Welcome to Sundays at Home
Good morning and welcome to Trinity! So glad you are tuning in virtually for today’s service. As we worship remotely during this time of change, each week you’ll find Sundays at Home with Trinity Episcopal Church. We will be featuring the full service recording, as well as the sermon and anthem on their own.
**Morning Worship for Sunday Feb 28 has been cancelled due to inclement weather. We’ll be back in person next Sunday, March 7th!***
Once again, thank you for tuning in and for being faithful with your time, talents, and treasures.
Grace and Peace!
Rev. Jonathan V. Adams
Worship for February 28, 2021
The Second Sunday in Lent
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
About the Music:
French baroque organist and composer Francois Couperin (1668-1733) was born into a prominent Parisian musical family whose family served the church of St. Gervais for generations. This week’s Prelude, “Recit de Cromorne”, is a movement from one of his two organ masses, intended to be played in alternation with the choir as part of the singing of the “Kyrie” at the beginning of the service. The title indicates that the solo voice would be played using the cromorne stop of the organ, a woodwind reed stop with a somewhat nasal sound. This voluntary is followed by the Introit, the beautiful motet “Adoremus te, Christe” (We adore thee, O Christ) by the late Italian Renaissance composer Palestrina.
The hymn this week is #707, “Take my life, and let it be consecrated”, sung to the tune Hollingside. The composer, John Bacchus Dykes, was a Church of England priest, at one time precentor of Durham Cathedral. He wrote some 300 hymn tunes and many anthems. The text is by English religious poet Frances Ridley Havergal (1874).
This week’s anthem, recorded last March, is the lovely “Jesus So Lowly”, one of composer Harold Friedell’s best known works (1905-1958). The text, by poet Edith Williams (1889-?), describes Jesus as lowly, lonely, broken, and ultimately victorious. Looking ahead to Christ’s triumph over death at Easter, we are reminded that Love will not fail us.
Johann Pachelbel is known today primarily for his Canon in D Major (written for strings), but during his lifetime he was best known as an organ composer. Among his 200 or so organ compositions are around 20 surviving toccatas, such as this “Toccata in e minor” that closes today’s service. These short works feature long sections of pedal points, where the pedal holds a long note and the harmony is pretty static. The opening of this piece showcases this technique: the first pedal note is held for over 20 seconds, while the keyboard part has fast passage work mostly outlining a single chord.