All Saints' Church, Rotherfield Peppard
Choir News 1999
The Carol Services at All Saints' Church this Christmas will take place on Christmas Day at 11 a.m. and on Sunday, 26th December at 11 a.m.
Interspersed with appropriate Lessons and congregational carols, the choir will sing arrangements of Basque and Neapolitan carols, together with compositions by John Rutter and Haldane Campbell Stewart on Christmas morning. The service of Nine Lessons and Carols on 26th December will include music composed or arranged by Michael Praetorius, Andrew Carter, Andrew Gant, Arnold Cooke, Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Walton.
At Evening Prayer on 28th November, we shall mark the beginning of Advent with a sequence of prayers, scriptural readings and other texts (many of which have musical settings) in a service of preparation for the coming of Jesus.
The sequence has been compiled by Professor John Harper, Director-General of the Royal School of Church Music, and it explores the ancient expectant theme of Advent - Maranatha - Come, Lord, come. It draws on monastic and Celtic materials for both text and music. The mood is one of apprehensive anticipation and hope in the sombre darkness of winter for the Light of the World.
The autumn months bring renewed activity in the choir stalls. The Royal School of Church Music Annual Choirs' Festival will take place in Dorchester Abbey on Saturday, 9th October (details here). Everyone is welcome to attend Festal Evensong at Dorchester at 5 p.m.
Sunday, 17th October is the anniversary of the birth, in 1892, of Herbert Howells. Music on that day will include his anthem, Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, the third in a set of four anthems written at the rate of one a day in January 1941 while Howells was snowed up in Gloucestershire.
John Wardle, RSCM Regional Director for the South of England, will direct a choirs' workshop at Reading Blue Coat School on Saturday, 30th October. Many members of All Saints' Choir will be there.
On the following day, Sunday, 31st October, we shall celebrate the Patronal Festival of All Saints. At 10.30 a.m., the Sung Eucharist will also be attended by members of the congregation of St. Nicholas' Church, Rotherfield Greys. Festal Evensong at 6.30 p.m. will include music by Bruckner, Bullock, Ives and Sumsion. We are particularly pleased to welcome David Butler, Organist of St. Nicholas, who will accompany both services.