Music to End the Day Sunday, 7 February 2021

by Robin.Kyd · 7 February 2021

Dear Friends,

As you will know, we are currently in the season of Candlemas, which began last Tuesday with the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. St Luke (Chapter 2) recounts how Jesus was brought by his parents to the temple in Jerusalem, and greeted by the aged Simeon who declared the young child ‘a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’

Candlemas is therefore a wonderful season of ‘light’. All this evening’s music has been chosen to reflect this theme.

We begin with an improvisation which I created just before Christmas on the tune ‘Dundee’, an early seventeenth-century melody from the Scottish Psalter, most often associated with John Morrison’s paraphrase of Isaiah 9.

The people that in darkness sat a glorious light have seen,
the light has shined on them who long in shades of death have been.

Prelude – Improvisation on DUNDEE
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Next we have Thomas Tallis’s luminous Latin motet ‘O Nata Lux’, from the wonderful collection ‘Cantiones sacrae’, which Tallis created with William Byrd and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth 1 in 1575. A recording of this piece by Cornerstone Choir bathed in candlelight at the entrance of the Guildhall while the congregation waits in darkness in the main body of the church has in the past proved highly effective and evocative.
O Light born of Light, Jesus, redeemer of the world,
mercifully deign to accept the praises and prayers
of your supplicants.

O you who once designed to be hidden
in flesh on behalf of the lost,
grant us to be made members of
your blessed body.

O Nata Lux de Lumine (Tallis)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bomjz7g_L94

From ‘O nata lux’ we move forward more than 400 years to Bernadette Farrell’s popular contemporary ‘Longing for Light’, a hymn which expresses hope for peace and justice in God’s world. Each verse follows a similar pattern, moving from a statement of what many long for and yet don’t have – basic human rights and the fundamentals of everyday living – to our commitment to share what we do have and respond to the needs of others. In this way, we may be a ‘light for the world to see, servants endeavouring to make Christ’s kingdom visible on earth.

Longing for light, we wait in darkness
Longing for truth, we turn to You
Make us Your own, Your holy people
Light for the world to see