Prelude: Kellner, Fugue in D minor
Processional: “Look, ye saints” (CORONAE, #105)
Offertory: Croft “God is gone up with a merry noise”
Communion:
      Titcomb “I will not leave you comfortless”
      “Our blest Redeemer, ere he breathed” (ST. CUTHBERT, #368)
Recessional: “See the Conqu’ror mounts in triumph” (IN BABILONE, #103)
Postlude: Lemmens, Postlude in D Major

The Treble Choir sang this service alone.

Prelude: Messiaen “L’ascension”, mvt. 1
Propers: TPG introit; others AUG
Processional: “Hail thee, festival day” (SALVE FESTA DIES, #102)
Offertory: Gasper “God is gone up”
Communion:
      Fauré “Ave verum”
      “The head that once was crowned with thorns” (ST. MAGNUS, #106)
Recessional: “Hail the day that sees him rise” (LLANFAIR, #104)
Postlude: Bach, Prelude in D Major, BWV 532

Prelude: choir, Aichinger “Regina Cæli”
Processional: “Alleluia, sing to Jesus” (HYFRYDOL, #347)
Offertory: Schütz “Cantate Domino”, SWV 81
Communion:
      Tallis “If ye love me”
      “Peace, perfect peace” (SONG 46, #436)
Recessional: “Jesus lives!” (ST. ALBINUS, #88)
Postlude: William Walond (arr. Biggs), Introduction & Toccata in G Major

Prelude: choir, Aichinger “Regina Cæli”
Processional: “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain” (GAUDEAMUS PARITER, #94)
Offertory: Billings “An anthem for Easter”
Communion:
      Tallis “Verily, verily I say unto you”
      “O who shall roll away the stone” (NEW ENGLAND, #84)
Hymns for the May Crowning:
      “Bring flow’rs of the rarest”
      “How sweet thou art, my mother” (ST. ANATOLIUS)

William Billings (1746-1800) is today regarded as the father of American
choral music and the first composer of renown in the New World. A tanner
by trade, his music enjoyed popularity during his lifetime, though the
primitive state of copyright laws of the day denied Billings much
monetary benefit from his music’s success. He died in poverty, his work
fading into obscurity amid changing popular musical tastes.

Billings’s music lacks the contrapuntal or harmonic sophistication of
the work of his European contemporaries; instead, its merit derives from
its visceral, utterly human “directness”. Several of his compositions,
such as “Modern Musick”, show a keen, even humorous relationship between
music and text.

“An Anthem for Easter” is one of Billings’s best-loved pieces. Its text
begins with a quote from 1 Corinthians 15:20, then pulls various lines
from the poem “The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, &
Immortality” by Edward Young (1681-1765), an English contemporary of
William Blake.

Chorus Angelorum’s Evensong service this Sunday is in honor of the establishment of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

Introit: “Teach me, O Lord” (William Byrd)
Preces/Responses: William Smith
Hymn: “The day thou gavest” (ST. CLEMENT)
Canticles: “Collegium Regale” (Herbert Howells)
Anthem: “Hymn to St. Peter” (Benjamin Britten)
Recessional: “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven” (LAUDA ANIMA)

This Evensong service features some of the best-loved jewels in the Anglican choral repertoire. Few hymns are so cherished at Evensong services as the great “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended”. Herbert Howells’s “Collegium Regale” evening canticles remain among his best-known and most frequently performed works; the William Smith responses are also familiar to, and beloved of, Anglican church choirs everywhere. Benjamin Britten’s “Hymn to St. Peter” showcases this composer’s signature mastery of harmony and counterpoint; its walking bass line in particular, which from a lesser artist might have come out sounding awkward and clumsy, propels the musical line forward with an “eerie nobility”.

Prelude: Te Deum, H. 146 mvt.1 (M. A. Charpentier)
Processional: “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven” (LAUDA ANIMA, #282)
Gradual: Ps. 118, Joseph Barnby
Offertory: Cope “He is Risen” — TREBLE
Communion: Haller “Surrexit pastor bonus”
      “The King of Love my Shepherd is” (ST. COLUMBA, #345)
Recessional: “The Church’s one foundation” (AURELIA, #396)
Postlude: Voluntary Op. 6 #5b (John Stanley)

This Sunday marks the retirement of our pastor, Rev. James Ramsey. I can’t do justice to Fr. Ramsey’s time as a priest by trying to describe it here except to say that OLW is in his debt for his unwavering support of the parish’s music.

The composer of the communion motet, Michael Haller, was part of the 19th-century Cæcilian movement in Germany, a movement among composers to bring church music closer to an “ideal” that, they felt, finds its most perfect expression in Gregorian chant and polyphony. The movement as a whole produced little that most today would consider of substantial worth, but it is important as part of the “seeds” for the 20th-century Liturgical Movement, which culminated in the 1960s reforms. Haller’s “Surrexit pastor bonus” is something of a “diamond in the rough”: graceful vocal lines and a well-balanced use of harmony.

Preludes:
“Ich steh’ mit einem Fuß im Grabe”, BWV 156 mvt. 1 (J. S. Bach)
“God be in my head” (John Rutter)
“Air in F” from Water Music (G. F. Händel)
“Rise up, my love” (Healey Willan)

Seating of parents:
“Jesu, joy of man’s desiring”, BWV 147 mvt. 5 (J. S. Bach)

Wedding party:
“Canon in D” (Pachelbel)

Entrance of the bride:
Introduction to “I was glad” (C. Parry)

Ordinary of the Mass:
Office of Holy Communion, “Collegium Regale” (Herbert Howells)

Offertory:
“Cantique de Jean Racine” (Gabriel Fauré)

Communion:
“Ubi caritas” (Maurice Duruflé)
“Panis angelicus” (César Franck)

Presentation of flowers:
“Ave Maria” (Bach/Gounod, arr. Proulx)

Recessional:
Voluntary, op. 6 #5 (John Stanley)

Postlude:
Symphony #5, mvt. 5 “Toccata” (Charles-Marie Widor)

This wedding’s music is noteworthy on several fronts, primarily for the Howells “Collegium Regale” (i.e, King’s College, Cambridge) communion service. Completed in 1956, this setting of the Mass Ordinary in the traditional Anglican translation combines musical material from Howells’s settings of the morning and evening canticles of the same name from 1944 and 1945, respectively. While many choirs sing the “Collegium Regale” evening canticles at Evensong services with regularity, the communion service, by comparison, suffers unjust neglect, perhaps owing to the modern tendency to restrict service music for the Eucharist to congregational singing. (Tragically, the scarcity of choral Matins services has rendered performances of the morning canticles a true rarity.) While our singing the service is almost surely not a Houston premiere, I am unaware of its being in the repertoire of any other local church.

The wedding music will also feature a string quartet and a trumpeter, facilitating a rich variety of timbres for well-known wedding classics like the Bach, Handel, and (my favorite!) Stanley.

Curious story: when I met the couple to plan this music, the offertory was one of the last pieces we discussed. When I proposed the Fauré, Marie-Claude liked it and mentioned that she actually had hoped to find something to honor her own French heritage. I then stepped back and realized that we had not one, but four French pieces already planned!

Propers: communion TPG; others AUG
Prelude: “Meditation on the name of BACH” (Herbert Brewer)
Processional: “Welcome, happy morning” (FORTUNATUS, #87)
Offertory: Thatcher “Come, ye faithful”
Communion 1: Palestrina “Ego sum panis vivus”
Communion 2: “They cast their nets in Galilee” (GEORGETOWN, #437)
Recessional: “Come, labor on” (ORA LABORA, #576)
Postlude: “Spring” from The Four Seasons, mvt. 1 (Vivaldi, arr. Pierre Gouin)

Propers: introit & communion from TPG; others from AUG
Prelude: Voluntary for ye Double Organ (Henry Purcell)
Processional: “That Easter day with joy was bright” (PUER NOBIS, #98)
Psalm: Psalm 118 (partial), Joseph Barnby
Offertory: Palestrina “Sicut cervus” / “Sitivit anima mea”
Communion 1: Croce “O sacrum convivium”
Communion 2: “O sons and daughters” (O FILII ET FILIAE, #99)
Recessional: “At the Lamb’s high feast” (SALZBURG, #89)
Postlude: “Chant de joie” (Jean Langlais, from “9 pieces”)

The Sunday after Easter Sunday is the Octave day of Easter, and it tells the story of doubting Thomas (for which it sometimes receives the nickname “St. Thomas Sunday”). It also concludes the Divine Mercy novena, a devotion that Pope John Paul II especially promoted during his papacy. (Fittingly, his beatification in 2011 happened on Divine Mercy Sunday.)

This Sunday also has the nickname “Quasimodo Sunday”, derived from the incipit of this Mass’s introit. Victor Hugo’s protagonist in “Notre Dame de Paris” was named for this Sunday. (Ironically, some today balk at the idea of using the name “Quasimodo Sunday” because the term reminds them of the character!)

I am indebted to my colleague (and OLW choir member!) M. Jackson Osborn for playing and directing this Sunday in my absence.

“Jesus Christ is ris’n today” (EASTER HYMN, #85)
Mass Ordinary: Willan “Missa Sancta Maria Magdalena”
Sequence hymn: “Christians, to the Paschal victim” (VICTIMAE PASCHALI, #97)
Offertory: Cope “He is Risen” — TREBLE
Communion:
Byrd “Hæc dies”
“Thou art the way, to thee alone” (ST. JAMES, #361)
“Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest” (KNICKERBOCKER, #207)
Recessional: “The day of resurrection” (ELLACOMBE, #96)
Postlude: J. S. Bach, Prelude in G Major, BWV 541a

The music for Easter Sunday largely duplicates that from the Easter Vigil the night before, with the addition of the “Victimæ paschali laudes” sequence as set in the Hymnal 1940. The Treble Choir will also join us, singing Cecil Cope’s “He is Risen”.