All Saints and Vaughn-Williams

Wednesday was All Saints Day. To celebrate, I went to the procession and solemn mass at St. Paul's K Street. All Saints is a feast day that goes all the way back to the Fourth Century in the very earliest years of the Church.

I got to the church a little early so I could get a decent place to sit. St. Paul's has this tradition of inviting Ascension and St. Agnes over for All Saints, and then everybody goes over to Ascension and St. Agnes the next night for All Souls, so I knew it would be crowded and fill up fast, and it did. My friend Doug popped in unexpectedly and came and sat by me. Considering he's the head usher at St. Matthew's Cathedral, I was kind of surprised to see him at St. Paul's instead of being over there, but he, too, had come to see a friend in the choir.

They sang Sine Nomine for a formal procession around the nave. Once the clergy arrived at the font in the narthex, they had a quick collect and then sang Lasst uns erfreuen for the procession to get everyone situated and back up in the chancel and sanctuary. Other hymns were Rhuddlan as the sequence, Land of Rest during post-communion ablutions, and All Hallows for the recessional. All Hallows was a trip. It's one of those old late Victorian/Edwardian hymns no one really sings anymore, no doubt because of all the big, high Fs in the last line.

The mass setting was Mass in G minor for soli and double chorus by Ralph Vaughn-Williams. Between the mass setting and the first two hymns, it was quite the V-W festival! My friend John was the counter-tenor soloist, and his beautiful and ethereal voice just soared out....he was fabulous, as always. Of course, he should be good, since he did his music degrees at Indiana University. Supplementing the mass setting, they did plainsong chants for the alleluia, Nicene Creed, prayers of the people, Our Father, and antiphons for the introit, offertory, and communion. The Anglican chant for the psalm was by Thomas W. Hanforth.

The choir did one of my favorite anthems, "And I Saw a New Heaven and a New Earth" by Edgar L. Bainton as the offertory. This is another anthem to sing at my funeral! :-)

The organist played "Choral III in A Minor" by Cesàr Franck as the prelude and Placare Christe servulis, Op. 38, No. 16, by Marcel Dupré as the postlude.

The curate, Fr. Humphrey, was the celebrant. The headmaster of St. James School up in St. James, Md., was guest preacher. He seemed like a nice guy, but was rather a sleepy preacher; I found his talk rather more suited to the first mass of the academic year up at his school than to a mostly all adult congregation at a festal holy day service. I forgot what he was talking about other than comparing one of his school's non-resident founders who has been canonized as a saint to the relatively unknown first headmaster of the school who had a great impact on generations of boys and later became a bishop but who isn't "officially" a saint.

After Mass, there was a big reception in the parish hall with heavy hors d'oeuvres and cases and cases of Korbel champagne. I got to chat with John up there and met Doug's friend. The "party" was still going on a nine o'clock when I finally got tired and left.