♪ Music Notes ♪

CHARLES WOOD (1866-1926) was an Irish composer, organist and teacher; his pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams at Cambridge, and Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music in London. One of the more important minor composers from the British Isles of his generation, he composed songs, cantatas, works for the stage, as well as orchestral and chamber pieces, but is best remembered for his large output of anthems, communion service settings, psalm settings, and other religious compositions.

GEORGE RATCLIFFE WOODWARD (1848-1934) was an English Anglican priest who wrote mostly religious verse, both original and translated from ancient authors. The best known of these were written to fit traditional melodies, mainly from the Renaissance era. He sometimes harmonized these melodies himself, but usually left it to his frequent collaborator, composer Charles Wood. In 1894, he and Wood published “Carols for Easter and Ascensiontide”, which included the popular Easter carol This Joyful Eastertide, heard sung this morning by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

JOHN MASON NEALE (1818-1866) was an English priest and scholar, best known as a hymn writer and translator, having enriched English hymnody with many ancient and medieval hymns translated from Latin and Greek. He studied at Cambridge, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1842. He was offered a parish, but chronic ill health, which was to continue throughout his life, prevented him from taking it. In 1854 Neale co-founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, an order of women in the Anglican Church dedicated to nursing the sick. Many Anglicans in his day, however, were very suspicious of anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism. Once Neale was attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the Sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honour or preferment in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by an American college (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut). However, his basic goodness eventually won the confidence of many who had fiercely opposed him, and the Sisterhood of St. Margaret survived and prospered.

FRIEDRICH VON SPEE (1591-1635) was a German Jesuit priest, professor, and poet, most well-known as a forceful opponent of witch trials and one who was an insider writing from the epicenter of the European witch-phobia. Educated in the Jesuit gymnasium at Cologne, he entered the order of the Jesuits in 1610, and was ordained priest around 1621. From 1613 to 1624 he was one of the tutors at the college in Cologne, and was then sent to Paderborn to assist in the Counter Reformation. Although Spee argued strongly against the use of torture, and as an eyewitness, wrote a book full of details regarding its cruelty and unreliability, in 1627, he was summoned by the Bishop of Würzburg to act as confessor to persons accused of witchcraft. Within two years, Spee had to accompany to the stake some 200 persons, of all ranks and ages, in whose innocence he himself firmly believed.

MY MASTER FROM A GARDEN ROSE was commissioned in 1999 by the Chancel Choir of Trinity United Church in Kitchener, Ontario, under the direction of Sheryl Loeffler, and was dedicated to the ministry of Rev. John Ambrose.

GORDON YOUNG (1919-1998) was an American organist and composer of both organ and choral works. His undergraduate degree in music was earned at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas. Following that he was a scholarship pupil at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in the 1940s, and later he received his Doctor of Sacred Music from Southwestern in 1964. His published works total over 800, and a number of his church anthems and organ compositions have become standard repertoire.

MELCHOIR VULPIUS (ca. 1570-1615) was a German singer and composer of church music, and was an important musical figure during the first century of Protestantism in Germany. Little is known of Vulpius’ early life. Born around 1570 in Germany’s Thuringia region, he started out attending a school in his hometown, but somehow his musical talent was recognized. In 1588, he is recorded as having studied music and Latin in the ancient cathedral city of Speyer, hundreds of kilometers away from Thuringia. He married in 1589 and was hired to teach Latin and to compose music at a school in Schleusingen, back in Thuringia. His appointment was made permanent there in 1592, and he was given the added post of Kantor at Lutheran services. In 1596, Vulpius accepted a similar position, involving teaching, singing, and composition at the Latin School in the larger city of Weimar, and remained there until his death.

FRANCIS POTT (1832-1909) was born in Southwark, Surrey, England. He studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, and was ordained Deacon in 1856 and Priest in 1857, then going on to serve a number of parishes. Pott wrote several original hymn texts, but is better known as a hymn translator – “The Strife is O’er” being one of his most popular and widely sung to this day.

Various legends, registering differing degrees of reality and truth, inevitably surround such a famous and long-lived composition as Messiah by GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759). It is known that he wrote most of the work in an astonishingly short three weeks time, beginning on August 22, 1741. Another legend attached to the work relates to his inspiration, which casts the frenzied composition as a sort of divine dictation. Handel is said to have emerged at some point (usually, it is noted, after finishing the Hallelujah Chorus) and proclaimed: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself!” The first performance of Messiah took place in Dublin, on April 13, 1742. Handel gave the London premiere less than a year later at Covent Garden, and in the almost 300 years since then, Messiah has taken its rightful place as one of the most frequently performed and most beloved choral works of all time.