Happy St Andrew's Day

Specious piffle from The Age

So, Ted Ballieu has one hundred days to display his mettle in government, according to The Age.

I have to say that The Age carried some good coverage over the last few weeks, compared to the increasingly hysterical primal scream we affectionately call The Australian.  There are some things I would quibble about.  They didn't really cover the policies of the Greens; most of that coverage was given over to the shafting that erstwhile party of the so-called Left graciously endured from the ALP franchises.

In spite of now having a dedicated arts page, the print edition of The Age didn't really provide much in the way of substantial discussion of arts policy.  OK, Labour kept it back until last Thursday, and the Liberals somehow didn't manage to release anything at all.  Both parties have something in their platforms which could have been rolled out.

Artists and their patrons vote as well, after all.

The commentary on economic issues was fairly uniformly excellent.  Tim Colebatch is easily one of the best economic writers around.  He connects the dismal science up with wider cultural issues in an engaging way.  But with the genuine diamonds come the fake items too; so much of the news-level coverage remains obstinately he-said-she-said.  Politics as celebrity gossip really doesn't cut it at all.  If you want a single reason for why the public appears disconnected from politics, why not start by looking at the go-betweens in the media.

One of the things which brought Kevin Rudd off the rails was his insistence on keeping every jot and tittle promised between his ascension to the ALP leadership and the washup of the night of the long knives.  His became a government obsessed with making announcements and 'winning' each day's media coverage.  It ended up putting the horse before the cart, with the predictable result of many announcements making for very little genuine progress.  Impatience bred inertia.

And commentators in the press kept setting 'tests' for him to pass.  Then they got fretful if he didn't 'pass,' or took out the sledgehammer if he somehow failed to take their advice.  Some of it was good, much of it eminently ignorable.

But Ted Ballieu has to prove himself over the next four years.  Some of his party's ideas for dealing with pressing issues are good; some things, like armed security personnel on public transport, could well be recrafted into better solutions like -- oh, I don't know, what about something a bit random and retro like staffing more train stations all day?  It's an instant winner: job creation, improvement of the customer 'experience' on public transport, and likely to improve longstanding problems with fare evasion.  The law and order auction was absurd: yet another token of how stultified public discourse has become.

The aspirations of a few crazy weeks of electoral politics must be tempered when they meet with the daily reality of having to make policy in government.  Citizens should rightly expect that it's going to take rather more than one hundred days to get the ball rolling.  No-one can ask much more than this.

In the meantime, I hadn't realized Fairfax was trying to shift a mile-high pile of fertilizer.  Perhaps they should put another of those &*#@ing wrap-around ads on The Age to irritate their readers even more.

Jonald Bradman Out For Six

Jonald Bradman, Australia's leading cricket player, has conceded defeat in the only match that matters.  He was bowled out for six in his first Test.

Sadly, we shall never know what sort of a captain he would have been as this is his second Test match as leader.  Bradman succeeded to the captaincy when former Victorian captain Steve the Smooth retired unexpectedly in 2007, and was widely expected to win the weekend's Test and finally experience leadership off his own bat.

Bradman never really recovered from the infamous Bodyline series of 1996, when he faced up against Jeff the Invincible.  Sadly, his legitimacy as leader was never to be given the imprimatur of the fans in the grandstand, although he made a good showing of his achievements so far, having played terrific games in water pipes, Port Philip Bay, Albert Park, the metropolitan transport system, not to mention his several innings with former Canberra kapitan Kev, and present captain Jillian.

Bradman will be retiring to his farm in western Victoria, leading to a seamless transfer of leadership in the Spring Street Cricket Club to members of the opposing team.  A certain amount of inter-generational uncertainty will ensue in the Lygon Street Fortress.

Voting

Well, that's the second election for the year down and dusted.  I voted after waiting some time in a muddy, rain bedraggled queue.

The ordering of my preferences ended up being something of a surprise.  I am a strict and comprehensive below the line voter for the upper house, which is just an extension of the method for preference-based voting in the lower house.  As a number of letters to the editor in various daily papers have pointed out, the direction of preferences is ultimately up to the voter, not the parties.  One is not obliged to follow the how-to-vote card.

Several things have irritated me in the closing days of the campaign.

Gratuitous mail-outs have been returned to sender (one bounced back: grrrrrr!), and various street-level promoters told to put their handouts in their own pockets.  Perhaps the one occupation which ranks slightly lower than politics in Australia must be electorate officers, party apparatchicks and the like.  Which would be why the same people eventually tend to wash up as candidates.

But the winner of the "if only I could strangle it with impunity" prize is the media habit of reporting opinion polls as news.  This is a cancerous habit which it behooves all thinking newspaper editors and their correspondents to break as soon as possible.

Advent Carols

An Advent Carols Service

Hymns, readings and choral music for the Third Sunday in Advent.

Featuring the Choir of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, directed by Kieran Crichton.

7.30pm, Sunday 12 December

St George's, corner Byfield and Ralph Streets, Reservoir.

What to do with political junk mail

Electoral mail-outs are far and away my pet hate for the year 2010.  In the federal and state elections I got my information from the source -- looking at the various party platforms on the web.  Of course, many voters are not as scrupulous in this regard, but it does cut out the static of being told by sundry Dear Leaders to fear the Greens.

I would welcome a mechanism which allowed one to opt out of party mail-outs.  The various stutterings about the major parties keeping electoral databases highlights the essential privacy issue at stake: it is very rare for a political party to seek the consent of the voter whose personal information is accrued in this way.  I wouldn't call it corruption so much as an unwelcome incursion into people's space.  It is at least as intrusive as cold-call surveys, fundraising appeals and sales pitches.

As a voter, the thing I resent most is the use of plain envelopes.  At least the sender address allows one to put it back into circulation.  I've lost count of the number of mail items I've sent back in this way through the two elections this year.

Message to Labour and Liberal:

• Sending electoral material in this way is mightily rude for those of us who would prefer not to receive it.
• Unidentified envelopes have become a dead give-away.  Make it obvious who the sender is so that I don't have to waste my time matching up the sender address before putting it back in the post.
• There are better uses for your postal budget.  I've found one which gets two bangs out of one postal charge:

Something to sing along to

Kyrie de Angelis, sung by the Benedictine monks of Silos.

Music for Sunday 28 November

I think everyone has a different sense of how Advent looks and sounds.  For me, the accent of the season is decidedly German -- Bach's organ chorales for this season are an important part of my repertoire, and I've lost count of the number of years where I've done performances of various movements from his cantatas for the season.  This year is no exception.

Equally, some of the art I turn to at this time of the year has a decidedly northern European accent.  Albrecht Durer's engravings dealing with the end-of-times seem to take on a sharper edge during the next four weeks.  Likewise, in my reading, Thomas a Kempis comes back to the fore.  Blake is my Advent poet with similar intensity to T.S. Eliot for Lent.

One of the challenges of having a youth choir is helping them to understand why we sing some of the music that we do, and how it fits in with what's going on in the liturgy.  Some things, such as the Advent wreath, are pretty self-explanatory.  Kids are natural pyromaniacs, so anything involving lighting a special candle gets their attention.  Likewise, the change of colour in the vestments and other penitential features of the season -- such as giving the gloria a rest -- are easily understood.

I've assembled a little teaching exercise linking up the words of Zion hears the watchmen's voices to the readings associated with Bach's 140th Cantata.  The Gospel reading in the Lutheran lectionary for the year 1731 was the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  The words of the hymn will be found here, although Bach's famous setting only uses the second verse.  The choir will be singing this piece for the Advent carols on 12 December, so it will be good to give them a richer sense it.  Perhaps the hardest thing is going to be getting them to understand that they're jumping through the same hoop as for their (by now) well-worn favourite, Jesu, joy of man's desiring; those who 'get it' will be the ones to drag the rest along in the performance!

Here's a sprightly performance of Zion from youtube, with Ton Koopman.

But back to this week...

There will be a joint parish mass at St Mary's, East Preston, followed by the Annual General Meeting.

I've alluded to some general seasonal variations in the service for the next four weeks, but there will be some local variations as well.  The choir will be singing the proper introit for the week throughout Advent, using the Francis Burgess psalm tone formula.  As we already use the Burgess tones for the offertory and communion sentences, this will make a nice set of chants to use at other times in the year.  Having arrived in the church, there will be a short service of light for the Advent wreath, including a hymn which gets longer with the season.  It's an old trick, but a good one!

The chant theme will be carried into the first part of the service, where we will be singing the Kyrie de Angelis.

The setting for the Sanctus, acclamations and Agnus Dei will be Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).  

The readings will be found here.  The psalm will be sung to Anglican Chant.  The hymns will be as follows:

Service of Light: Come, thou long-expected Jesus [verse 1 only, 272]
Sequence: The advent of our God [271]
Offertory: Wake, awake, for night is flying [266]
Communion: Dona nobis pacem, Domine [713]

Bright Cecilia

Today is the patronal feast for musicians and poets, the feast of St Cecilia.  If you want to read her legend, you can find the life of St Cecilia in the Golden Legend.

I remember the first time I heard G.F. Handel's setting of John Dryden's Ode on St Cecilia's Day.  It was electrifying, and set me off in search of both more Handel, and a good dose of Dryden.  As things turned out, Handel stuck, but Dryden didn't really -- I ended up being more of a fan of Alexander Pope, especially after meeting the bilious Epistle to Arbuthnot.  It still makes me laugh out loud, and I do enjoy the frisson from the sheer cattiness of it.

But back to Handel's Ode.  This is one of two such pieces composed for the celebration of St Cecilia's day in London, this one in 1739; Alexander's Feast is the other (setting another poem by Dryden), composed in 1736.

In the 1739 Ode, Dryden and Handel work their way through the orchestra, with meditations on the properties of harmony and music to bring the world into order.  You can find a copy of the poem by scrolling down the page here.

The opening sequence is the predictable formula of overture, recitative and chorus.  By the time the tenor arrives to summon us out of our elemental rest, you can almost feel the universe vibrating away in perfect tune.  It's important to distinguish between the use of terms here -- the universe is made by harmony, the musica universalis so perfect it is inaudible to mere human hearing.  That which we can hear is musica mundana, somewhat lower down the scale of value in the Platonic order, but no less affecting for that.

The soprano follows on with an aria posing the question "what passion cannot music raise, and quell?"  I love the description of the origins of music here -- Jubal struck the chorded shell, and his brothers stood amazed.  How rare for anyone to gape at music!

Of the instruments, we get the organ (obviously!), the lyre, the violin, and the flute.  However, the instruments that really get the show off the ground are the trumpet and drums.  Hark!

This is probably the aria and chorus tenors and choristers love to hate -- try saying "the double double double beat of THE thund'ring drum" as quickly as possible on your own, then getting a dozen or so people to match up perfectly, and then add a healthy number of string players and a timpanist to the mix.  But look very closely at this video: you will see natural trumpets, and what stunning players they are.  There is so much that just makes your jaw drop in this performance.

Skipping over the soft complaining flute and sharp violins, one reaches the part of the piece where the existential rubber hits the road, as it were. No organist can ignore it, given that it is this instrument which sets things spinning on their eternal coil in the climax of the poem.  Given that St Cecilia's attribute in iconography is the organ, this is where all the classical music theory meets with mid-eighteenth century ideas about music and theology.  (If you look closely at the picture at the top of this entry, you'll see a small portative organ between the violin-toting angels.  Curiously, it looks as if one could only play this particular organ while kneeling, for which purpose a nice cushion has been placed before it.)

The cadenza at the end of the aria in this performance is real fun.  It's worth recalling that Handel was known for his virtuosity as an organist.  The organ theme carries on in the following aria, where we get Orpheus quelling the savage brute followed by angels dropping by because they mistook earth for heaven when Cecilia was at her practice.  (Oh that this would happen to me!)

Style

A very kind correspondent sent me a link to a site titled I Write Like.

It's a pretty diverting website.  You paste in a chunk of something you've written, hit the button, and an algorithm generates an analysis of your style.  It then tells me I write like the following:

H.P. Lovecraft
James Joyce
David Foster Wallace
Arthur Conan Doyle

It seems that my style changes according to the subject.  Lovecraftian prose results from writing about organ music (maybe it's appropriate enough, given Lovecraft's profile as a pioneer in weird fiction).  I write with a Joycean accent when delivering my findings about the development of public music examinations in Melbourne.  Wallace appeared in response to a short political essay.  And my doctoral thesis was apparently written in the voice of the narrative of Sherlock Holmes!

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Music for Sunday 21 November

Well, another lectionary year is done.  Only five weeks to go until Christmas, and then the summer break.

All Saints has a couple of windows with images associated with this week's feast.  One is in the north aisle, towards the back of the church.  It's a rather pretty window, and the picture to the left gives you a good impression of the colours.  Something of a fantasy in imperial purple...

The other image is in the chancel window.  It's a long way up the wall, and consequently difficult to photograph without a large lens.

The end of the ferial weeks means that the music will be taking a more restrained turn until Christmas.  This means Dudman makes a comeback, and some more plainchant will be used than is usual.

So, for the last time until Christmas, the setting will be Philip Mathias' Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: Come let us join our cheerful songs [204]

Psalm: I was overjoyed [78]

Sequence: Hail Redeemer, King divine! [237]

Offertory: Hallelujah! sing to Jesus [517]

Communion: Let all mortal flesh keep silence [497]

The choir will sing an anthem: Lead me, Lord -- Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Things you always wanted to do

There's a video going viral in certain quarters of the Pope's recent visit to Santiago di Compostella, where the Botafumeiro (a large thurible) was swung especially.  Of course, it's usually put in flight on Sundays and feast days.

Because Compostella was one of the great pilgrimage churches, it is thought that the Botafumeiro was originally made so that a large amount of incense could be burnt in order to ameliorate the smell of people who had walked from France.  There's a physics side to it, however -- it may also have functioned as one of those little monastic experiments looking at pendulums.


Youtube has a host of videos of the Botafumeiro, and I thought I'd link one that gives a good view of how the Tiraboleiros get the great vessel to fly.

Now, if you've always wanted to give swinging the Botafumeiro a try, you can do so without leaving the comfort of your present location with this online simulator.  You might want to watch the guys in the video for some tips...

Read this

I cried reading this.

Music for Sunday 14 November

This is an odd week, for reasons which will shortly become apparent.

First, some good news.  The congregation of Brunswick Baptist Church has decided to gift their 1880 Gray & Davison organ to the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika to be placed in All Saints, Preston.  This has been brought about by a decision to renovate the building at Brunswick Baptist Church to allow the congregation's style of worship to continue evolving.  The time has now come for a deed of gift to be signed and some public event to mark the handing over of the instrument, which will be taking place at Brunswick Baptist Church this Sunday, 14 November, at 10.00am.

The fortunes of the organ at All Saints will be detailed in another post.  Here it is enough to say that the arrival of a new organ will be an important and welcome addition to the fabric at All Saints.

The service is a joint event between the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika and Brunswick Baptist Church.  The parish youth choir is to sing for the service.  Readings and music will be as follows:

Reading 1: Isaiah 65.17-25
Reading 2: Psalm 122
Reading 3: John 4.19-24

Organ prelude: Interludium f# (Op. 36, II B) -- Sigfrid Karg-Elert
Choral introit: The Call -- Ralph Vaughan Williams

Hymn: All people that on earth do dwell
Hymn: All things are thine, no gifts have we

Anthem: Jesu, joy of man's desiring
Hymn: O praise ye the Lord

Organ postlude: Piece d'Orgue [BWV 572] -- J.S. Bach

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Things will be carrying on in the other two centres of the parish as normal, although parishioners have been encouraged to attend the service in Brunswick.  Those who stay 'at home' will be treated to the following.

Readings are linked here.  The psalm will be said.  The setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Christ whose glory fills the skies [212]

Sequence: Christ is our cornerstone [433]

Offertory: Lord Christ, at your first eucharist [512]

Communion: An upper room did our Lord prepare [536]

The Organs at All Saints, Preston and St Mary’s, East Preston.

The Current Instruments

The instruments at St Mary’s and All Saints are reaching the end of their working lives, each for different reasons.  Work will be needed to keep each instrument in service.

St Mary’s has an electronic organ which is more than thirty years old – well above the average working life expectancy for electronic instruments of the period.  It has always been the case that electronic devices have an inherent element of inbuilt obsolescence, be it in the form of components that go out of manufacture or simply the standard of performance over time.  Very often an electronic instrument simply ceases functioning and cannot be repaired, or can only be put back into service at considerable expense.

The organ at All Saints has been displaying signs of mechanical collapse for some time now.  Many of the symptoms will have been noticed by worshipers in this centre: pipes sounding when they shouldn’t (ciphering), stops and couplers failing to engage or disengage, wind leaks, and notes that don’t work, leading to chords sounding hollow in some keys.  While many of these faults can be fixed, they will not remain fixed for very long without comprehensive work on the key and stop actions.

A further consideration is the purpose of having organs at St Mary’s and All Saints.  For many people, the essence of Anglican worship is the quality of the music, whether it is sung by a choir or wholly congregational.  This is an important part of our tradition for which the organ is indispensible.

While the organs at St Mary’s and All Saints are adequate for primary functions, such as leading hymns, there is little musical interest about either organ for the performance of organ or choral repertoire.  The current instruments are highly restricted, which limits the potential for expansion of music in the liturgy, or for holding concerts and other musical events to increase the parish’s presence in the local community.

Repair or Replace?

Why can’t we just repair the instruments we’ve got?

Is replacement really necessary?

Repairs are certainly possible, but this simply leaves the existing problems in place at considerable expense.  The ultimate answer to this question is whether the money spent on repairing existing instruments represents good value, and whether the outcome is of sufficiently high quality.

The electronic organ at St Mary’s has given very good service over its lifetime.  Replacing it with an instrument of similar quality would be a very expensive exercise, and would create similar problems for the parish 30 years down the track when the limitations of present-day technology meet once more with long service.  Would this be a good investment if given the choice to replace it with a well-built pipe organ, where there is no problem with inbuilt obsolescence?

The organ at All Saints has had significant work undertaken in the last 25 years, yet numerous faults have appeared (or re-appeared) in the meantime.  Can it really be said that the investment in that repair work was money well-spent if the instrument has deteriorated, and what does it say about the quality of the work performed at the time?  What’s to say that repeating the exercise of repair would do little more than defer serious problems into the future?

Two organs have been gifted to the parish, as possible replacements for the present instruments.

The first is a single-manual (one keyboard) mechanical action instrument, which is presently located in Launceston.  It was originally placed in a Uniting Church in northern Tasmania, and is thought to have been built by a Bevington & Son, one of the most prominent London organ builders in the mid-nineteenth century.  The instrument has been in storage at Scots Oakburn College in Launceston for some years.  The parish was offered the instrument after responding to an advertisement in the Society of Organists newsletter.

The second organ has been donated by Brunswick Baptist Church.  This is a large two-manual instrument, which has been left redundant after the congregation decided to renovate their sanctuary in line with changes to their pattern of worship.  The instrument has not been in regular use for some considerable time, and the congregation decided to gift it to the Parish of Jika Jika because they wished it to go to a new home where it will be used for weekly worship.  The commencement of the parish youth choir, which opens the possibility of the parish encouraging a new generation of organists, helped to seal their decision.

This instrument was built in 1880 by Gray & Davison, one of the most important organ building firms in London prior to 1914.  It was originally placed in Old St Pancras Church, one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London, before being brought to Australia sometime in the 1920s, where it was placed in Brunswick Baptist Church in 1929.  The original tonal scheme is intact, in spite of two major rebuilds, which gives it high heritage value.  This is one of a very few examples of an organ by Gray & Davison from the period in Australia, and would represent an important addition to the fabric of All Saints.  More information about this instrument can be found on the website of the Organ Historical Trust of Australia.

The Money Question

The parish vestry has agreed to the project proceeding under the condition that the money will not come from existing capital.

This means that a large amount of funds will need to be raised from beyond the immediate parish community.  There are many options to allow this: for example, cultural grants from the local council and state government, the diocesan cultural organization, private philanthropic trusts and various public-sector grants committees.  The parish is setting up a tax-deductable fund to increase the potential for receiving grants, and to encourage donations from private individuals and parishioners.

The two instruments require different amounts of work to put them into service, which affects how much it will cost.  It will only be possible to say how much the work will cost once the parish receives quotes from organ builders.

The important thing to remember is that the cost of replacing the existing instruments is either comparable with, or cheaper than, repairs.

Timeline

The smaller instrument will be arriving in Melbourne sometime between mid-November 2010 and February 2011.  Depending on how it has been handled in shipping, it should be possible to install it immediately.  There may be some small repair work to undertake in the process of installation.

The organ at Brunswick Baptist Church must be removed before the end of January 2011.  This means that a contract for refurbishment and transfer of the instrument to All Saints needs to be in place by the end of 2010.  It may be necessary to store the instrument before work can proceed.  The time between the organ leaving Brunswick and arriving in Preston ultimately depends on fundraising.

Some Gandhi

I was reminded of a quote from Mohandas Gandhi today, and it seems very apposite after my previous entry about the forthcoming state election.  In an article published in Young India in 1925, Gandhi intimated to his readers a list of seven social sins, which had come to him via a "fair friend:"

Politics without principles
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

I think the most telling thing about the upcoming state election is that neither of the major parties has been able to articulate why they're there.  Why vote Labour or Liberal if they can't even state some basic principles as to why it's worth the effort?  We are just slaves to the same punitive economic ideology which has warped our social outlook for the last 30 or more years.  If the point is to remain in power (Labour) or to attain it (Liberal), what is the point of possessing power at all?  If it is to follow the same political muddle-headedness that has prevailed since the politicians began to dissent from the prevailing socio-economic consensus, then there really is no point.

Several questions follow on from this.

Why the auction on "law and order," when the governing ideology practically forbids the government from operating the whole system?  Ideology dictates that prisons be outsourced to private companies.

Why continue to build freeways when it is clear that they don't stack up in purely economic terms?

Why persist with private-public partnerships for all major infrastructure projects?

Why subordinate education policy to the needs of industry?

Why is government involvement in the market necessarily a bad thing?

If questions like this make me naive, then being wordly-wise doesn't seem particularly worthwhile.  Surely there are more interesting possibilities contained within our community if it is conceived as a society, instead of constantly being articulated as a market, industry or some other economic construct.

There is a very good point Gandhi makes earlier in the same article, which bears placing close by this list of social sins:

We have not the governance of the universe in our hands but we have our own in our hands and you will find that that is about all it is possible for us to do. But it is at that same time all in all. There is much truth in the homely English proverb: Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

There are many more questions one could proceed to ask here.  Probably a lengthy blog post worth, but I'll save that for another edition. The full Gandi piece can be found here, pages 129-35.

Culture made random

This really happened the other day.

Wow.

Of consensus and nonsense

What is the key to the problem facing our politics at present?

Why do we have governments informed by an ideological commitment to laissez-faire economics, even if unprofitable companies have to be propped up at the taxpayer's expense?

Why does this occur in the face of a social consensus which still backs the welfare state at the deepest level?

I think the key to our political problems lies in a simple formulation: if it is good policy that makes sense and can be demonstrated to have positive social effects, then it must be subjugated to the needs of laissez-faire economic ideology.  In short, if it's any good at all, gouge it down to the dying breath.  Throttle it before anyone can suggest that it might be worth pursuing.

At the bottom of our politics there is a terrible muddle, which is summarized by my questions above.  Our politics is based on the notion of a welfare state, whether it involves paying middle-class couples to have children or electricity companies to cease burning coal.  Actually, these are examples of how a basically good idea has been debased in the name of supporting a free market.  It is this willful  debasement of a strong social consensus that shows how the state of Australian politics has landed in the current rotten mess.  We believe ourselves to be the land of the fair go, and the instrument to ensure that happens is the government.  If you doubt me, just read any of the recent histories of state and federal government in Australia.

Why this aversion to government as a force for social good?

Why is the good of private enterprise favoured above social good?

These are the questions I am pondering in the race to 27 November.

Music for Sunday 7 November

Well, here we go -- just short of eight shopping weeks left till Christmas.  The Melbourne Cup was run yesterday, so now we know the summer break is close at hand.  Similarly, the Sunday readings are getting around to the crunch: this is a big week of resurrection, what it means, and where we stand.

A more practical sign of the imminent turning of the year is that the new music list runs through to the end of January.  I prefer to have a break in the week after Christmas, rather than madly scurrying to get a music list for the following month in place.  Doing these things in larger chunks means that the inertia is reduced to a matter of one or two days in three months, rather than the same in every four weeks.

The setting this week will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Jesus, remember me [730]
Psalm: The Lord will bless his people with peace [17]
Sequence: Now is eternal life [385, tune 371]
Offertory: All my hope on God is founded [560]
Communion: Soul of my Saviour [502]