Music Notes for May 24, 2026

Music for Pentecost

The story of Pentecost heard in today’s reading from Acts of the Apostles contains some of the most striking imagery in the New Testament. As a musician, I appreciate the artistic possibility represented by today’s dramatic subject material: by the tongues of flame, an invisible force like the wind, the Spirit as a dove, and the diverse and powerful tool that is human language.

Today’s liturgy presents an occasion to sing many such works of art in the form of religious poetry composed for this occasion. The processional hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is believed to have originated in a ninth-century Benedictine abbey, perhaps composed by Rabanus Maurus, who also wrote an important treatise on the Divine in nature and biology. Indeed, the Latin poetry of the hymn evokes anatomical terms cordibus, pectora and corporis, describing the human body and soul as a medium by which the Holy Spirit acts in the world. Perhaps it is no mistake that the author’s text was set to a plainchant melody and that, as such, we use our physical bodies to profess the mystery of the Spirit. The melody has been set by Victoria, Bach, Haydn, and Bruckner among countless others, but today’s prelude is a short verset by French baroque organist Nicolas de Grigny. You will hear a lively introduction on the full positive division, after which the hymn melody cuts through in long notes played in the tenor range of a trompette, an idiomatic registration of the French baroque.

The communion motet sets a Latin paraphrase of the reading from Acts, centring on the idea of the disciples telling the works of God “in many languages.” Tallis writes a richly-voiced texture of seven individual parts, beginning with several imitative voices and then layering others above and below, echoing the words being sung;  “all about them… began speaking also.” The final hymn, a text by Michael Hewlett, ties these events to the spiritual practices of today, a beautiful invocation for the Holy Spirit to let its “flame break out within us, fire our hearts and clear our sight.”

Abraham Ross

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

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Music Notes for May 17, 2026

Music for Seventh Sunday of Easter

Charles Callahan was a composer, teacher, and organist born in Cambridge, Massachusetts who studied at Catholic University of America and the Curtis Institute of Music. He quickly became one of the most sought-after composers of liturgical music on this continent, receiving hymn commissions from several Archdioceses in honour of Pope John Paul II’s 1999 visit to St. Louis and New York. Today, his Easter Prelude for flute and organ is played at communion by our choral scholar and cantor Aaron Lau, containing the seasonal hymn tune Lass uns erfeuen and the plainchant hymn Victimae paschali laudes.

The postlude comes from a collection of six “sonatas in trio” by J.S. Bach surviving in manuscripts held by his sons, likely designed as technical exercises for study at the pedal clavichord. Building on the chamber-music genre of trio sonatas popularized in France and Italy, these keyboard soli feature three fully independent lines – one played by each hand and one by the feet – that might just as easily be rendered by two violins with a gamba or harpsichord for the bass. They persevere as pedagogical tools in a young organist’s curriculum, as the task of rendering each voice precisely and independently instills critical techniques at the instrument. As with so many works of Bach, each sonata also serves as a cognisant synthesis of instrumental styles, displaying his mastery of musical grammar and form. This movement in G major hints at elements of the Italian concerto as well as the style galant.

Abraham Ross

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

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