Music Notes for April 26, 2026

Music for Fourth Sunday of Easter

In 1594, a twenty-two-year-old organist from Pembrokeshire travelled to London to study composition with William Byrd, who immediately took him on as an apprentice. Thomas Tomkins showed promising skill as both a polyphonist and keyboardist, and two years later he was appointed Master of Choirs at Worcester Cathedral, all the while maintaining ties to the city of London and the Chapel Royal; of which he became a Gentleman and where he worked occasionally as an organist beginning in 1621. His church anthems would have been composed for his choir in Worcester and closely adhere to the genre of the verse anthem. Closely tied to the contemporary practices of chamber music and secular song, this form born of Reformation England features a consort of instruments such as viols or dulcians (or, an organ!) accompanying four-to-six part chorus which sang more or less the same words at the same time. A verse anthem’s concision and clarity of text was augmented by the nuanced texture of an instrumental accompaniment.

Tomkins’s son Nathaniel published a collection of his works, Musica Deo Sacra, in 1688, which contains five service settings and ninety-four anthems such as the one sung today during communion. This poetic rendering of Psalm 23 is presented in alternating sections, with soloists presenting the first few verses and the chorus responding with the “consequent” text.

Tomkins was also a skilled organist and took over Byrd’s playing roles in the royal court after his death in 1623. A handful of remaining works mirror his output for viol consort, several imitative fantasias and several dance-forms. The postlude for today’s service is a ground; which, like a chaconne or passacaglia, builds on the repetition of a four-bar melody introduced in the bass. In Tomkins’ rendering, this “ground” is placed in all four voices and elaborated with an exuberance that, in several instances, leads to the altogether abandonment of the theme mid-phrase!

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 April 19, 2026

Music for Third Sunday of Easter

It is easy to think of Latin hymns as being somewhat analogous in their historiography, all contained neatly in the Liber usualis or in the back of our New English Hymnal. On the contrary, these melodies are drawn from various sources dating from the rich period of creativity during the early Middle Ages, after which time their distribution and use throughout Christendom determined whether or not we sing them today. During communion, the choir will sing a Renaissance setting of Tibi Christi splendor Patris, a hymn whose convoluted history landed it on the perimeter of our modern canon, not often used. The text is a hymn praising God as King of the angels in heaven, mentioning the archangel Michael by name. For this reason, it is often appropriated for the Feast of Michaelmas.

Thought to have been written by the archbishop of Mainz, Hrabanus Maurus in the 9th century, the hymn does not survive in any source from this period. As is so often the case, late-medieval sources transmit disparate versions of the melody and text, some changing the words entirely to versions such as Te splendor et virtus Patris. Perhaps these amendments were made in an effort to establish a rhyme scheme, which the older version (exceptionally for plainchant hymns) does not possess.

The hymn must have been significant in the 16th century, as Lassus, Victoria, and Palestrina all write contrapuntal settings. Because this melody is strophic (different stanzas sung to the same tune), you will hear the choir alternate between the plainchant melody and Lassus’s elaboration. In this style of “perfected” counterpoint, each line of the poetry begins on a theme taken from the corresponding melodic moment in the plainchant. Each voice will either imitate this theme or offer a countersubject, forming a tightly-woven progression in which each voice is equal, no single line upstaging its counterparts.

Abraham Ross

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

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