - March 15 2015

  • Organ Voluntary in A -  Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676)
  • Opening Hymn 524 - O Christ, the great foundation
  • Service Music: Mass for 3 voices – William Byrd (1539/40-1623)
  • Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-22 (Tone VI) - Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good
  • Lenten Gospel Acclamation: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son: everyone who believes in him has eternal life.
  • Offertory 551 My faith looks up to thee (Olivet)
  • Hymn during Communion 72 Bread of Heaven (Jesu, meine Zuversicht)
  • Communion Motet: Who is at my window who – Welford Russell
  • Hymn 398 Let us with a gladsome mind (Monkland)
  • Organ: Pavan (The Earle of Salisbury) – William Byrd

  • View/download music list including anthem and psalm texts - see here » 
Music Notes

This Sunday (March 15) three of our lead singers (alto, tenor, bass) will sing a special setting of the communion service – William Byrd’s “Mass for 3 Voices”. Byrd (1543-1623) has been called “the greatest English composer, an arbiter of the sublime and master of his craft”. We sincerely hope that this beautiful music will enhance your worship during this Lenten season.

William Byrd (1543-1623) is known to have been a tenaciously loyal Roman Catholic in a country which was more or less militantly Protestant. It took some courage, therefore, for a composer to set Latin texts at all at that time. Actually to publish three Latin masses (one in 3 parts, one in 4 parts, and one in 5 parts) took a great deal more courage, yet Byrd did publish them between 1593 and 1595, just a year or two after they were written. The Masses were originally written with the pragmatic purpose of giving small amateur choirs settings of important texts which they could reasonably hope to master. The Mass for 3 Voices which we hear this morning is for alto, tenor and bass and will be sung by our choir leads.

Welford Russell (1900-1975) was a Canadian composer who is particularly remembered for his output of choral works. Born in Neepawa, Manitoba, Russell made a living as a surgeon and was notably a medical missionary in India from 1925-1941. He pursued musical activities in his spare time. He studied the organ in Ireland and pursued studies in music composition with Godfrey Ridout and singing with Weldon Kilburn at the Toronto (now Royal) Conservatory of Music. He published a Stabat mater and eight individual choral pieces, of which his part-song Who Is at My Window Who? has been widely performed.


Visit St. Barnabas on the Danforth (at Chester Station) map » or visit the website here »

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Lent 3 - Sunday March 8, 2015

  • Organ Prelude: Ich ruf zu dir (I call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ) – J.S. Bach
  • Opening Hymn 629 - Jesus, thy blood and righteousness (Walton)
  • Service Music: A New Plainsong – David Hurd
  • Psalm 19: 1-4 (Tone III.4) - The heavens declare the glory of God...
  • Lenten Gospel Acclamation: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die, says the Lord.
  • Offertory Hymn 603 - Holy Spirit, storm of love (Arfon Minor)
  • Hymn during Communion 479 - O Christ, the master carpenter (Albano)
  • Communion Motet: Expectans, expectavi – Charles Wood 
  • Hymn 306 O for a thousand tongues (Richmond)
  • Organ: Ich ruf zu dir (I call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ) – Herbert Collum

  • View/download music list including anthem and psalm texts - see here » 
Music Notes

There is an intriguing back-story to the text of today’s communion motet, “Expectans expectavi” (“I waited patiently for the Lord”). Although this Latin title alludes to Psalm 40, it is also the title of one of the last poems of Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915), a young Scottish poet and scholar who was killed in the second year of World War I by enemy fire at the Battle of Loos. Like his contemporary and fellow poet, Wilfred Owen (also felled, three years later, on the Western Front), Sorley wrote brilliant, bitter verse about the savagery and futility of war (“When you see millions of the mouthless dead/Across your dreams in pale battalions go . . .”). In 1919, composer Charles Wood (1866-1926) set to music the final two stanzas of Sorley’s “Expectans expectavi,” creating a moving anthem that, in part, memorialized the lost generation of British youth slaughtered in The Great War. And while the first three stanzas of Sorley’s poem are a sardonic assessment of years wasted in frivolity, these final verses, interpreted through Wood’s uplifting music, manifest the poet’s inextinguishable belief that fathoms deep, beneath the superficial banality of his life, dwells the God-found chamber of his soul that “Unwitting, I keep white and whole.”

Next Sunday (March 15) three of our lead singers (alto, tenor, bass) will sing a special setting of the communion service – William Byrd’s “Mass for 3 Voices”. Byrd (1543-1623) has been called “the greatest English composer, an arbiter of the sublime and master of his craft”. We sincerely hope that this beautiful music will enhance your worship during this Lenten season.


Visit St. Barnabas on the Danforth (at Chester Station) map » or visit the website here »