Category: Worship Music

Good evening, friends. Last week I shared with you Thomas Tallis’s wonderful setting of words from St John’s Gospel, appropriate to this season of the Holy Spirit. Tonight we hear a more recent setting of the same text by Philip Wilby. Yorkshire-born Wilby was for many years a lecturer of music at the University of Leeds. He...

Good evening, friends. St John’s Gospel, chapter 14 provides wonderful words of comfort to sustain us through this great season of Pentecost. ‘If you love me, you will obey my commands; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your advocate, who will be with you for ever – The Spirit...

Hello, everyone. The theme of rest and sleep runs through our music this evening. The Italian late baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti wrote nearly six hundred sonatas for keyboard. Many of them are boisterous and virtuosic, but tonight I have chosen the reflective Sonata in G minor to establish a mood of quiet contemplation. Sonata in G...

Hello, everyone. Over the past fifteen months I have recorded several ‘Orgelbuchlein’ chorale preludes of J.S. Bach. They are particularly well-suited to our organ at Cornerstone. We open tonight with the prelude based on ‘Vater unser im Himmelreich’ (‘Our Father who art in heaven’), one of Luther’s greatest hymns. The original hymn is in nine stanzas,...

Dear Friends, On this Trinity Sunday, we begin with an improvisation on the wonderful Irish tune ‘St Patrick’ commonly used for the hymn ‘I bind into myself today the strong name of the Trinity’ (St Patrick’s Breastplate).  The melody appears in the ‘Petrie Collection’ of Irish music, edited by Stanford in 1903. Now we will hear St Patrick’s Prayer,...

Dear Friends, We begin our musical sequence for Pentecost Sunday with the beautiful Aria from Bach’s Variations written for the keyboard player Johann Goldberg.  Goldberg was a student of Bach.  He was also musician to the Russian Ambassador to the Electoral Court of Saxony, and told Bach that he was often required to play late into the night...

Hello everyone Our worship this weekend continues to focus on inspirational words from John, chapter 15: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Dwell in my love. … You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and bear fruit, fruit that will last. … This is my...

The last two Sundays of Easter focus on inspirational words from St John’s Gospel, chapter 15. If you dwell in me and my words dwell in you, ask whatever you want and you shall have it. This is how my Father is glorified: you are to bear fruit in plenty and so be my disciples. As the Father...

Hello, everyone. The fourth Sunday of Easter is often known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’, so all our music in today’s sequence is related to this theme. We begin with an arrangement for piano solo of Bach’s ‘Sheep may safely graze’. In its original form this is a soprano aria from the composer’s 1713 ‘Hunting Cantata’ (Was...

Hello, everyone. You may remember the inspiring Amazing Grace Pilgrimage back in September 2019, when people walked from Christ the Cornerstone to Olney, ‘home’ of Amazing Grace. The walk concluded with a lovely service in the Church of SS Peter and Paul, Olney, in which our musicians took part. In our morning service today we heard...

Hello, everyone. Our music this evening continues to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We begin with a short improvisation that I created at home just before Easter on the ancient French carol melody ‘Noel Nouvelet’. In France the tune is well-known as a popular Christmas carol, but in England we more often associate it with...

Hello, everyone, and Happy Easter! The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!! We begin this sequence with Bach’s great choral prelude ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’ based on one of the finest resurrection hymns of the Lutheran Church. The chorale melody is underpinned with a driving contrapuntal motif, passed between alto, tenor and pedal. In...