Worship for OCtober 25, 2020
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
About the Music:
I am pleased to welcome my friend and colleague Brad Tatum to Trinity this Sunday. Brad performs regularly as Principal Baroque Hornist with the Washington Bach Consort, and as solo and section horn with several other outstanding ensembles in the DC area. He holds a DMA in Horn Performance from the University of Maryland, and is a graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory.
Today we are playing the "Concerto in D Major" by John Humphries, one of the earliest known concertos for horn. The first movement, Allegro, is the Prelude and the final movement, Vivace, is the Postlude. Brad is playing a valveless natural horn, a replica of an English Baroque horn by Hoffmaster, whose instruments were in unbroken use in England from about 1700-1850. These were the ideal instruments for the music of Handel and his contemporaries and also for this concerto, the first known British concerto for horn. Brad chooses to play with the bell up or to the side, as most Baroque horn players did. It wasn't until after the Baroque era (after 1760) that horn players started putting their hand in the bell. Playing with the hand out of the bell results in a more brilliant and rustic sound quality than when playing with the hand in the bell.
- Dan Miller, Organist
This Sunday's anthem, "I Give You A New Commandment" by British composer Peter Aston (1938-2013) is a charming setting of this text related to the Gospel reading. Aston was appointed to the faculty of the University of East Anglia in Norwich England in 1974, where he subsequently became Emeritus Professor of composition. The anthem is conducted by our new Music Intern, Ryan Davis, who is a graduate student in Choral Conducting at Shenandoah Conservatory.
Hymn 680, "O God Our Help In Ages Past" is truly one of the great hymns of all time. The composer of the tune, named St. Anne, is uncertain but widely believed to be Dr. William Croft, organist of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey during the reign of Queen Anne. However, it is his previous assignment as organist of St. Anne's Church, Soho in 1700 that is likely the namesake of the tune and best evidence of his authorship. The text is a paraphrase of Psalm 90 by the "father of English hymnody" Isaac Watts and is considered to be one of his best works. It received a small but enduring assist from John Wesley who changed the original "Our God" to "O God" in his Collection of Psalm and Hymns (London 1738).