Music for Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

A little over two decades ago, I first encountered the sacred vocal music of Gabriel Fauré, not by way of his noted Requiem, but in singing the Cantique de Jean Raçine as a boy chorister in my home parish. The music struck me as incredibly beautiful; from the first notes of the serene organ solo through the interweaving of soaring melodies. It is remarkable that Fauré wrote the piece with apparent ease at the age of 19, for which efforts he was awarded the first prize in a competition at the École Niedermayer for sacred music. The text is overtly devotionalist, embodying an profoundly inward proclamation of a faith in something much greater than our rational understanding. Fauré depicts this “eternal word” as all-encompassing, yet effortlessly natural and beautiful; a musical setting that has always been deeply touching for me. Today, the lower voices of the High Mass Choir sing the same three-part setting I learned in my youth.

In today’s gospel, Jesus calls his disciples to leave their work and follow him, helping to spread the gospel. Today’s final hymn was conceived when its author, John Henry Newman turned in his tracks to follow his own calling. While travelling in Italy, Newman became severely agitated, sensing he had work to complete in England and, unable to explain his abrupt departure, sailed hastily across the Mediterranean for Marseilles. On this journey, his ship was becalmed for a week, during which time he was inspired to jot down the sentiments of his early vocation as the text of a hymn. “I was writing verses the whole time of our passage,” writes Newman, who discerned his vocation to convert to Anglo-Catholicism in the years that followed.

Almost one century later, English composer William Henry Harris composed the tune Alberta while travelling across Canada by train on a vacation celebrating a successful revival of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in Oxford. We will sing his Evening Canticles in A at next Sunday’s evensong.

Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.