October 2021 – Notes on the Music
With covid restrictions increasingly lifted for performing musicians, the summer happily became a very busy time for our regular senior choir members and deputy singers, and a number of past and present Hampstead musicians were involved in the BBC Prom concerts, notably contralto Jess Dandy who was a soloist at the First Night singing music by Vaughan Williams and James MacMillan, and bass Will Thomas who sang solos for the Mozart Requiem. Opera work has begun again, with baritone Malachy Frame singing for Nevill Holt Opera, and this month mezzo-soprano Catherine Backhouse and soprano Rebecca Hardwick will be singing in Rusalka in Bergen. It is also splendid to note that The Hampstead Collective will begin a season of ‘Start the Month’ concerts shortly with an opera gala on Monday 4th October, and then a concert of three of Bach’s sacred cantatas on Monday 1st November.
Our visiting organists at Evensong continue to do us proud with their imaginative and impressive choices. This month amongst the usual helpings of Bach and Buxtehude we hear music by composers from Finland (Rautavaara) and Canada (Healey Willan), though there are two pieces that I’d like to flag up in particular, played by Richard Gowers. The first is the brilliant Toccata composed by Richard’s grandfather Patrick Gowers, to be heard on Sunday 10th. There are two basic elements in the piece: a repeated Phrygian F-E motif coloured with different harmonies, as heard at the outset, and a breathless cascading toccata underpinned by complex rhythms, all infused with jazz-style elements. Buckle-up and enjoy the ride! The second is the masterful Pastorale (1909) by Fauré-pupil Jean Roger-Ducasse to be heard on the 31st which will flow well from our meditative Memorial Service that evening. It’s about 12 minutes long and has an imposing arch-structure beginning and concluding in a gentle, pastoral F major. (photographs of Patrick and Richard Gowers below)
Choral music for Dedication Sunday on the 3rd includes one of Thomas Tallis’s perfect miniatures for the early English liturgy, Hear the voice and prayer, which includes the words ‘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 Edgar Bainton’s stirring anthem And I saw a new heaven, with words from the Revelation of St John the Divine. For our all-age Eucharist on 17th the combined choirs will perform Schubert’s joyful Mass in G, and as we celebrate Harvest Festival increasingly mindful of the damage we are inflicting on the planet, our anthem at Evensong by contemporary American composer Robert Kyr is a setting of words from the ‘Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon’ by St. Francis of Assisi. For All Saints on the 31st we sing Victoria’s Motet O quam gloriosum (‘O how glorious is the kingdom in which all the saints rejoice with Christ’) and his Mass based on the music of this motet, and in the evening we sing music for the Memorial Service that includes the modern classic O nata lux by Morten Lauridsen and Samuel Wesley’s fine motet Omnia vanitas, one of two pieces by him that his son Samuel Sebastian Wesley hailed as perfect examples of noble church music. ‘Old Sam’ was a passionate enthusiast for the music of J. S. Bach, little of which was known in England in the early 19th century. He called his son Sebastian after the famed Leipzig organist, and his choice of the key of C# minor for Omnia vanitas probably reflects his enthusiasm for the 48 Preludes and Fugues that had just been published in London.he full music list for the month can be found in the parish magazine and on the music section of the website