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, 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.
If you would like to join us for an in-person service we have started Holy Eucharist in the Bishop’s Garden each Sunday at 10am. Simply bring a chair, mask, and a heart for worship.
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 May 23, 2021
Pentecost Sunday
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
About the Music:
The Prelude for this Pentecost Sunday is an arrangement of Hymn 225, “Hail thee, festival day!” by American organist and composer Mary Beth Bennett of Richmond, Virginia, where she serves on the adjunct music faculty of the University of Richmond and is the organist of Second Baptist Church. This vigorous tune by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams appears in our hymnal with three different texts for Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost.
The choir will sing as an Introit the short motet “O Holy Spirit, Lord of Grace” by Christopher Tye (c. 1505-1573), who served as a lay clerk and musician in the English royal court early in his career, and later as master of music at Ely Cathedral.The text, shown below, is by Charles Coffin.
“O Holy Spirit, Lord of grace, eternal source of love, inflame, we pray, our inmost hearts with fire from heaven above. As thou dost join with holiest bonds the Father and the Son, so fill us all with mutual love and knit our hearts in one.”
This week’s hymn was composed by the Rev. Richard T. C. Peard, beloved Rector of Trinity Church from 1979-1991 until his death at age 50. May 11 marked the 30th anniversary of his passing and we are singing this hymn in memory of him. The text, “Holy and Creative Spirit”, is by A. Theodore Eastman, 12th Bishop of Maryland, and is especially appropriate for Pentecost. It can be found inside the back cover of the hymnals in the pew racks.
William Levi Dawson (1899-1990) was a renowned African-American composer, choir director and professor at the Tuskegee Institute. There he developed the Tuskegee Institute Choir, which became an internationally acclaimed ensemble. He is best known for his arrangements of African-American spirituals such as the anthem this week, “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit”.
During Communion I will play an arrangement of hymn #500, “Creator Spirit, by whose aid” by the American organist and composer Charles Callahan (b. 1951). Dr. Callahan has written many compositions for organ, and his book, “Aeolian-Skinner Remembered”, is a history of the four decades of organ building by the now defunct Boston firm that built our organ, the company’s Opus 1316 (1957).
Finally, the Postlude is the well-known “Toccata in F” by Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), a Danish composer and organist of the Baroque period who strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. This short toccata is comprised of rapid scale passages, repeated chords, and grand harmonies.