Bells and smells

Tonight is the Feast of the Epiphany. This is the traditional deadline for having the Christmas tree down. We'll push the deadline next year....this year, I hated having to take down my tree to pack on the day after Christmas like some Baptist! Anyway, I observed the day by going to St. Paul's K Street for a Procession and Solemn Mass.

St. Paul's is an old and surprisingly small parish church in that segment of Washington between Foggy Bottom and Georgetown. They have a national reputation for having very fine choral/organ programs, including a choir of men and boys that sings Evensong every Sunday evening, so I went with great expectations. It was hard to see the traditional stained glass windows inside the nighttime church, but there were evergreen and candle arrangements in each window well, and I thought it interesting that they made extensive use of whole, fresh pineapples in their displays. There were also tall three-branched candle stands on the outer aisles of the nave. Elaborate gold reredos adorn the high altar in front. I could see a four-manual organ off to one side, differently arranged so the organist was all the way up against the major pillar separating the chancel from the nave, facing the altar and almost able to see all the choir. The mainly older congregation seemed to have a lot of older homosexuals.

This was the first time I'd been to a proper Anglican Mass in ages, so I kept having to remind myself when to do all the appropriate reverential gestures, crossings, bowings, etc. They sang pretty much everything singable, including the Nicene Creed, and the whole parish genuflects during the Incarnatus. I found their liturgy to be interesting, in that it seemed to have Rite Two (contemporary) wordings with some Roman Catholic insertions, yet it was all translated into Rite One (Elizabethan) language. This was also the first time since the '70s I'd seen the clergy following the old tradition of ceremonial, with the priest-celebrant assisted by a deacon and sub-deacon, both dressed in dalmantic and tunicle, and as they processed in (and later around the church for the solemn processions), the deacon and sub-deacon held up the corners of the priest's cope. Later during the eucharistic prayers, they stood on different steps, sometimes in a row, sometimes separated, in the tradition most modern priests never learned. The festal vestments and church hangings were all gorgeous matching sets of gold-hued cream damask with burgundy and metallic gold orpheys and ornamentations. I do think the church looked ever so much more elegant in burgundy, rather than the garish red used in so many secular Christmas decorations, and the altar guild was very good in matching colors, even in the evergreen sprays and the Christmas tree back in the narthex.

I don't know if it was normal for the parish, or just because of the special service, but all of the altar boys were adult men, and I think all of them were older than me! Actually, I only saw one family with two extremely well behaved children—of course, it was a night time service, so perhaps parents didn't bring their kids out at night. Nevertheless, the altar boys were all very efficient, although I wish the thurifer had led the solemn processions with normal steps, instead of the tiny, baby steps he took! It did, though, give him an opportunity to very thoroughly smoke the entire church and the entire congregation with his incense. In fact, they used so much incense, that when I left the church after the service, I smelled incense a block away on the street!

Tonight's choir was a mixed ensemble of men and women, about sixteen in number, with the organist joining on some a capella pieces. The mass setting was Palestrina's Missa Brevis, a capella of course, and there were a lot of supplemental plainsong antiphons at various portions of the service. The offertory anthem was "Now, there lightens upon us a holy daybreak" by Leo Sowerby (d. 1968). The Sowerby was accompanied by soft organ and was exquisitely done. They sang a communion anthem in Latin which sounded "period" to the Palestrina Mass, but which was not listed in the program. On the whole, the choir was excellent, and they certainly had a very ambitious repertoire for this service. I was a bit annoyed, though, that on high note entrances, the sopranos seemed almost always to enter a full quarter-tone flat and then pull up to the pitch, and the rather elderly men's section had a lot of unblended voices which stuck out from time to time. I also found the organist to interpolate too many and too long improvisations between hymn verses, and on several occasions, the already long (100 minutes!!) service had to pause to wait for the music to finish before moving on.

It will be interesting to see what this church does on a Sunday morning for a "normal" service. If I go back, it will be interesting to see if anybody talks to me. As is typical of Episcopal churches, the only ones who talked to me tonight were the usher who said "good evening" as she handed me my program and the priest who shook my hand and said "happy Epiphany" as we left.