Church music in its environs

English Choral Music; Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge; Christopher Robinson, conducting

At the beginning of the new semester following the Christmas break of 1987, Dr. C. met his SDSU Concert Choir with his typical array of diversity in choral literature. A virtual smorgasbord of heterogeneity. No two pieces alike, all of them coming from a different time period, with a different language and in a different style. I like to quote the king from a Bugs Bunny cartoon where his majesty has just heard the menu for his lunch. The king responds with: “Everyday the same thing … variety.”

Dr. C. handed us the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from composer Herbert Howells’ Collegiate Regale. He explained to us that the EvenSong service of the English Anglican church incorporates these two texts into their liturgy. Composers who set the texts to music typically set them as a pair. And with both texts concluding with the Lesser Doxology or the Gloria Patri:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Composers will typically use the same music for the final portion of each text.

I had never heard Herbert Howells’ music before and it took a long time to get used to his manner of moving around in the field of harmony. Since it was English Church music, Mr. Howells wrote it, as you can imagine, with organ accompaniment. I had to get used to this, as well.

“Do you like it?” Dr. C. asked me after rehearsal one day. I don’t know, I said. I can’t tell yet. “Trust me. You will.”

We sang our concert in February at the annual South Dakota Music Inservice Convention with the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis included on the program. “Did you like it?” Dr. C. asked after the performance. I don’t know. “Trust me. You will.”

About a month later, the SDSU Concert Choir took a tour through Iowa, with a stop at a church with an immense sanctuary in Des Moines on a Sunday morning. We were to be the choir for their worship service. And since the church had a grand pipe organ, Dr. C. included our Herbert Howells pieces in the liturgy mix. As we approached our portion of the service, I wondered, How would this sound? Would the congregation like it? Would I like it? Would God like it?

The organ began and the sopranos came in ... and ...

I finally got it. The church’s cavernous interior allowed for marvelous acoustics, melding choir sounds with organ sounds and carrying one chord over into another for just a moment to create a heavenly sound that was impossible to create in our concert environments. The soaring soprano sounds reverberating over the cacophony of passage work in the organ accompaniment found a place in my ear and never left. THIS was the place for this music to happen.

“Did you like it?”, Dr. C. confidently asked me after the service. Yeah.

Credits: To Herbert Howells, for composing music suitable for the exaltation glorification of God. God seems a lot taller when your music is performed.