Canticles of Advent: Filled Up

Rev. Rebecca M Heilman-Campbell Selected Verses: Luke 1:46 – 55 Each year we hang stockings, light candles, purchase gorgeous wrapping paper and tie each red bow tight. We embrace the beauty and the sentiment of this Season of Waiting, sometimes forgetting the...

Christ the King Sunday

Christ the King Sunday

Today, on the eve of Advent, we celebrate the event that started it all - the announcement to Mary that she would bear the Christ child. Mary's response to the angels' proclamation is enshrined for all time in the text of the Magnificat, a canticle of joy, humility...

Christ the King Sunday

Music Notes With Justin

Ralph Vaughan Williams was intimately familiar with the horrors of war. When World War I broke out, the 42-year-old British composer immediately volunteered for service as an ambulance driver on the front lines, where he witnessed unspeakable carnage. He later served...

Christ the King Sunday

Music Notes from Justin

The Introit this morning is the central soprano aria from Bach's grand Magnificat. Shameless promotion - Queens' own Royal Voices, under my direction, will sing the entire work this Wednesday, November 13th, at 7:30 pm in Belk Chapel. Hope to see you there....

Christ the King Sunday

Music Notes from Justin

Today's music is an "arrangement" (deconstruction might be a better word) by Knut Nystedt, who spent most of his life in Oslo, Norway, where he was organist at Torshov Church and taught choral conducting at the University of Oslo. He also founded the Norwegian...

Christ the King Sunday

Music Notes for Sunday, September 29, 2024

Our music today takes its cue from Psalm 90. In 1708, Isaac Watts wrote both text and music for "Our God Whose Help in Ages Past," paraphrasing the words of the Psalm, in celebration of his wife's recovery from illness. So, the Psalm's famous opening lines: Lord, you...

Christ the King Sunday

Music Notes for Sunday, September 15, 2024

This morning, easily the choir's favorite part of the music we took over to Oxford this summer - Charles Villiers Stanford's setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis texts which we sang for Evensong at Christ Church in that magical city. This pair of settings...