Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Showing posts with label The Music of the English Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Music of the English Church. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Elizabethan Composer John Amner (1579-1641): Te Deum (Ely Cathedral Choir)




John Amner (1579-1641): Te Deum (Cesar's Service)

The Choir of Ely Cathedral
David Price, organ
Paul Trepte, Director of Music

Ely Cathedral is pictured

We praise Thee, O God: We acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee: the father everlasting.
To thee all angels cry aloud: the heav'ns and all the powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry:
Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth.
Heav'n and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee.
The noble army of martyrs praise thee.
The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee,
the Father of an infinite majesty: thine honourable true and only Son,
also the Holy Ghost the Comforter.
Thou art the king of glory, O Christ.

Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou took'st upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death:
thou didst open the kingdom of heav'n to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God: in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge.
We therefore pray thee help thy servants
whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.

O Lord save thy people and bless thine heritage.
Govern them and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee and we worship thy name ever world without end.

Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin: O Lord have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.
From Wiki.
John Amner (1579–1641) was an English composer.
A composer of sacred works, Amner was born at Ely, Cambridgeshire and had a close association with Ely Cathedral, even before his employment there as Informator choristarum (1610–1641), through his relatives, Michael and Ralph Amner, who were both lay clerks there.[1] He received his Bachelor of Music from Oxford with the support of the Earl of Bath in 1613, and also from Cambridge in 1640.[2] He was employed as both an organist and clergyman at the Cathedral after he obtained his first degree. He was subsequently ordained to the diaconate, later becoming vicarius (minor canon). In 1615, he published a collection entitled Sacred Hymnes of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts for the Voyces and Vyols, which represents most of his known works. His other works include Preces (both for five voices), four settings of the daily canticles, several simple four-part anthems, slightly more complex five-part anthems, and verse anthems. Roughly a dozen of these works were recorded in the 1990s, and many were performed by the Ely Cathedral choir, including Blessed be the Lord God; Hear, O Lord; Have mercy; I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; My Lord is hence removed and laid; O sing unto the Lord; O ye little flock; the Second Service (Cesar's) and Sing, O heavn's. Amner also wrote a pavan and galliard for viols and a single keyboard piece that stands out historically as the only recognized group of variations on a metrical psalm tune (O Lord in thee is all my trust).
Works, editions and recordings
  • A stranger here. Come, let's rejoice. O ye little flock. on collection Tune thy Musicke to Thy Hart, Stile Antico, Fretwork. Harmonia Mundi 2012.
References
1.      ^ Lionel Pike Pills to purge melancholy: the evolution of the English ballett - 2004 Chapter 5 The Opportunist John Amner 1615, Page 243 "John Amner (1579-1641) was a native of Ely, and was a chorister at the Cathedral there: he spent the majority of his life in that city, moving away for only one prolonged period,..."
2.     ^ Venn, J.; Venn, J. A., eds. (1922–1958). "Amner, John". Alumni Cantabrigienses (10 vols) (online ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
External links

 

Monday, September 9, 2013

Kenneth Long: Outline of "The Music of the English Church"


        Long, Kenneth. The Music of the English Church. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.


Mr. Long states:  “Happy is he to whom the great corpus of English church music is not so much a field of academic study as a glorious living reality” (12).

The website offers this:

“Concerned with the growth and development of the art of liturgical music and the circumstances under which it was written and performed, this book shows English church music as part of the far wider pattern of western European musical culture and examines the effect upon it of such great continental movements as the Renaissance and Baroque. The author seeks to project it against its religious, political, economic and social background, and to trace the parallel developments in parish music and organ building.”

1.  THE ENGLISH REFORMATION


 

1.  Brief History of the Book of Common Prayer

2.  First Prayer Book of 1549

3.  Church Musicians and the Reformation

4.  Merbecke’s Book of Common Praier Noted

5.  Modern Revival of Merbecke

6.  The “Parish Church” and “Cathedral Traditions”

 

2.  PLACE OF MUSIC IN WORSHIP

 

1.  The Parish Church Tradition

2.  The Cathedral Tradition

 

3.  MUSIC AT THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION

 

1.  Origins and the development of Renaissance style

2.  The sixteenth century

3.  The sixteenth century in England

4.  Setting Latin and English texts

5.  Notation and performance

6.  Sacred and secular: dual purpose music

7.  The organ in Britian

 

4.  THE EARLIEST ANGLICAN COMPOSERS

 

1.  Manuscript and early printed sources

2.  Christopher Tye

3.  Thomas Tallis

4.  Tallis: the Latin works

5.  Tallis’s English church music

6.  Thomas Caustun

7.  Robert Johnson

8.  John Merbecke

9.  Osbert Parsley

10.  Robert Parsons

11.  John Sheppard

12.  William Munday

13.  Robert White

14.  Richard Farrant

 

5.  CHARACTERISTICS OF LATE RENAISSANCE STYLE

 

1.  Melody

2.  Rhythm

3.  Modes and tonality

4.  Counterpart and harmony

5.  Form and texture

6.  Underlaying the words

7.  Word-painting

8.  Pitch and notation

9.  Tudor and Jacobean “fingerprints”

--Common melodic idioms, cadence formulae, the Nota Cambiata, decorated suspensions, false relations, simultaneous clashes

 

6.  WILLIAM BYRD

 

1.  The Latin Masses

2.  The motets

3.  English service music

4.  Sacred music with English words

 

7.  SOME LATE RENAISSANCE COMPOSERS

 

1.  Thomas Morely

2.  Thomas Tomkins

3.  Tomkins’s church music

4.  Tomkins: the services

5.  Tomkins: the anthems and full anthems

6.  Tomkins: the verse anthems

7.  Characteristics of Tomkins’s style

8.  Thomas Weelkes

9.  Weelkes: the music

10.  Weelkes:  the Services

11.  Weelkes: the full anthems

12.  Weelkes: the verse anthems

13.  Orlando Gibbons

14.  Gibbons’s church music

15.  Gibbons: the Services

16.  Gibbons: the full anthems

17.  Gibbons: the verse anthems

18.  Gibbons: the hymn tunes

19.  Characteristics of Gibbons’s style

20.  Some lesser composers

21.  John Amner

22.  Adrian Batten

23.  Michael East

24.  Thomas Ravenscroft

25.  William Smith

26.  John Ward

27.  Composers of Transition

28.  Peter Philips

29.  Martin Peerson

30.  Richard Dering

31.  Robert Ramsey

 

8.  CHURCH MUSIC AND THE PURITANS (Mr. Long gives 10 pages to these “types”)

 

9.  THE ENGLISH BAROQUE—PART ONE

 

1.  Monody and recitative

2.  “Affective” melody and harmony

3.  Regular barring and accentuation

4.  The key system and harmonic thinking

5.  Figured bass and continuo playing

6.  The influence of harmony on melody

7.  English “recitative musick”

8.  The growing importance of the solo voice

9.  Problems of form

10.  The Chapel Royal after 1660

11.  Use of stringed instruments

12.  Anthems and Services

13.  Church music outside the Chapel Royal

14.  The organ after 1660

15.  Music in the parish churches

16.  The gallery minstrels

17.  Anglican chanting

 

10.  THE ENGLISH BAROQUE—PART TWO

 

1.  Nicholas Ranier

2.  Walter Porter

3.  Henry Lawes

4.  William Lawes

5.  William Child

6.  Benjamin Rogers

7.  Christopher Gibbons

8.  Henry Cooke

9.  George Jeffreys

10.  Matthew Locke

11.  Robert Creighton

12.  Henry Aldrich

13.  The “Restoration” Composers

14.  Pelham Humfrey

15.  Robert Smith

16.  Michael Wise

17.  Daniel Roseingrave

18.  Thomas Tudway

19.  William Turner

20.  Henry Hall

 

11.  THE ENGLISH BAROQUE—PART THREE: BLOW AND PURCELL

 

1.  John Blow

2.  Blow: the verse anthems

3.  Blow: the full anthems

4.  Blow: the services

5.  Henry Purcell

6.  Purcell: the full anthems

7.  Purcell: the verse anthems

8.  Purcell: the Latin anthems

9.  Purcell: the Services

10.  Daniel Purcell

 

12.  THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

 

1.  General

2.  Manuscript and English Baroque

3.  The end of English Baroque

4.  William Golding

5.  William Croft

6.  John Weldon

7.  Maurice Greene

8.  William Boyce

9.  Minor figures—Benjamin Cooke, John Travers, James Nares

 

13.  CHURCH MUSIC UNDER THE LATE GEORGIANS

 

1.  Jonathan Battishill

2.  Thomas Attwsood

3.  Samuel Wesley

4.  William Crotch

 

14.  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

 

1.  The State of the Church

2.  Cathedral music

3.  Reformers of Cathedral music: John Jebb, S.S. Wesley, Maria Hackett, John Stainer

4.  Music in the parish churches

5.  The growth of hymnody

6.  The organ

7.  Characteristics of Victorian church music

 

15.  SOME VICTORIAN COMPOSERS

 

1.  Samuel Sebastian Wesley

2.  Wesley: the Twelve Anthems

3.  Wesley: other anthems

4.  Wesley: the Services

5.  Wesley’s hymn tunes

6.  Robert Lucas Pearsall

7.  John Goss

8.  Thomas Attwood Walmisley

9.  The Rev. Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley

10.  William Sterndale Bennett

11.  George M. Garrett

 

16.  VICTORIANA

 

1.  Henry J. Gauntlett

2.  The Rev. John Dykes

3.  Sir Joseph Barnby

4.  Sir John Stainer

5.  Sir Arthur Sullivan

 

17.  THE AWAKENING

 

1.  The state of the Church

2.  Music in the twentieth century

3.  The state of Cathedral music

4.  The state of parish church music

5.  The radio and gramophone

6.  Reforming, training, and examining agencies

7.  Singing the Psalms—metrical Psalms, Psalm-singing to Gregorian tones, Psalm-singing to Anglican chants, Psalm-singing to the Gelineau method

8.  Hymnody in the twentieth century

9.  The organ in the twentieth century

 

18.  THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

 

1.  The main stream

2.  Alan Gray

3.  Basil Harwood

4.  Thomas Tertius Noble

5.  Sir Henry Walford Davies

6.  John Ireland

7.  Sir Edward Bairstow

8.  Sir Sydney Nicholson

9.  Sir William Harris

10.  The Tudor and Jacobean revival

11.  The Folk-song influence

12.  The reactionaries

 

19.  THE MUSIC OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

 

1. Ralph Vaughn Williams

2. The Jazz Influence

3. The Impressionists—Peter Warlock, Herbert Howells

4. Benjamin Britten

5. “Pop Music” in the Church

6. “Folk Music” in the Church

7. The New Music

 

20.  BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

1.  Background history and general reading

2.  General music

3.  The Church

4.  The Church

5.  Church music—general

6.  Church music—Gregorian Chant

7.  Church music—Renaissance

8.  Church music—Baroque

9.  Church music—Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

10.  Church music—Twentieth century

11.  Hymnody

12.  Carols

13.  The Organ

INDEX TO MUSIC EXAMPLES

GENERAL INDEX