Easter 2013 The Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday marks the beginning of Easter.

In some churches, it is followed by the First Mass of Easter, even though it is still Saturday evening. One might be surprised by this, unclear how, if Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, we could possibly celebrate Easter as soon as the following evening. This is because the church inherited from its Jewish roots the understanding that the day begins at sundown. This is, indeed, part of the story of Good Friday: the authorities are anxious that all those executed on crosses should be dead and down before the start of the Sabbath, which began at sundown on Good Friday. Jesus said he would rise on the third day. The first day is therefore Good Friday, the second is Holy Saturday, beginning at sundown on the Friday evening, and the third day is Easter Day, beginning at sundown on the Saturday, and known as Easter Eve, just as Christmas Eve is the evening before Christmas Day. The biblical account is not specific about when on the third day the resurrection occurred, and some churches therefore undertake a full celebration of Easter on the Saturday evening. Our practice is a little different: we meet in the Cloister for the First Fire of Easter, we proclaim the Resurrection, listen to the story of our salvation in a sequence of readings, prayers and music, and then hear a dramatic Te Deum, during which key parts of the church are censed and then we go home and come back to do the First Mass of Easter in the daylight. The music of the Easter vigil seems to grow out of the darkness. Beginning with the Deacons three stark cries of The Light of Christ into a building illuminated initially only by the pastoral candle he or she carries, and the peoples response, Thanks be to God, we move to the lectern, where the Exsultet is proclaimed in chant by the Deacon into the huge space, amid flickering candlelight that still fails to penetrate the darker corners of our extraordinary building. Then scores of other candles throughout the building are brought to life and the first Gloria of Easter, absent throughout Lent apart from being heard once at the Maundy Thursday Solemn Eucharist, bursts from the choir and organ as the whole space seems to come to life. Lit now almost entirely by candles, the church looks the way it will have appeared at this time for the first 750 or so years after its foundation. The music for the Gloria is from the Missa Brevis by the Hungarian Composer Zoltn Kodly (18821967). It is a curious fact of musical history that the first performance of the Mass took placed in the Budapest Opera House cloakrooms during the Siege of Budapest in 1944/45, having been adapted from an earlier solo organ work while the composer and his wife lived in the basement after their flat was destroyed by shelling. Rather like Durufl,

whose Gloria from the Messe cum jubilo we heard on Maundy Thursday, Kodly makes extensive use of plainchant as a source for the melodic material of this music. The readings of the vigil are interspersed with music of various kinds, including the beautiful setting by Herbert Howells (18921983) of Like as the hart, the words taken from Psalm 42. This is now published just as one of Four Anthems, but the set was originally known as Anthems In Time of War and was first published in 1941, shortly before Kodly wrote the organ version of the Mass mentioned above. Just as was the case for Kodly, Howells and his family were bombed out of their house in Barnes, only surviving by the good fortune of having been away at the time. Like as the hart was written out at a single sitting by its composer on 8th January 1941, when he and his family were snowed in while staying at a house in Cheltenham. It has become one of the most loved anthems of the Anglican choral tradition. Victim paschali laudes is one of only four medieval sequences that survived a series of musical revisions decided upon by the Council of Trent. The authorship of the text is usually attributed to Wipo of Burgundy. Christians, offer your thankful praises to the paschal victim, it begins. For this, we return to the music of Toms Luis de Victoria (15481611), who has been our musical companion throughout Holy Week. The Te Deum in previous years has been by Herbert Howells, but this year we will be hearing the setting by Edward Elgar (18571934). This forms the first piece in his Opus 34, which also contains a Benedictus, one of the possible pairings used at Prayer Book Matins. In fact, the combined work was commissioned from the Roman Catholic Elgar by George Sinclair, the organist of Hereford Cathedral, where it was given its first performance at the Three Choirs Festival of 1897. The work, accompanied by a substantial orchestra, was a tremendous success with the audience. Sinclair was good friends with Elgar, and indeed, he is identified as the subject of Variation XI of the Enigma Variations. Elgar clearly conceived the Te Deum & Benedictus as a single work. The Te Deum seems to float off into the distance in a concluding passage on the organ alone. The Benedictus, which we will not be hearing this night, picks up a similar atmosphere at its opening, but when we get to its Gloria, the music of the Te Deum returns with a vengeance for a dramatic finale to the combined work. Of course, that is beyond the scope of Easter Eve, and so we shall be left with the gentle plea let me never be confounded. While this is technically musically incomplete, it simply reinforces the fact that the end of our Vigil just marks a pause in proceedings before the joyousness of Easter Day itself bursts upon us. The voluntary at the end of the Vigil is the vigorous Vivace movement from the Sixth Organ Symphony by Charles Marie Widor (18441937). He was the long-serving organist of Saint-

Suplice in Paris and wrote a very wide range of music, of which rather regrettably it is only his organ symphonies that are still generally known. The use of the word symphony is interesting, because it really had only referred to orchestral music until this time. Widor used it in his organ music to evoke a sense of scale, as well as making a deliberate reference to the rich colours of the romantic French instruments on which he expected these works to be played. Other French composers then followed suit. You can hear them played all over the place these days on desperately unsuitable organs that have been designed to bear a passing resemblance to something that Bach might have known, rather than the generous, highly enriched sounds of much later French romantic instruments. This is repertoire that will sound especially fantastic when our own new romantic organ is finally installed in a few years time. The Mass Setting at the Solemn Eucharist on Easter Day is the Coronation Mass (Krnungsmesse) by Mozart (17561791). It was written in 1779 and first performed that year in Salzburg Cathedral, where Mozart had just been appointed organist and composer, on Easter Sunday, April 4th, 234 years ago. So, this really is an Easter work, and the coronation nickname is a later embellishment. Indeed, the first time the work was used for such a purpose was the year after Mozart died. The choice of C major as the principal key of the setting tends to position the music in such a way to give a fresh and open sounding quality to the choral ensemble, helping give the work its joyful quality. Mozart clearly identified C major as especially suitable for the liturgy, because this was the eighth setting he had made in this key. In fact, there are some musical politics lurking under the surface here. Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo, had made the stipulation that the music of the liturgy should be kept brief and to the point. We know from his letters that Mozart was appalled, but nevertheless, if you took the Prince Archbishops florin, he it was who called the tune. Nevertheless, there are some marvellous signs of pushback by the 22-year old composer. The Kyrie starts with a portentous and, indeed, slow statement, but is then followed by an almost indecently jolly and brisk presentation of the text. Nevertheless, before he is done, the slow music suddenly bursts back in and makes a final six (!) statements of Kyrie eleison. Mozart has, as it were, the last word, and he had the louder means to make his point However, this is as nothing compared with the joy of the Benedictus. Mozart sets the first sentence to a pretty melody, repeats the text really quite often, and having perhaps slightly pushed his luck, brings it elegantly to the point of a restatement of the boisterous Hosanna in excelsis that we heard at the end of the Sanctus. Then, blow me down if he doesnt break off, return to the music and delicate texture of the Bendictus and repeat the text one final time before giving us another burst of the Hosanna before sitting back (as one might see him

in ones minds eye) with a satisfied smirk at having made his point so charmingly. He seems to have got away with it. Of course, church musicians and clergy long ago gave up such games at each others expense. At the Offertory, we are going to hear Easter, the wonderful first movement from the Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams (18721958). We are especially grateful to the RVW Trust, which has made a grant to enable us to acquire a number of works by Vaughan Williams for the churchs music library. The set of five pieces drawn from four poems (Easter is split into two parts) by the metaphysical poet George Herbert (15931633) was first performed in 1911 at the Three Choirs festival in Worcester we are having something of a Three Choirs-influenced Easter this year. Four of the movements are set for baritone soloist, who is joined by the choir for three of them, including Easter, while the last Antiphon (Let all the world in every corner sing!) is for choir alone. In Easter, the accompaniment expands from a single pitch to a chord over which the soloist enters: Rise heart; thy Lord is risen, at which point the choir bursts in with the same text. It is like a miniature but thrilling musical depiction of the moment of Resurrection. The text continues: Sing his praise Without delayes, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise With him may'st rise: That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more, just. Choir and soloist repeat the opening motif thrillingly before we move into a prayer that we might be enabled to praise God for this redemption adequately in music: Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part With all thy art. The crosse taught all wood to resound his name Who bore the same. His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key Is best to celebrate this most high day. Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song Pleasant and long; Or since all musick is but three parts vied, And multiplied; O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part, And make up our defects with his sweet art. The upper and lower parts of the accompaniment drift apart in glowing modal chords, settling finally in a beautiful resolution that feels exactly as though the blessed Spirit has indeed repaired any and all defects in this only just earthly music. What could be better at the end of this joyful occasion than to hear the Toccata from Widors Fifth Symphony, one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world? After a week of intense liturgical and musical events, Solemn Easter Vespers is an appealingly brisk and joyful service, neither too long to give one liturgical indigestion after all that has gone before, nor too trivial to diminish the importance of the day. The Missa Pap Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (15261594) is one of his bestknown Mass settings, from which we just need the Kyrie this evening. It shares with the rest of the setting a direct and uncomplicated way of presenting the text that gave it a

reputation as the ultimate expression of the Counter-Reformation principles of clarity and concision in liturgical music. The Magnificat octavi toni is a setting by Cristobl de Morales (15001553), just one of eighteen that he composed. The eighth tone of the title just refers to the medieval mode (akin to scale) in which it was written (technically known as the hypomixolydian). Morales was considered to be one of the finest composers of his day, yet apparently had much difficulty in keeping down a job, mainly because he was thoroughly seized of his own genius and upset those around him by conspicuously looking down on them. Fortunately, good music generally leaves out the character flaws of its composer Hc Dies by William Byrd (15391623) was most probably written for the recusant English church in which Byrd was an active participant. The reason for thinking this is that the text, which translates as This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it. Alleluia! is said to comprise the last words said by Fr. Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest who ministered to Catholic communities in Elizabethan England, but who was arrested, tortured, tried, hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Byrd was much affected by this, yet saw past the human tragedy to the positive message of the text. The piece ends with an especially joyfully cascade of Alleluias. Victim paschali laudes by Victoria was sung at the Easter Vigil and is described above. Vespers ends with the first hearing this year of the Marian anthem Regina Cli, again in a setting by Victoria. His music has accompanied us so closely from Palm Sunday morning to this evening that it seems simply right that his is also the last choral music we hear at the end of this remarkable eight-day journey that has taken us from the Entry into Jerusalem a week ago through the Passion narrative and finally on to the joy of the Resurrection. Easter Day is rounded off as a whole with A Trumpet Minuet by the English composer and organist Alfred Hollins (18651942). Blind from birth, he was not in the least held back by this, building a hugely successful career as a recitalist that took him all round the world. It has been estimated by someone with too much time on their hands that he travelled some 600,000 miles on his recital tours. This particular piece, which depends on having available the kind of trumpet sound that is only found on romantic organs, carefully only uses the notes that can be played on a real natural trumpet (i.e. one without valves). If you were to be told that it had been written by Handel, you might only be mildly surprised, so well does it capture a kind of Handelian ethos. It doesnt, therefore, push in any sense at the boundaries of early twentieth century musical style, but it is a jolly good tune and a marvellously upbeat way to end this very special day.