2025.03.16 

For the remainder of Lent the Introit chant historically assigned to each Sunday will serve its historic role of accompanying the entrance of the ministers in the parish I serve.

These chants, like the other ‘proper’ (variable) chants of the liturgy, are many hundreds of years old and are rooted in the Psalms, though other Scriptures are also used. The Introit originally consisted of an entire Psalm with an antiphon (refrain) probably sung after every verse or group of verses. (In an era when most Masses were celebrated by bishops or at least in large urban or monastic churches – when parish churches as we know them did not yet exist or were not the norm – these processions were quite grand!) Over time, in response to the more modest needs of smaller churches like ours, the amount of psalmody was reduced and the antiphon became the main feature; today, in places where these chants are sung, Psalm verses may be selected according to the length required as well as, one hopes, the connections they may have with the given occasion. This Sunday’s Introit comes from Psalm 25 and asks God to remember the divine compassion and love rather than one’s sins.

The choir sings two classically Anglican anthems, one from Tudor England and one from twentieth-century Seattle, both using verses from Psalm 27, appointed for the day. Richard Farrant was a musician in royal establishments in the second half of the sixteenth century, when English-language sacred music was being developed. Although ‘Hide not thou thy face’ is simple in texture, with the four voice-parts moving in the same rhythm most of the time, a sensitivity to the rhythm of the text and careful control of range and voicing, tonality, and rhetorical repetition give this and other early English anthems a subtle sophistication. Peter Hallock, longtime music director at St Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, uses several unusual musical scales to create a sense of mystery in ‘The Lord is my light’, and effectively contrasts mostly chordal writing for the choir with a more linear texture for the organ. Surprising changes of tonal center and a large dynamic range help shape the piece.

The services conclude with a historic Lenten Office hymn, excerpted and paraphrased as ‘Now let us all with one accord’ (‘Ex more docti mystico’ [146/7]). Somewhat like the Introit, it, while confessing our sinfulness and frailty, ‘reminds’ the Lord that we are created in the divine image and asks for forgiveness on the strength of it. The hymn’s associated plainsong tune is found at 146, but we sing it to the vigorous early-nineteenth-century American tune ‘Bourbon’ printed at 147. Unlike Hallock’s colorful and enigmatic musical scales, this hymn-tune, like vernacular music from many cultures around the world, is pentatonic: it uses only five pitches.