Music for Easter Sunday — April 17 2022

Chorale Prelude on a melody by Melchior Vulpius – Healey Willan (1880 – 1968)

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Healey Willan was born in 1880 in England, and from an early age showed an interest in music and liturgy. He was educated at St Saviour’s School in Eastbourne, were he also gained a deep appreciation for church music, singing Evensong every day, and studying composition and organ.

In 1913 Healey Willan moved to Canada as he was appointed as head of the Toronto Conservatory of Music. In Toronto he also served as organist and choirmaster for nearly 50 years at the Anglo-Catholic parish of St Mary Magdalene.

Today’s postlude is from set of six compositions written by Healey Willan in 1950, all of which draw inspiration from German chorales of the sixteenth century. One of the most important composers of the time was Melchior Vulpius, whose melody we find in The New English Hymnal (107) with the words

Good Christians all, rejoice and sing!

Now is the triumph of our King

To all the world glad news we bring

Alleluya!

Gerald Harder

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Music for Palm Sunday — April 10 2022

Christus factus est – Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

 

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In the classical Roman rite, this text from Philippians 2:8-9, also part of today’s Epistle, was sung as the Gradual at Mass on Maundy Thursday. [The name “Gradual” comes from the fact that a soloist originally chanted the psalm (today’s text, unusually, is not from the psalms) from an elevated place, the step (gradus) of the ambo where the subdeacon had just read the Epistle.] However, since the promulgation of the novus ordoby Pope Paul VI in 1969, it has instead been employed as the Gradual at Mass on Palm Sunday.

 

Anton Bruckner’s (1824-1896) Christus factus est, this morning’s motet at communion, appeared in 1884 – the same year as the Te Deum for chorus, four soloists, organ and orchestra. More than any of Bruckner’s great motets, Christus factus est follows an almost symphonic path of motivic and harmonic development – a striking parallel to Christ’s journey of “obedience unto death”. All suggestion of triumphalism is avoided in the final quiet, almost mournful reference to the “name which is above all names”.

 

Christus factus est pro nobis obediens
usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.
Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum et dedit illi nomen, quod est super omne nomen.

Christ became obedient for us unto death,
even to the death, death on the cross.
Therefore God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above all names.

Gerald Harder

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