Music for Epiphany 3 — Sunday January 22 2023

O sing joyfully – Adrian Batten (1591-1637)

 

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Adrian Batten was a contemporary of Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Weelkes. They all composed in the early 1600s and wrote anthems in English for the Anglican Church. Batten may be less celebrated than the other two, but he was Vicar Choral at both Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Batten and his contemporaries were active during an important period of Anglican church music, between the English Reformation and the English Civil War of the 1640s. During this period the liturgical music of the first generations of Anglican composers began to diverge significantly from music on the continent. O sing joyfully, Batten’s four-part setting of the first four verses of Psalm 81, this morning’s communion motet, is sung by countless church choirs in every English-speaking country. It is irresistible, with its melodic invention, word-painting (“blow up!”), and just plain joyfulness!

O sing joyfully unto God our strength: make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob.

Take the song, bring hither the tabret: the merry harp with the lute.

Blow up the trumpet in the new moon: in the time appointed, and upon our solemn feast day.

For this was made a statute for Israel: and a law of the God of Jacob.

Gerald Harder

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Music for the Second Sunday of Epiphany–January 15 2023

These are they which follow the Lamb – John Goss (1800-1880)

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Sir John Goss (1800-1880) and his younger contemporary John Stainer were the two most prominent Victorian composers of church music. Goss was organist of St Paul’s Cathedral from 1838 until his death, and most of his church music dates from his time there. These are they which follow the Lamb, this Sunday’s communion motet in church, was written in 1859 with a text from Revelation 14:4-5. It gives the lie to the belief that all Victorian church music is sentimental or vulgar: it is simple, chaste, and almost completely diatonic.

These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

And in their mouth was found no guile;

for they are without fault before the throne of God.

Gerald Harder

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