Music for Pentecost — May 28, 2023

Holy Spirit, ever dwelling – Text: Timothy Rees (1874-1939) / Music: Herbert Howells (1892-1982) / arr. Malcolm Archer

Click to view video

This Sunday’s communion motet in church is an arrangement by Malcolm Archer of Herbert Howells’ (1892-1983) hymn tune Salisbury. Herbert Howells was for a short time in 1917 the sub-organist of Salisbury Cathedral, and this may be remembered in the name of this tune. Thereafter he turned to composition and to teaching, both at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith and at the Royal College of Music. Towards the end of his life he concentrated on church music, in particular writing a remarkable series of settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for cathedral evensong. In the 1930s he contributed a number of tunes for use initially in public school chapels. This is a distinguished example of such a tune.

The author of the text, Timothy Rees (1874-1939), was a monk of the Community of the Resurrection and later Bishop of Llandaff. He wrote a small number of very useful hymns. This one first appeared in 1922, and has been a welcome addition to the repertoire of hymns on the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, ever dwelling
In the holiest realms of light;
Holy Spirit, ever brooding
O’er a world of gloom and night;
Holy Spirit, ever raising
Sons of earth to thrones on high;
Living, life-imparting Spirit,
Thee we praise and magnify.

Holy Spirit, ever living
As the Church’s very life;
Holy Spirit, ever striving
Through her in a ceaseless strife;
Holy Spirit, ever forming
In the Church the mind of Christ;
Thee we praise with endless worship
For thy fruit and gifts unpriced.

Holy Spirit, ever working
Through the Church’s ministry;
Quick’ning, strength’ning, and absolving,
Setting captive sinners free;
Holy Spirit, ever binding
Age to age, and soul to soul:
In a fellowship unending
Thee we worship and extol.

Gerald Harder

/by

Music for the Seventh Sunday of Easter — May 21, 2023

Elegy (from A Downland Suite) – John Ireland (1879-1962) / arr. Alec Rowley

Click to view video.

John Ireland (1879-1962) was one of the most distinctive and distinguished of a generation of exceptional British composers that included Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and Arnold Bax. They emerged in the decade before the First World War and, in the inter-war years, produced a remarkable body of music. In Ireland’s case his was not only the most popular British piano concerto of its time, but he also composed a splendid repertoire of songs, piano music, chamber music and orchestral and choral scores.

John Ireland’s music is often a response to landscape and romantic sensitivities. A Downland Suite is one of Ireland’s most attractive compositions, a pictorial depiction enshrining the composer’s love for the Sussex Downs. Written in 1932 for brass band in four movements, it has also been arranged for string orchestra and various other instruments. This Sunday in church the suite’s hauntingly beautiful Elegy is presented as the organ prelude, in an arrangement by Alec Rowley.

Gerald Harder

/by