Music for Sunday 5 December

After last week's intense togetherness, the three centres are back in their respective houses this week.  This time next week I will be fretting about the Advent carols.

There are some weeks in Advent where one comes out with Handel echoing in one's ears.  This isn't one of those weeks.  This is a Bruckner week.  We get that wonderful passage from Isaiah 11: A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Bruckner set part of this text very memorably in one of his motets.  I sang in this piece aeons ago as a young organ student, and recall wondering why Bruckner's orchestral music was so, well, monotonous, compared with his choral writing.  Of course, now I know you just have to lie back and let Bruckner's symphonic runaway train flatten you.  It's not the destination so much as the journey that matters.  When it comes to his choral music, his language seems much more concentrated, with the form more crisply articulated.  He still plants the big idea early and works it through, but you sort of get the feeling he respected his singers in a way that didn't extend so much to players of certain wind instruments.

But coming back from the mountain, readings for Sunday are linked here.  The Psalm will be sung to Anglican chant, using the Liturgical Psalter rather than the tatty (not to say maddening eccentric) Catholic translation.

There is a bit of variety across the parish about the service setting.  At All Saints we're using the Kyrie de Angelis, but taking the rest from Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).  St George's will 'just' be doing Dudman.

As mentioned last week, the introit hymn has been displaced to after the blessing of the candle on the Advent wreath.  Surprisingly, when the choir sang the introit sentence last week a few people in the congregation chimed in.  Either some people have sung the Burgess chants before, or the formula is so predictable it's easy to pick up.  The next couple of weeks will be the time to tell.

Hymns are as follows:

Advent wreath: Come, thou long-expected Jesus [272, verses 1-2]
Sequence: On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry [270]
Offertory: There's a light upon the mountains [276]
Communion: Eat this bread, drink this cup [714]