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Stephen Watkins presents music and texts that seek to enlighten the path untravelled, the idea unravelled. JS Bach leads. Others (and often the unexpected) follow. The seasons are reflected and the hour is respected with space and contemplation.
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"I look from afar, and lo I see the power of God coming", begins a Procession with Carols for Advent Sunday. Images of light and darkness, present and future and penitence and hope announce another year of ritual and reflection in the Christian west. The Chapel of King’s College Cambridge, famous for its Christmas Eve ritual of Lessons and Carols, now heralds Advent. Deep in winter frost, the Chapel, Henry VI's glorious monument of power and royal patronage, opens Advent Sunday with readings and carols and closes it with Evensong, the two rituals bound, in our two-hours, by a contrasting setting of Psalm 80, where the Divine Gardener is sought to restore his Vine from national, economic and social collapse (Albert Roussel’s English setting of Psalm 80, 1928). An hour-long Procession with Carols for Advent Sunday sees the Chapel bathed in the joy of winter sunlight though coloured glass. Evensong on Advent Sunday, sees the Chapel bathed in candlelight for a tradition, inherited from vespers and compline, English cathedrals and colleges, like King’s, have refined beautifully.
The end of the Christian year announces Last Judgement, thrones, servitude and splendour. Choirs hail a King, a loving Shepherd coming with clouds descending, while all moral flesh in awe keeps silence. The year’s seasons have come and gone, accompanied of course by music, and a first century scribe summarises Jewish lore: When the Son of Man will come in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne and gather his sheep to his right. They will have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, visited the sick, buried the dead and freed the captive. Bach’s imagination, theology and musical craft is inspired. His Cantata BWV70, ‘Watch, pray, pray watch!’ sees pilgrim ‘sheep’ leaving the slavery of Egypt and a Saviour arriving in the clouds of the firmament, the gates of heaven lifted high. Scottish composer James MacMillan paints with a different brush; from his Strathclyde communion motets, ‘Sedibit Dominus Rex’ (The Lord will sit on his throne forever) and ‘Christus Vincit’ (Christ conquers, Christ is King). The year ends with Psalm 100, ‘Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Enter his gates with thanksgiving’. Max Reger invests Psalm 100 with Luther’s chorale ‘Ein feste burg’ and Sir William Walton his with British year-end fireworks, while Pachelbel opens FOR THE GOD WHO SINGS with Psalm 100 as a motet and closes, again with Luther’s chorale, and not a little exhortation, as a cantata.
Music played on For The God Who Sings with Stephen Watkins on November 30 | 23 | 16 | 9 | For earlier dates, start at the index of Archived Music Details.
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