Music to our ears: in-person music is back! Music programs for 2021-22
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fter a year of fasting from many forms of in-person music, we are thrilled to once again be able to offer a series of special programs in 2021-22 with music for choirs, organ, and orchestra. While these will certainly be celebrations of the return of inperson music, a celebration that began By Brent te Velde months ago, there is still need, as Sara Mackey powerfully stated in her reflection for the service of Celtic Evensong on June 27, to grieve our temporary and permanent losses from the difficult time of pandemic. As Sara said, now that the path forward is becoming clear for us, it is time to recognize our grief, and that it is not our enemy, but our friend; that it is not an orphan, but belongs with us and deserves a place alongside our joy and celebration. The music of two composers featured in the coming year’s programs, Herbert Howells and César Franck, exemplifies this holistic expression of emotion and contains some of the most sublime musical testimonies of human transformation through grief and an intimate relationship to God. Our hope is that our musical offerings will honor and dignify this year’s journey toward healing and express faith in the strength of a new vision for the future. We will celebrate the 129th birthday of Herbert Howells (1892-1983) this October by featuring his music in a special service as St. Stephen’s again hosts the Three Choirs Evensong on October 29, welcoming the choirs of St. Paul’s and St. James’s. The service will feature three of Howells’ most beloved pieces for choir and organ: the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, and Te Deum from his Collegium Regale service. The Collegium Regale service is dedicated to King’s College, Cambridge, and is a collection of settings of the morning canticles, choral Eucharist, and evening canticles, providing a full complement of service music for the chapel’s Sunday choral services. Howells was dared to write the service for
the price of one guinea by the dean of King’s College, Eric MilnerWhite, who had introduced to the chapel the Christmas service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The resulting music began a fruitful period of composition for the self-critical Howells, and marked the beginning of a new age for English church music, the resonances of which persist to the present day. Howells’ inspirations included Renaissance Tudor music and English folksong, interests shared by his contemporary, Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as the colorful harmony of contemporary French Impressionists, such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The greatest influences on Howells’ life, however, were the grief from the early loss of his son, Michael, and the world-weariness and introspection that was the result of living through two world wars. These emotions color nearly all of Howells’ music, yet they are indivisible from the accompanying emotions of spiritual transcendence and ecstasy. All of these refract as through the magnificent stained glass windows of a cathedral from the light of Howells’ fresh sensitivity to ancient texts. The Winter Solstice Concert returns December 17, once again offering a cappella choral music in the beautiful candlelit setting of our church. This year our musical meditation on the longest night of the year and the anticipation of the return of the light will feature music inspired by a monastic ritual that is one of the greatest treasures of the Advent season: the singing of the Great “O” Antiphons. According to the Roman tradition, these antiphons are sung before and after the Magnificat, or Song of Mary, each night leading up to Christmas Eve, beginning on December 17. The seven antiphons were collected in Rome in the eighth century or earlier, and each begins by addressing God in Christ by a different name from the prophetic texts of Isaiah: Wisdom, King of Israel, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Morning Star, King of the Gentiles, Emmanuel. The first letters of the Latin names for these, Sapientia, Adonai, Radix Jesse, Clavis David, Oriens, Rex Gentium, Emmanuel, form a reverse acrostic, ERO CRAS, meaning “Tomorrow, I come.” This reverse order, leading to Christmas Eve, symbolizes the unknowable flow of God’s time, the presence of Christ in our lives from the beginning of time, and the
...now that the path forward is becoming clear for us, it is time to recognize our grief, and that it is not our enemy, but our friend; that it is not an orphan, but belongs with us and deserves a place alongside our joy and celebration. 6 403073_Newsletter.indd 6
SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT
9/7/21 7:51 AM
