Category: Worship Music

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...

Warm greetings, all. I have crafted this offering of music around the key of F (major and minor), which I hope will lend unity and integrity to the sequence as a whole. We begin with one of the beautiful chorale preludes from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein, written for the Church in Weimer around 1716.  The chorale melody, gently elaborated,...

Greetings, all. On Mothering Sunday our thoughts turn to Mary, Mother of Jesus. The first item in our sequence of music for this day is Healey Willan’s Chorale Prelude based on the fourteenth-century German tune ‘Quem Pastores’. Many of us will associate the tune with Percy Dearmer’s beautiful text Jesus, good above all other gentle Child...

Warm greetings, Friends. In the Lutheran Church, the singing of a hymn is introduced not by a simple ‘play over’ of the tune, but more often by a complex elaboration of the melody, either composed or improvised.  Bach wrote several hundred such chorale preludes, covering the complete spectrum of the liturgical year.  ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein’...