Music Notes for February 8, 2026

Music for Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

A little over two decades ago, I first encountered the sacred vocal music of Gabriel Fauré, not by way of his noted Requiem, but in singing the Cantique de Jean Raçine as a boy chorister in my home parish. The music struck me as incredibly beautiful; from the first notes of the serene organ solo through the interweaving of soaring melodies. It is remarkable that Fauré wrote the piece with apparent ease at the age of 19, for which efforts he was awarded the first prize in a competition at the École Niedermayer for sacred music. The text is overtly devotionalist, embodying an profoundly inward proclamation of a faith in something much greater than our rational understanding. Fauré depicts this “eternal word” as all-encompassing, yet effortlessly natural and beautiful; a musical setting that has always been deeply touching for me. Today, the lower voices of the High Mass Choir sing the same three-part setting I learned in my youth.

In today’s gospel, Jesus calls his disciples to leave their work and follow him, helping to spread the gospel. Today’s final hymn was conceived when its author, John Henry Newman turned in his tracks to follow his own calling. While travelling in Italy, Newman became severely agitated, sensing he had work to complete in England and, unable to explain his abrupt departure, sailed hastily across the Mediterranean for Marseilles. On this journey, his ship was becalmed for a week, during which time he was inspired to jot down the sentiments of his early vocation as the text of a hymn. “I was writing verses the whole time of our passage,” writes Newman, who discerned his vocation to convert to Anglo-Catholicism in the years that followed.

Almost one century later, English composer William Henry Harris composed the tune Alberta while travelling across Canada by train on a vacation celebrating a successful revival of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in Oxford. We will sing his Evening Canticles in A at next Sunday’s evensong.

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 February 1, 2026

Music for Presentation of Our Lord at the Temple

This Sunday’s liturgy features a setting of the Mass ordinaries (including the Gloria) penned by Costanzo Porta, known in his late lifetime as one of the most astute composers of strict counterpoint in southern Europe. As a young man, Porta trained as an apprentice at the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, under Adrian Willaert, a master of the Franco-Flemish style who stayed in Italy at the end of his life. At the Basilica, Porta became acquainted with the organists, Andrea Gabrieli and Claudio Merulo, the latter of whom he befriended and corresponded with until his death. Born of a rather exceptional period in the development of western music, one detects a remarkable balance in Porta’s musical style: between florid polyphony and textual clarity; between the bold motives of his Franco-Flemish tutelage with the reserved charm of the Italian school; as well as the influence of keyboard styles such as the canzona and capriccio.

The musicians of St. Mark’s developed a style of lavish concerted music sung and played by choirs and ensembles of trombones, strings, and cornetti placed in the various galleries of St. Mark’s. As the best musicians from the north moved to work in Venice, so Venetian style extended its reach into neighbouring regions, notably southern Germany and Prussia. The sacred music of Johannes Eccard (conductor at the Prussian court by 1599) bears such resemblances, although it is written with greater emphasis on textual clarity, describing the story of the Presentation of Jesus to Simeon.

The story of Simeon continues in the offertory hymn written by English Bishop and noted hymodist Timothy Dudley-Smith. The text forms a rhyming paraphrase of the proclamation by Simeon in the Nunc dimittis – it is fascinating that of the dozens of hymns Dudley-Smith wrote, this and his paraphrase of the other evening canticle (Magnificat anima mea) “Tell Out My Soul” are the two most often sung today.

Abraham Ross

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

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