Mount Calvary Church
Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
A Roman Catholic Parish
The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter
Anglican Use
Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor
EASTER SUNDAY
April 21, 2019
9:00 A.M Sung Mass with Festal Procession
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Organ Prelude
XVIII Elevation. Tierce en Taille, Mass for the Convents, F. Couperin
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Organ Postlude
Fanfare, Jacques-Nicholas Lemmens.
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Common
Messe pour le Samedy de Pasques, Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) was born in Paris and traveled to Italy to study with Giacomo Carissimi. Upon his return to France, he became the maître de musique to the Duchess of Guise and eventually Sainte-Chapelle, one of the most important church musician positions in the country. Unlike Lully and other composers that focused on opera and the court, Charpentier wrote a great deal of very good church music; sadly, most of is unknown and unrecorded, although you can certainly find excellent recordings of his popular Messe de minuit pour Noel, Te Deum, and Litanies de la Vierge. The Messe pour le Samedi de Pâques was composed in about 1690 and is one of the few that is short and doesn’t require additional instruments. Even so, with its ornaments, uneven eighth notes (a kind of swing) and upbeat rhythms characteristic of the French Baroque, it’s just a lot of fun.
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Anthems
Healey Willan (1880-1968)
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear upon the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come. Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.
Here is the Stanford Chamber Chorale.
The text for today’s offertory anthem “Rise up my love, my fair one” is taken from that strange and beautiful book dwelling almost exclusively on romantic love, the Song of Solomon. Although the origin of this book is obscure, perhaps coming from the ancient Israelite marriage liturgy, it was read very early on as an allegory of God’s love for Israel and in the Christian era as Christ’s love for the church. “Rise up my love, my fair one,” can be heard equally plausibly as Christ offering redemption to the sinner or as the blossoming of new hope through forgiveness at a turning point in a romantic relationship. Healey Willan (1880-1968) was born in England and attended a choir school where he studied harmony, counterpoint, and organ. From an Anglo-Catholic background, he became an authority on plainchant in English translation and many of his compositions have chant-like melodies with free meter.
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John Taverner (1490-1545)
Dum transisset Sabbatum, Maria Magdalene et Maria Jacobi et Salome emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent Jesum. Alleluia. Et valde mane una sabbatorum veniunt ad monumentum orto iam sole.
And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. Alleluia. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
Here is Alamire.
“Dum transisset Sabbatum” is a setting of a matins responsory for Easter. It is the best-known motet by the great John Taverner (1490-1545), one of the most important English composers of his era. Taverner was the first organist and master of the choristers at Christ Church, Oxford (founded in 1525 as Cardinal College by Wolsey). Taverner’s music has several characteristics we typically associate with late medieval music on the continent. There are flowing lines with very long melismas that can obscure the text. There is little sense of harmonic movement or direction. The music is constructed on plainchant, with the cantus firmus in the tenor. There is little imitation that is so pervasive in the music of the high Renaissance on the continent (and in the later music of Tallis and Byrd). Listen for the particularly English texture with soaring high treble lines in the top voice and very low notes in the bass. This is what the best church music sounded like in pre-Reformation England. It captures a sense of sacred space and repose from the noisy and insistent world we live in.
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Hymns
#91 The strife is o’er, the battle done (VICTORY) is from a 17th-century Latin hymn, translated by Francis Pott (1832-1909). The Latin text begins‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia./ Finita iam sunt proelia.’ It is found in a Jesuit book, Symphonia Sirenum Selectarum, published in Cologne in 1695. VICTORY is a free adaptation by William Henry Monk for the first edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern of the ‘Gloria’ in Palestrina’s Magnificat Tertii Toni .
#86 Hail thee, festival day (SALVA FESTA DIES) The refrain comes from the 20th couplet of Venantius Fortunatus’ (c. 540—c. 600) long Latin poem (110 lines!) celebrating the conversion of the Saxons by Felix, Bishop of Nantes (c. 582): Salve feste dies toto venerabilis aevo. Venantius, who traveled around the Germanic kingdoms of Europe as a wandering minstrel, devoted his life to the cause of Christian literary elegance. As poet to the Merovingian court, he became a friend of the mystic Queen Radegund, and he later became Bishop of Poitiers. The poem was translated by George Gabriel Scott Gillett (1873-1948).
#96 The day of resurrection (ELLACOMBE) is from a Greek hymn by St John Damascene (ca. 655 – ca. 745). It was translated by John Mason Neale (1818-1866).
#85 Jesus Christ is risen today (EASTER HYMN) is from Lyra Davidica (1708). It is a translation of part of an anonymous Latin hymn, ‘Surrexit Christus hodie.’