[Online] Choral Evensong Rebroadcast
Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, a time where the church celebrates all its saints, known and unknown. This afternoon’s anthem, Basil Harwood’s “O how glorious is the kingdom,” sets a brief anonymous text written for All Saints Day:
O how glorious is the kingdom wherein all the saints rejoice with Christ.
Clothed with white robes, they follow the lamb withersoever he goeth.
It has long been favorite of choirs to sing for its bold, striding opening melodies that return throughout the piece. Harwood studied the organ in England as well as the Leipzig conservatory, returning to England as Organist of Ely Cathedral. His strict German training in Leipzig can be heard clearly in his chromatic writing and massive organ introduction rising to the first thundering choral entrance of this monumental anthem composed right at the turn of the 20th century in 1899.
Ken Naylor was for many years Director of Music at Leys School, a prominent independent school on the outskirts of Cambridge. Nearly a century later Ken Naylor composed the tune to the famous 17th century hymn, “How shall I sing that majesty” of John Mason. Nearby the school is a fen (a marshy lowland) over which the ancient Romans built a winding road. This beautiful view was the centerpiece from Naylor’s office window at the school and no doubt the inspiration for his marvelous tune (COE FEN) on Mason’s colorful seventeenth-century text. As with Harwood’s majestic portrayal of the saints in heaven, the final lines of Mason’s text (below) combined with the descant over Naylor’s tune offer glimpses of beauty and wholeness.
…Thou art a sea without a shore,
a sun without a sphere;
thy time is now and evermore,
thy place is everywhere.
Music in this service:
- Surely thou hast tasted that the Lord is good—Bernard Rose
- Preces and Responses—Paul Spicer
- Psalms 8 & 84
- Service in D—Edward Bairstow
- O how glorious is the kingdom—Basil Harwood
- Hymn: COE FEN