CD Review: Sancte Paule Apostole
Music from the Choir of Old Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Edinburgh
2CD £15 from osp.org.uk
Review by Dan Divers
This 2 CD set, entitled Sancte Paule Apostole, after the lively motet by Willaert which is its first track, provides an impressive insight into the quality of liturgical music which is enjoyed on a weekly basis by worshippers at Old St Paul’s Episcopal church in Edinburgh. The discs have a total running time of eighty-six minutes and contain music for Mass, Evensong and Benediction in a wide variety of styles. There are no fewer than eleven world premiere recordings, and much of the other music has been little recorded. The booklet contains excellent notes on the place of music in the liturgy by Fr John McLuckie, the Rector of Old St Paul’s, and on the music by Dr John Kitchen, the Director of Music.
The first and shorter of the CDs is entitled High Mass – slightly oddly, given that neither a Gloria nor a Credo is sung. The real discovery here is a Mass setting by Morales, a Spanish composer of the generation before Victoria. It is dedicated to St Paul (Missa Tu es vas electionis, Sanctissime Paule) which makes it a rarity in itself. The edition was prepared by Paul Newton-Jackson, the Scholar-in Residence of Old St Paul’s. The music is top notch, and it receives a committed and idiomatic performance from the choir, which is well balanced and sings with unfailing beauty of tone. The music for the Mass is completed by two hymn settings, a psalm sung to Brother James’s Air, arranged by John Kitchen and a clarinet solo From Galloway by James Macmillan, which is played by the versatile Calum Robertson, who is also Assistant Director of Music and sings bass in the choir.
At Old Saint Paul’s Sunday Evensong is followed by a short service of Benediction, which merge together seamlessly on the second CD. It begins with a short preface chant, followed by a Stanford setting of Hail Gladdening Light – another OSP tradition. The main point of interest in the evensong section will be the previously unrecorded setting, prepared during the Covid lockdown by two other members of the choir, of a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by the little known 16th century Johannes Flamingus, details of whose life are sketchy, but some thirty-odd of whose works survive in the Leiden Choirbooks. The settings, which are in Latin, alternate plainsong and polyphony. The music can hold its own with anything of the period. It receives an idiomatic performance by the choir and the mellifluous Matt Norriss, who sings the plainsong verses. Between the two canticles there is a short, atmosphere setting by John Kitchen of a poem called Still, which was written by Alan Spence to complement a painting of the same title by Alison Watt, which hangs in the memorial Chapel of OSP. The painting can be seen in one of a number of evocative photographs of the church which adorn the sleeve booklet, which also contains full texts and translations of all the music sung. Such is the clarity of the choir’s diction that it need only be referred to in the more unfamiliar items. The words of the psalms, for example, are crystal clear.
A brief word about the hymns which punctuate all the liturgies. In his notes, Dr Kitchen says that “at Old Saint Paul’s, we are committed to singing and playing hymns colourfully and with great conviction.” That commitment comes across in all the hymns performed here, with particularly lovely performances of Jerusalem the golden and New songs of celebration render.
The music for Benediction includes a lively setting for choir and organ of Sing unto the Lord by Elizabeth Poston and the two normal Benediction hymns: devotional settings of O Salutaris hostia by Elgar (the one in F Major) and Tantum ergo by Charles-Marie Widor. A toccata in Em by Joseph Callaerts, played with considerable bravura by John Kitchen himself, brings this very worthwhile collection to a rousing conclusion.
Dan Divers is Director of Music at St Aloysius Church, Glasgow.