Music for Sunday 4 December

Readings can be found here, and the psalm setting is listed below.

The service music will be Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist, with a responsorial Kyrie based on a plainchant setting.

Hymns are as follows:

Introit: [proper entrance antiphon, sung to a tone]
Psalm: Show us your mercy, O Lord [Psalm 85, setting at TIS 45]
Sequence: On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry [270]
Offertory: Hark the glad sound! the Saviour comes [269]
Communion: We have a gospel to proclaim [245]

Just a quick reminder: only TWO weeks to go

Another item from the vault

Here is a little experiment. I've been thinking about how to present some of my organ tracks with visual stuff, if only to break the monotony of having upload mp3s to Box, and then wrestling with embedding them here (it's become easier of late, for reasons I don't know). I thought I'd have a go at making a little slideshow to accompany a short piece by an ancestor of mine, John Lugge.

Lugge was organist at Exeter Cathedral in the early-seventeenth century. His family was accused of recusancy, which made his position as a Vicar Choral awkward. Lugge's major claim to fame is that he wrote some of the earliest English music for an organ with two manuals.

Nowadays, we regard two manuals as the most basic aspect of the organ.  Lugge's music was groundbreaking because it exploited a technological change in the disposition of the instrument. The technological change was the positioning of the keys for two divisions of the organ in the one keydesk -- previously one played the Great organ from a dedicated keyboard, and then span around to play on the Chair (or Choir) organ, facing down into the chancel. This was one of the items in the recital I played at Christ Church, Brunswick, in August 2005. The vicar and people were good about allowing the event to happen, and it was a good afternoon of music-making.

I've gathered a collection of images from Exeter, and added a small group of photos from Christ Church at the end.

Enjoy!

Music for Sunday 27 November 2011

Advent seems to come around faster every year.  On Sunday we start the new lectionary cycle for the coming year, turning from Matthew to Mark.


Readings for the week can be found here, and the psalm will be sung to this setting.

Service music will be a bit different to the normal diet for the Advent season. The Kyrie will be troped, using the Kyrie Cum Jubilo as a responsory.  The creed will be sung in a versified form.  The intercessions and Agnus Dei will be sung using a setting from Taize.  The remainder will be sung to Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).

Just to add to the feeling of things being completely different, this Sunday will see the Sudanese congregation in the parish joining with the 10.30am regulars.  They will lend their voices at the offertory, and again at the close of the service.

Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Unto you have I lifted up my soul [Proper introit sung to a tone]
Sequence: Mine eyes have seen the glory [315]

Offertory: Lord Jesus, when you came to earth [Paul Wigmore; tune O Waly Waly]

[Offertory hymn at St George's and St Mary's only; music will be provided by the Sudanese congregation at All Saints]
Communion: Not the powerful, not the privileged [288]

From the vault

While I'm on the roll of sharing things from a little while ago, one of the other rehearsal tapes I found while moving house was the one from my final year recital in 2002.

Since it is St Cecilia's day today, perhaps it is pertinent to write a little about the power of music.  I can't really offer a great metaphysical treatise today, so perhaps a little story about the circumstances of what I'm sharing today will have to do.

I remember getting to the end of third year in 2001 and wondering why I was even in the music course.  I think the middle years of a degree do tend to be like this: removed from the experience of a discipline being exciting and life-enhancing, but not yet near feeling confident enough to grasp the nettle.  It had been a pretty dreadful year, capped off by the instrument at Trinity College expiring halfway through my examination recital.  There was a side of me that was very ready to throw it in and finish the arts degree I'd deferred to go and study music in the first place.  It all felt wrong, wrong, just plain wrong.

The rescue operation came in fourth year.  I started preparing for the examination recital with a determination to do things that would retain my interest, stretch my capacities, and -- hopefully -- spook the examiners.  The academic side of the year was pretty undistinguished, but I really managed to pull my playing together.

I chose an ambitious programme, and much of the recorded playing still stacks up.  Here's a solid dose of it: Prelude et Fugue sur le Nom d'Alain -- Maurice Durufle.

Organ Concert at Christ Church, Brunswick, 7 August 2005

My first post as a fully-fledged organist was at Christ Church, Brunswick, where I worked from 2004 until mid-2008.
Christ Church is a unique place on many accounts: the building is highly unusual, the liturgy quite distinctive, and the organ groundbreaking.  This parish was the first in Melbourne to install an instrument built purely along classical-revival lines.  It is an excellent example of the work of Roger Pogson in his prime.

As young directors of music are wont to do, I put on a recital about eighteen months after I arrived.  Like most studious organists, I made a recording of the event for personal reference.  This recording only resurfaced during my recent removal.

It is interesting to listen to tapes like this at a distance of years.  My approach to performance has evolved and matured quite considerably, and you would expect that a recording a few years old would contain lots of things that I would now prefer to forget.

Strangely, that's not really how I see this recording.  There are a good number of things that were quite well-done, even if it's not exactly how I'd go about it right now.  There are a few pieces that I was performing publicly for the first time, so my ideas have moved on.  But most of it is basically good playing, which is the critical point for me.  There are many small things that make one blanch, but the totality is still quite acceptable.

Over the next little while I'll post items from the programme.  There was a lot of music, and the audience certainly heard a lot of colour from the instrument.

Here is the first item, Prelude & "St Anne" Fugue in E-flat [BWV 552] -- J.S. Bach.  To mix things up, I invited the congregation (woops! Audience) to sing the hymn tune on which fugue is based.

The bookshelf

My reading list disappeared with the sidebars, and there have been a few emails wondering if I could find another way of sharing what I've been reading.

The sidebar was a continuation of the Endnote habit, whereby I kept bibliographic details of all books related to my research.  This meant that I could be certain of having everything in order when it came time to assemble footnotes while writing.

My reading habits are fairly consistent, in that I'm usually tackling two or three things at once.  So it's usual for me to have one big book going, with a steady stream of smaller books.

The big book I've been reading slowing for the last four months is Composing the Citizen (Jann Pasler).  Only one chapter left to go, but it's going to have to wait until a completely clear day comes up, meaning it will be done in early-December.

The stream of smaller books is as follows:

Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music (RMA Monographs, 9) -- Matthew Head
The Master: the Life and Work of Edward H. Sugden -- Renate Howe (ed.)
Marxism and Literary Criticism -- Terry Eagleton
The Hope of Things to Come -- Mark Chapman (ed.)
Space for Grace: Creating Inclusive Churches -- Giles Goddard
Realizations: Newman's Own Selection of his Sermons -- J.H. Newman (ed. V.F. Blehl)
The Discourse of Musicology -- Giles Hooper
Poems -- Francis Thompson
Poems in the Porch -- John Betjeman
If you Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him -- Justin Lewis-Anthony
Come Celebrate: Contemporary Hymns -- Michael Saward (ed.)
Newman's Unquiet Grave: the Reluctant Saint -- John Cornwell
Collected Poems -- Philip Larkin
An Equal Music -- Vikram Seth
Smut -- Alan Bennett

The poster

Music for Sunday 20 November 2011

Readings can be found here, and the psalm will be sung to a home-made setting.  I recently did a survey of responsorial psalms composed over the last seven or eight years, and realized that I probably have the better part of a complete three-year cycle.

The setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757), with the Kyrie Cum Jubilo and a setting of the Te Deum from Taize.

Hymns as follows:

Introit: Crown him with many crowns [228]
Sequence: All go to God when they are sorely placed [240]
Offertory: There's a spirit in the air [414, tune 219 ii]
Communion: Come, my way, my truth, my life [552]

Grey days

It's getting to that time of the year when things are winding down.  In Melbourne, the slide into the summer holidays can be felt from the time between Cup Day and Remembrance Day.  The weather has turned, with daytime temperatures now reliably in the twenties.

The paradox of the slide into the holidays is that everything becomes more frenetic.  Social gatherings take on a determined air that they would not have had in mid-October.  The first Christmas events have taken place, while the festive bunting in many shops is beginning to look like a permanent fixture, having been strung up in late-September.  Various organizations I work for are beginning to look towards the final events for the year, with the beginning of discussions about how much leave to take in January.  The need to get business completed for the year drives the work-day just that bit harder.

I've been inhabiting a slightly liminal space for the last twelve months or so.  The fate of post-doctoral studies has rested on the assessment of grant applications, various articles and book chapters have yet to appear, all topped off by moving house a couple of months ago.  There have been other adjustments, like finally getting used to life without feline conversation, and starting back at weight training after a break.

Just recently, some doors that had been ajar have blown shut.  A job application for which I had some hopes of at least getting an interview was shunted into the never-never by yet another machine-generated email, many long months after the application went in.  Just today I finally received notification that my application for a research grant didn't make it through.

I've spent the last two years working in areas that make use of my abilities, but can be difficult to connect well with my gifts and callings.  I will never know whether the job or the research application would have provided scope to reconcile this gap in the immediate term, although one can always apply again for a grant, and another job is bound to come up sometime.

In the meantime it's back to plugging away at being a triangular peg in a square hole, hoping against hope that it will all fit together in the end.

Why do we tax books?

The perennial brain-storm that is our book industry is back in the news, with the Book Industry Strategy Group telling the government to scrap the GST on books bought in Australia.  Either that, or levy it on all books purchased through the internet.

I think our regime of applying GST on books is wrong-headed.  In the UK, the VAT is not applied to books.  The BISG making this move looks like seeking concessions for a lack of foresight in their industry.  The rather spectacular collapse of Borders earlier in the year points to a cluster of issues the peak bodies have yet to deal with.  The age of the local bookshop is truly up; those that remain will be the cultural institutions (like Readings), where value-adding is a key attraction to customers.  For those of us wanting to get the latest Stephen King novel without hassles, the internet has well-and-truly become the first port of call.

Changes to the tax regime should not be made simply to support industries that have failed to keep up with the times.  I can see a time looming when second-hand books will be the backbone of the real-world market, with a likely decrease in print runs for new titles.  A decade from now will probably see the majority of readers carrying libraries around on an electronic device in much the way that people no longer accumulate CDs in order to listen to music.  Micro-purchasing for books is already with us, along with public domain downloads of out of copyright material, and the BISG have yet to seriously grapple with what this might mean for their members.  Instead, they are arguing about terrestrial trade boundaries.

Upcoming concert

I'll be accompanying a song recital in December.  The program includes vocal music by Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Franz Schubert.  It will be a very rich feast.

SWEET & LOW

A SUMMERTIME CONCERT PROGRAM

Mezzo Soprano: Karen van Spall

Baritone: Joseph Kinsela

Accompanist: Kieran Crichton

3.00pm, Sunday 11 December 2011.

St Stephen's Anglican Church

360 Church Street, Richmond.

Music for Sunday 13 November

Back to normal after all the togetherness of last week.

Well, sort of.  I've been busy redesigning the pew sheet so that we can rationalise the amount of paper we hand out at the door.  If you come along this week, all you will receive is a pew sheet and a hymn book.  With any luck, it'll make life simpler for all.

Readings for the week can be found here, and the psalm will be sung to this setting.

The setting will be Philip Matthias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  The Kyrie will be sung to a simplified version of the Missa Cum Jubilo.

Hymns are as follows:

Introit: This day God gives me [642, tune 156]
Sequence: Take my life, and let it be [599 ii]
Offertory: O God of every nation [621, tune 595]
Communion: Wait for the Lord [Taize]

Music for All Saints Sunday, 6 November 2011

This week the Parish will be keeping the feast of title of one of our centres, All Saints, Preston.

Readings for the Mass can be found here, and the psalm will be sung to this setting.

The service setting will be as follows:

Kyrie Cum Jubilo
Gloria & Sanctus: Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757) 
Agnus Dei: Taize

 I've long adored Durufle's Missa Cum Jubilo, so it's nice to be able to introduce a simplified version of the Kyrie from the plainchant setting Durufle used.  Here's how Durufle's version sounds.

During the intercessions there will be an anthem for the commemoration of the faithful departed: Pie Jesu -- Gabriel Faure

Because this is a high day, the choir will be singing the Offertory and Communion chants from the Simple English Propers.  It's been interesting to see how people have picked these up on 5-minute nibbles over the last three weeks.

Hymns are as follows.

Procession: For all the saints [455]

Sequence: Rejoice in God's saints, today and all days [470]

Offertory: [music provided by the Sudanese congregation]

Thanksgiving: Jerusalem the Golden

Totally [sic]

A real estate agent wrote the following property description.  Everything about it is so monumentally bad that it really demanded to be shared, so hear it iz.

This very carictaristic brick veneer home with a touch of new and old that has so much to offer consisting of 3 very large bedrooms x2 with wardropes walk in to a hallway with high ceilings that lads you into very open spacious lounge room with double doors leading into dining area. Walk into the kitchen and it has a character of its own also offering gas heating, wall mounted cooling unit, separate laundry, 2 large sheds double garage and then walk outside to under cover huge entertaining area in the heart of town close to local shops, schools and trainsport.

Ca Ira

Pity the poor Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, London.  Having taken and persisted with a silly position over the camp set up in the Cathedral grounds, he now finds his position 'untenable' and has resigned.

Here's a little musical tribute to the out-going Dean.