Welcome to Sundays at Home
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.
Good morning and welcome to Trinity! So glad you are tuning in virtually for today’s service. If you would like to join us for an in-person service we have started Holy Eucharist in the Courtyard 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 December 27, 2020
Christmas 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:
Our music on this first Sunday after Christmas features two settings of the beautiful hymn "In the Bleak Midwinter" by English poet Christina Rossetti. Hymn 112 in our hymnal uses the tune Cranham which Gustav Holst wrote specifically for these words. It was a favorite of Mrs. Mellon and was sung at her funeral here at Trinity Church. Just two years after the Holst tune in 1909, another English composer, Harold Darke set the Rossetti text as a choral anthem. This version is often sung for the Kings College Service of Lessons and Carols and was voted best Christmas Carol by a BBC poll of choral experts in 2008. We present it adapted as a solo.
This week's voluntaries are based on two traditional Christmas hymns - "Of the Father's Love Begotten" (Divinum Mysterium, #82) and "Good Christian friends, rejoice" (In Dulci Jubilo, #107). In the opening voluntary, a gently rolling pastoral, Craig Phillips gives the plainchant melody, dating from the 1500's, an interesting rhythmic twist. Dr. Phillips (b. 1961), is a distinguished and popular organist and composer and Director of Music at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, CA.
J. S. Bach's chorale prelude based on "In Dulci Jubilo" (BWV 729) is a traditional postlude for Christmas services. In fact, since 1938 it is traditionally performed as the first organ voluntary at the end of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve. This German melody first appears in a manuscript in the Leipzig, Germany, University Library dating from c. 1400, although it is thought that it was in use in Europe far earlier. Generally regarded as one of the greatest composers who ever lived, Bach held the post of Cantor at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, from 1723-1750.