Music Notes for Holy Trinity — May 26, 2024

Missa brevis – Grayston Ives (b. 1948)

Bill Ives has spent his life in choral music—as a singer, conductor, teacher and composer (writing as Grayston Ives). He was a chorister at Ely Cathedral and studied music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, taking composition lessons with Richard Rodney Bennett. After Cambridge he sang in Guildford Cathedral Choir before joining the King’s Singers, with whom he recorded and performed worldwide. For 18 years he directed the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 2008 his work as a composer and conductor of church music was recognized with the award of a Lambeth DMus and a Fellowship of the Royal School of Church Music.

Grayston Ives’ choral works always express their sentiment clearly and with an ear toward memorable melody and richly coloured harmony. His Missa brevis (1987), this morning’s setting of the Mass Ordinary, is inventive, tuneful, harmonically vibrant, textually illuminating, and (very importantly) short, with a terrific organ accompaniment.

Gerald Harder

Kyrie

Click to watch video on Youtube: Kyrie

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

 

Sanctus/Benedictus

Click to watch video on Youtube: Sanctus/Benedictus

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,
heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
Glory be to thee, O Lord most high.
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:
Hosanna in the highest.

 

Agnus Dei

Click to watch video on Youtube: Agnus Dei

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: grant us thy peace.