10:00am Eucharist, II

      Festival Choir - Good Shepherd Choirs with Choir of

      First Presbyterian Church, Evansville, Indiana

      John Linker & Robert Nicholls, Directors

            Dove / Missa Brevis

            Crotch / Psalm 47

            Rutter / O clap your hands

            Tournemire / Improvisation sur le Te Deum (Transcribed by Durufl�)

            Hymns

            214*                   Hail the day that sees him rise                              Llanfair

            WLP 761 (st. 1)  All who hunger gather gladly                        Holy Manna

            307*                   Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor         Bryn Calfaria

            215*                   See the Conqueror mounts in triumph              In Babilone

4:15pm Concert

      Robert Nicholls and Helen S. Reed, Organ

            Preston / Alleluyas

            Improvisation

            Delius / The Walk to the Paradise Garden

            Improvisation

            Leighton / Martyrs (organ duet)

5:00pm Choral Evensong

      Festival Choir - Good Shepherd Choirs with Choir of

      First Presbyterian Church, Evansville, Indiana

      John Linker & Robert Nicholls, Directors

            Brackett / Simple Gifts (Training Choir)

            Nicholls / Octatonic Responses

            Howells / Gloucester Service

            Rutter / O clap your hands

            Hymns

            29*                     O Trinity of blessed light                                        Bromley

            24*                     The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended                 St. Clement

[* = Hymns chosen from the 2009 Hymn Survey]

Organists Robert Nicholls and Helen Reed to Perform this Sunday in Good Shepherd

Missa Brevis by Jonathan Dove (b. 1959), as the name implies, is an economical setting of the Mass ordinaries, of which the Gloria, Sanctus, & Agnus Dei are sung for the 10:00am Eucharist. The music closely resembles minimalism in several respects. One characteristic feature is short, repeated cells of rhythm and melody in perpetual motion, as heard in the rambunctious Gloria in excelsis. The Sanctus & Benedictus carries on the perpetual motion in 5/8 meter. Grand chords are used for "Sanctus," whereas bell-like writing is employed for "Dominus Deus." The Hosanna at the end brings back the opening chords of the movement. Another trait of minimalism is a paired down accompaniment, such as heard in the Agnus Dei, where the organ simply plays pedal fourths and fifths adding color to the homophonic treatment of the text. In addition to choral music, Jonathan Dove also writes music for plays, films, and orchestral and chamber music.

The Canticles for Evensong is the famous Gloucester Service (Magnificat & Nunc dimittis) by Herbert Howells (1893-1982). A prolific composer for the Church, Howells wrote many settings of the evening canticles with the acoustical properties of certain cathedrals and collegiate churches in mind. The harmonic rhythm of the Gloucester Service is slow and ponderous, and seems to be just as perfectly at home in Good Shepherd's acoustic as it is in the eight-second acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral.

The Responses were written by Robert Nicholls in 2013 for use at the King's College RSCM Course in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The skeleton of the work is the octatonic scale (an eight-note scale with alternating half-steps and whole-steps). Each of the voices closely follow the intervals of this scale, making for a strikingly fresh approach to tonality.

"At his feet the six-winged seraph;

Cherubim with sleepless eye,

Veil their faces to the Presence,

As with ceaseless voice they cry,

Alleluya, Alleluya, Alleluya, Lord most high!"

Simon Preston was my choirmaster when I was a Chorister at Westminster Abbey from 1981-1986.  His was a personality which entertained no fools and whose musical perfectionism required performance without compromise.  He was often fed up with us boys who were never good enough, and yet those of us he tolerated gained a permanently positive musical outlook. His own compositions display a penchant for rhythmic vitality.  Alleluyas is steeped in the harmonic language of the 20th century French school; Preston was preparing to record Messiaen's La Nativite in 1967.  After the arresting opening comes an angular melody which infuses the rest of the piece.  I overheared "Sir" (as we knew him) tell someone over Sunday lunch at the Choir School that this melody with its five notes was inspired by the word "al-le-lu-i-a."

In high school I stumbled across an LP in the Oundle School music library of orchestral works by Frederick Delius conducted by Sir John Barbirolli.  The Walk to the Paradise Garden is a sumptuous wash of unashamedly hedonistic sensual post-Wagnerian romanticism from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet.

                                             --Robert Nicholls