New year's church

Laurent and I celebrated the Church's new year yesterday at St. Paul's K Street. Usually, Laurent and I go to St. Stephen Martyr on Sunday mornings, but, even though I woke him at ten, he was too slow getting dressed and wasn't ready to leave until eleven. So, since Mass at Stevie's had already started, we went to K Street, as their Mass doesn't start until quarter past.

The place looks very pretty, decked out for Advent—this is a parish that, instead of purple, uses rich blue brocade with deep red orphreys and ornaments on their frontals and eucharistic vestments.

The Mass setting was Palestrina's Missa brevis. The choir sang Wood's "O thou the central orb" for the offertory and the de Victoria "Ave Maria" for the communion motet. Hymns were Helmsley for the processional (I thought it was cute that they did a service leaflet insert to give the congregation the four-part harmony music instead of the melody-only version in the hymnal), Llangloffan for the sequence, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland during the ablutions, and Wachet auf for the recessional.

The organ prelude and postludes were two of the Bach preludes based on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, with BWV 659 before and BWV 661 after.

The new seminarian read the sermon.

I was expecting maybe to hear Parry's "I Was Glad When They Said unto Me" today, but the choir did that psalm text to Anglican chant by Sir Walter Parratt.

Ran in to Mattie at Mass. It was fortuitous to see him. After the service, we went up to the parish hall for croissants with cream cheese and fruit preserves and little glasses of fino sherry.