Friday, November 13, 2015

All Souls and Remebrance Sunday in Oxford and Hethe

Don't forget to attend, if you can, Cardinal Burke's celebration of the LMS' Annual Requiem: tomorrow, 14th November, 2pm Westminster Cathedral.

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Fr John Saward celebrated a Missa Cantata for All Souls in SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford
I've been getting behind with my photographs: I have just uploaded photos of two recent Sung Masses, one of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls), in St Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford, and one of the Sung Requiem celebrated on Remembrance Sunday, in Holy Trinity, Hethe.

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I sang at both, and also at the Requiem in St Benet's which came in between. The chants of the Requiem don't grow stale; I'd be happy to sing them, for the good of the souls in purgatory, a hundred times.



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Fr Paul Lester celebrated a Missa Cantata for Remembrance Sunday in Holy Trinity, Hethe.
For one thing they are difficult: even when very familiar, they require a singer's serious attention. But more fundamentally, they are supremely beautiful and profoundly spiritual. They are, in fact, one of the greatest achievements of Western culture: not for nothing do we hear the influence of the Dies Irae in all sorts of modern compositions, including film music. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to perform them in their proper liturgical setting.

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The culture which produced these chants valued the contributions, the hard work and the sacrifice, of its decesased members. A society which does value theswe things will not find its current members motivated to make much of an effort to sustain it. Why should they bother? Such a society is heading for the scrapheap.

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