Mount Calvary
Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
A Parish of
The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter
The Consecration of the Altar
by
The Most Rev. Stephen Lopes
November 11, 2017
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Prelude
An Evocation of ‘Urbs Beata Jerusalem’ – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
Hymns
Christ is made the sure foundation
How lovely is thy dwelling place
Love divine, all loves excelling
The church’s one foundation
Anthems
Hear the voice and prayer, Thomas Tallis
O how amiable, Ralph Vaughn Williams
Locus iste, Paul Mealor
Postlude
Marche Triomphale (Nun Danket Alle Gott) from op. 6, Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Common
Missa de S Maria Magdelena, Willan
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Prelude
An Evocation of ‘Urbs Beata Jerusalem’ , Gerre Hancock
Gerre Edward Hancock (1934 – 2012) was an American organist, improviser, and composer. Hancock was Professor of Organ and Sacred Music at the University of Texas at Austin.Hancock served as Organist at Second Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas; Assistant Organist at Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, New York; Organist and Choirmaster at Christ Church (now Christ Church Cathedral) in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Organist and Master of the Choristers at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1971 to 2004.In 1981, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and in 1995 was appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Hancock received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the Nashotah House Seminary and The University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. In May 2004 he was awarded the Doctor of Divinity degree (Honoris causa) from The General Theological Seminary in New York.
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Hymns
Christ is made the sure foundation is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818—1866) of the 7th c. Latin hymn Urbs beata Ierusalem, which was written for the dedication of a church. Neale was an Evangelical when he was ordained an Anglican clergyman, but under the influence of the Oxford Movement he became an Anglo-Catholic. He was a student of worship in the early church and one of the first to translate ancient Greek and Latin texts into metrical English for singing.
The hymn is based on two Scriptures: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ep 2:20-22); and “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious, And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.’ Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone’” (1 Pet 2:4-7).
Henry Thomas Smart (1813—1979) composed the tune Regent Square and named it for Regent Square Church, the “Presbyterian cathedral” of London.
Henry Thomas Smart (1813– 1879) was an English organist and composer.
Smart was born in London, a nephew of the conductor Sir George Smart and son of a music publisher, orchestra director and accomplished violinist (also called Henry Smart). He was educated at Highgate School and then studied for the law, but soon gave this up for music.
In 1831 Smart became organist of Blackburn parish church, where he wrote his first important work, an anthem; then of St Giles-without-Cripplegate; St Luke’s, Old Street; and finally of St Pancras New Church, in 1864, which last post he held at the time of his death, less than a month after receiving a government pension of £100 per annum. Smart was also skilled as a mechanic, and designed several organs.
Though highly rated as a composer by his English contemporaries, Smart is now largely forgotten, save for his hymn tune Regent Square, which retains considerable popularity, and which is commonly performed with the words “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation”, “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem”, or “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. His many compositions for the organ (some of which have been occasionally revived in recent years) were described as “effective and melodious, if not strikingly original” by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which also praised his part songs. A cantata by him, The Bride of Dunkerron was written for the Birmingham Festival of 1864; another cantata was a version of the play King René’s Daughter (1871). The oratorio Jacob was created for Glasgow in 1873; and his opera Bertha was produced with some success at the Haymarket in 1855.
Harry Emerson Fosdick greatly admired Regent Square, and wrote his own “God of Grace and God of Glory” specifically in the hope that it would be generally sung to that tune. He was horrified when in 1935 the Methodist Hymnal set the lyrics instead to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Cwm Rhondda.
In the last 15 years of his life Smart was practically blind. He composed by dictation, primarily to his daughter Ellen, who was married to Joseph Joachim´s brother Henry Joachim.
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How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts, to me is a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 84, from the Scottish Psalter. Many British Reformation churches would use only psalms in worship. The tune BROTHER JAMES’ AIR is by the poet and mystic James Leith Macbeth Bain (1840—1925).
James Leith Macbeth Bain (1840 – 1925), was a healer, mystic, and poet known simply as Brother James. The tune BROTHER JAMES AIR was first published in his volume The great peace: being a New Year’s greeting … (1915). Born in a devout Christian home, Bain came to doubt the faith but later regained a mystical belief with the aid of the Christo Theosophic Society. He founded the Brotherhood of Healers, and he and his fellow healers often sang to their patients during healing sessions. In the latter years of his life he worked among the poor in the slums of Liverpool.
Here is Psalm 23 with Brother James Air: the choir of Kings College, Cambridge; the choristers of Canterbury Cathedral.
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Love divine, all loves excelling is by Charles Wesley (1707—1788). The hymn is a prayer: through the incarnated Christ, we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and ask that we would never be separated from the love of God in Christ, who works in us and through us until our time on earth is done.
One of the most loved Welsh tunes, HYFRODOL was composed by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811—1887) in 1830 when he was only nineteen.
Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
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The Church’s one foundation was written by Samuel John Stone (1839—1900) as an expansion of the article in the Creed: “The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of saints.” Bishop Colenso of South Africa had denounced most of the Bible as fictitious; in response Stone wrote this affirmation of the Church, which, although afflicted by heresies and schisms, still reflects the unity of the Trinity and the glory of the Church Triumphant in heaven.
The tune Aurelia is by Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810—1876), the son of the composer Samuel Wesley, and grandson of Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley.
Here is the choir of Kings College, Cambridge.
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Anthems
O How Amiable, R. Vaughan Williams
O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of hosts!
My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young,
even thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be alway praising thee.
The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us:
prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handywork.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
This is a setting of Psalms 84 and 90 in the 1539 Miles Cloverdale translation, with the hymn O God our help in ages past at the end.
Simplicity is a keynote in Vaughan Williams’s O how amiable, and the reason is the circumstances in which it was composed. In 1934 the novelist E. M. Forster wrote “The Abinger Pageant”, a play about the history of England, performed to aid preservation work at a church near where he lived in Surrey. Vaughan Williams’s anthem was written to be sung by amateur performers as part of the festivities, and the mainly unison writing reflects this. It also emphasizes the communal nature of the pageant experience, as does the addition of a verse from the famous hymn “O God our help in ages past” at the conclusion.
Here is the Houston Camerata.
Hear the voice and prayer, Thomas Tallis
Hear the voice and prayer of thy servants, that they make before thee this day.
That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, ever toward this place,
of which thou hast said: “My Name shall be there.” And when thou hearest have mercy on them.
It appears that Thomas Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer of Thy Servants was one of the earliest efforts at an “anthem” composed in English. Its earliest manuscript source dates from right around 1547, and its scoring for four men’s voices (without choirboy trebles) also tends to indicate this time period; though composers quickly moved to use antiphonal effects of divided treble voices, many observers of the time disparaged the practice as “like tennis play whereto God is called a Judge who can do best and be most gallant in his worship.” Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer remains quite conservative and unassuming!
Like much of the early English anthem repertory, Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer follows a simple ABB repetition form and uses imitation somewhat sparingly at the outset of its musical sections. In this case, he is setting an English text that comes from Solomon’s dedicatory prayers over the Temple of Jerusalem (2 Chron. 6:19-21). The text thus is appropriate to any church dedication or memorial. The first musical section is rather brief, with a single invocation of God, and a rhetorical first cadence. The second opens with “That thine eyes may be open toward this house,” with a more active imitative motive that leads to two extended sequential passages. Tallis repeats the final imitative prayer, “And when thou hear’st, have mercy upon them,” twice in each repeat for quadruple emphasis on the desired mercy.
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Locus iste, Paul Mealor
Locus iste a Deo factus est, inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.
O flawless hallow, O seamless robe. Lantern of stone, unbroken.
Exultate Chamber Choir performs the motet Locus Iste by Welsh composer, Paul Mealor who became famous for his setting of Ubi Caritas, composed for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. His harmonic language abilities are immense and his compositions are thoughtfully composed and ripe with neo-romantic chord structures. Mealor is a master of contemporary harmony where complex chords sound “right” to the ear and serve to move the soul when connected to traditional liturgy or compelling poetry. His Locus Iste was written to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the consecration of King’s College Chapel.
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Postlude
Marche Triomphale (Nun Danket Alle Gott) from op. 65 – Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Karg-Elert was born Siegfried Theodor Karg in Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany, the youngest of the twelve children;he changed his name to Sigfrid Karg-Elert, adding a variant of his mother’s maiden name to his surname, and adopting the Swedish spelling of his first name.
Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (he often used the BACH motif in Bach’s honour), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and early Arnold Schoenberg. In general terms, his musical style can be characterised as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies. His profound knowledge of music theory allowed him to stretch the limits of traditional harmony without losing tonal coherence.
Here is Peter Hurford.
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