This Sunday 2 November is the first Sunday of the month, which means the Choir of St. John’s, Shaughnessy will offer the traditional Anglican service of Choral Evensong at 4pm.
Offered daily in English cathedrals since the sixteenth century, this late afternoon service marks the transition from workday to evening rest, from daylight to dark of night, providing an escape from the busyness and worries of the world. Come experience transcendent choral music amidst prayers for the world and reflections on life, with light refreshments to follow.
This week's music list:
- Voluntary: Maurice Duruflé, Méditation
- Introit: Kievan chant, Give rest, O Christ
- Responses: Humphrey Clucas
- Canticles: tone II
- Anthem: Maurice Duruflé, Domine Jesu Christe
- Voluntary: Maurice Duruflé, Hommage à Jean Gallon
From the earliest church liturgies, funeral services have always been marked with a special sombre solemnity as we acknowledge the mortality of man and meditate upon eternal truths. This Sunday we commemorate All the Faithful Departed, or All Souls, looking through the lens of chant as being particularly suited to a service that acts as a funeral for everyone who ever lived and died.
The use of chanted psalm tones can be traced back to the early centuries of the church, and continue to be used today as easy formulas for singing unmetred texts. Kievan chant rose out of this tradition in the 17th century, focussing on repetition and simplicity; Anglican chant developed similarly, with a predilection for proportioned harmonic patterns.
Duruflé suffused all of his sacred compositions with chant: his Méditation borrows an octatonic melody from his own Messe cum jubilo, based on the gregorian chant mass of the same name; Hommage à Jean Gallon was a harmony exercise written on a 'Chant donné', or given melody; and his Requiem, Op.9 is underpinned by the chants of the traditional funeral mass.
This All Souls' Day, we invite you to travel with us from the earliest days of church music through to the present, remembering fallen souls through history while looking forward to God's eternity, wrestling with the incredible dichotomy between life and death as we try to make sense of it all in this complicated world.