MUSIC FOR ST. MICHAEL
& ALL ANGELS
One of the great feast days
in September is St. Michael & All Angels (the 29th). This
year we observe the solemnity on the Sunday before (the 28th).
We mark the occasion with a procession to the ninth-century hymn “Christ,
the fair glory of the holy angels” and a station at our magnificent
St. Michael window at the west end of the nave.
The offertory anthem on that
day will be “And I saw another angel” by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford
(1852-1924). It is one of two short anthems written around 1885, when
Stanford was Organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, and before his
appointment as Cambridge University’s Professor of Music in 1887.
They were published as his Op. 37. The anthem was intended for All
Saints’ Day, taking its text from the seventh chapter of Revelation.
Since these verses describe the holy angels doing the bidding of the
Almighty and leading the praises of the saints in glory, it is also
a fitting text for St. Michael & All Angels.
The communion motet will
be “Lo, the Angels’ Food is given” by the Rev’d John Bacchus
Dykes (1823-1876). The text comes from the liturgical sequence
“Lauda Sion Salvatorem” by St. Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus
Christi. It happens to be a portion of that text omitted from
the version in the Hymnal 1940.
Dykes is primarily known
as a composer of hymn tunes. Indeed, I suspect that more of his
tunes are still in common use than those of any other single composer.
Check him out in the composer index of the Hymnal 1940. After
taking a degree in classics at Cambridge University in 1847, Dykes was
ordained a priest the following year. He spent a year as curate
in Malton, Yorkshire before being appointed Precentor of Durham Cathedral
in 1849. The Precentor is the member of the cathedral chapter
who has charge of the cathedral’s music. His devotion to his
priestly vocation was so great that in 1862 he resigned his prestigious
cathedral position to become Vicar of the Parish of St. Oswald in the
City of Durham.
When the Good Shepherd Choir
sang at Durham Cathedral in 2004, our hotel was just a short distance
from St. Oswald’s Church. I found it very moving to visit the church
and Dykes’s grave, which is in a portion of the churchyard across
the road from the church building. The headstone would certainly
have been regarded as daringly (perhaps scandalously) High Church in
its day. It is in the form of a Celtic cross with a chalice and
host carved in relief.
“Lo! the Angels’ Food
is given” (Ecce Panis) might be described as a choir partsong.
It begins with two stanzas of the text set to the same music in the
key of E minor. After that, Dykes recasts the opening phrase of
the tune in E major at the words “Very Bread, Good Shepherd, tend
us”, and continues it differently. The piece appears in the Holy
Communion section of the Standard Edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern,
but I cannot imagine it working well as a congregational hymn.
Some critics would disparage the piece as sweetly sentimental.
I would disagree. While the music is very much in the Victorian
style, to call it sentimental implies that its expression is somehow
false or superficial. I believe that Dykes’s unquestioned spiritual
integrity was such that the tender devotion heard in this work is deeply
felt and authentic. In an article of 1950, Arthur Hutchings, then
Professor of Music at Durham University, said of Dykes: “The
sweetness is of sugar, not saccharine.”
--WJG
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