Thoughts Upon Writing a Communion Service
Introduction
The Mass of History
me being crushed by a particularly weighty mass
Which piece of writing has been set to music the most times, by the most composers? I’m pretty sure it would have to be the Ordinary of the Mass of the Western Christian Church. ChoralWiki has over 1,500 different Mass settings listed – and that’s just the ones in Latin, freely available online.
My job right now is to compose another one. Technically, it’s going to be a Communion Service, because it will be in English and for an Anglican church. But the foundational text is the same.
For centuries, this text has been heard (spoken, chanted, sung) in church services all over the world, week after week. It’s called the “Ordinary” because it’s the unchanging part, the same words every service. Around this fits the “Proper”, the bits of the liturgy that are specific to that particular day.
I’m a Baptist, and – like a lot of present-day Protestants – we don’t use this text anymore. But a great many churches still do. And for all Christians, it’s part of our shared heritage. It’s the way that God has been worshipped, and the way that the Good News of Jesus Christ has been proclaimed, for millions of people, for well over a thousand years.
How is a composer to deal with such a huge historical burden? How am I going to come up with music for this text that is different from everybody else’s? (Different enough to be worth writing!) And… why am I doing this?
I’m doing this as an act of worship. And because of that, the weight of history is actually not a thing. Worship is not a competition! And worship is not a burden either… it’s a “giving up” of whatever I have to God, including myself.
All I have to do is find an authentic way to “speak” this text in music, in my own language, as I really mean it. Which I do…
My job right now is to compose another one. Technically, it’s going to be a Communion Service, because it will be in English and for an Anglican church. But the foundational text is the same.
For centuries, this text has been heard (spoken, chanted, sung) in church services all over the world, week after week. It’s called the “Ordinary” because it’s the unchanging part, the same words every service. Around this fits the “Proper”, the bits of the liturgy that are specific to that particular day.
I’m a Baptist, and – like a lot of present-day Protestants – we don’t use this text anymore. But a great many churches still do. And for all Christians, it’s part of our shared heritage. It’s the way that God has been worshipped, and the way that the Good News of Jesus Christ has been proclaimed, for millions of people, for well over a thousand years.
How is a composer to deal with such a huge historical burden? How am I going to come up with music for this text that is different from everybody else’s? (Different enough to be worth writing!) And… why am I doing this?
I’m doing this as an act of worship. And because of that, the weight of history is actually not a thing. Worship is not a competition! And worship is not a burden either… it’s a “giving up” of whatever I have to God, including myself.
All I have to do is find an authentic way to “speak” this text in music, in my own language, as I really mean it. Which I do…
Preparing the Way
The Shape of Things to Come
the composer hard at work
The first stage of composing a new work is (in most cases) research. When writing to a commission, I like to get as much detail about the commissioner’s expectations as I can, so that I’m not endlessly wondering about it while trying to compose.
“What do you want the music to sound like? Give me some examples!”
This is when I get to listen to music for several hours and call it working. It’s pretty fun. The hard part is having to stop and go on to the next stage (actually composing). It’s tempting to just keep ‘researching’ instead…
I’ve been listening to many different ‘Communion Services’ in preparation for writing my own. It’s a whole subgenre of Anglican church music which I’m not heaps familiar with. The idea is to get a feel for musical ‘language’ and conventions of the style – not because I want to write something the same, but because I want to write something that will fit its context, and be understood.
The context is a church service. And the focal point of a Communion Service is Communion, the Eucharist. This is where believers take of the bread and the cup (of wine), just as Jesus told his disciples to do at the Last Supper before his crucifixion.
Everything in the Ordinary of the Mass is designed to lead up to this, as the primary reason for the gathering.* I can see this shape of this in the texts…
“What do you want the music to sound like? Give me some examples!”
This is when I get to listen to music for several hours and call it working. It’s pretty fun. The hard part is having to stop and go on to the next stage (actually composing). It’s tempting to just keep ‘researching’ instead…
I’ve been listening to many different ‘Communion Services’ in preparation for writing my own. It’s a whole subgenre of Anglican church music which I’m not heaps familiar with. The idea is to get a feel for musical ‘language’ and conventions of the style – not because I want to write something the same, but because I want to write something that will fit its context, and be understood.
The context is a church service. And the focal point of a Communion Service is Communion, the Eucharist. This is where believers take of the bread and the cup (of wine), just as Jesus told his disciples to do at the Last Supper before his crucifixion.
Everything in the Ordinary of the Mass is designed to lead up to this, as the primary reason for the gathering.* I can see this shape of this in the texts…
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Kyrie (‘Lord have mercy’)
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We come before God humbly, relying on his mercy.
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Gloria (‘Glory to God in the highest’)
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… to worship him for who he is and what he has done…
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Sanctus (‘Holy, holy, holy’)
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… remembering both his transcendence (how far he is above us)…
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Benedictus (‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’)
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… and his immanence (how he has drawn near to us)…
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Agnus Dei (‘Lamb of God’)
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… and remembering that all of this is only possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as the ‘Lamb of God’, to atone for our sin.
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After listening to communion services by Francis Jackson, Harold Darke, Herbert Howells, Charles Villiers Stanford and John Ireland, I’ve begun to get a sense of the kind of ‘thing’ that will do. I’m not making detailed lists of musical conventions or anything like that… I prefer to keep this process as intuitive as possible, so I can simply ‘feel’ my way into the new piece I’m going to write.
I find it curious that many of these composers were not themselves believers. They wrote church music because they wanted to write beautiful music, and the Anglican Church was where that was possible. I think this points to music’s transcendence – that it is able to ‘mean’ something bigger and more real, or true, than the ideas or beliefs of any individual person who writes it.
So, I submit the music I’m composing to God, and ask him to do more with it than I can!
I find it curious that many of these composers were not themselves believers. They wrote church music because they wanted to write beautiful music, and the Anglican Church was where that was possible. I think this points to music’s transcendence – that it is able to ‘mean’ something bigger and more real, or true, than the ideas or beliefs of any individual person who writes it.
So, I submit the music I’m composing to God, and ask him to do more with it than I can!
*This is quite different to my own tradition (Evangelical/Baptist), in which the delivery of the Good News (‘evangelion’), expounded in a sermon, forms the focal point of the service. This isn’t the place to explain the difference; just to point out that I’m sympathetic to both ways of doing things. :)
Getting Started
The not-so-blank page
The music for this Communion Service started out as a piano piece.
I’m not overly familiar with the words of the Mass, which perhaps is an advantage for me in creating something new. But how is a Baptist like me familiar with it at all?
Partly it’s my knowledge of western classical music. But I also have a little practical experience: I used to play piano once a month in a church that sang an English congregational version of the Mass. And then there’s my uncle Gary, who served as an Anglican priest. I have fond memories of watching him conduct services at various small churches – he always made the text and the ceremony come alive, his enthusiastic and candid manner helping everyone to feel involved.
After Gary died in 2021, my Aunty Robyn commissioned me to compose something to remember him by. The result was my Piano Sonata No.2: Portrait of Gary Priest (you can hear it on Portraits: Volume I). One of the perspectives of Gary I wanted to include was ‘At Church’, and for this movement I simply put the English words of the entire ‘Ordinary’ to a tune, and turned it into a piano solo.
Here are a few bars from the piano sonata to show you what I mean. Below the melody, I’ve written in the words I had in mind when composing it.
I’m not overly familiar with the words of the Mass, which perhaps is an advantage for me in creating something new. But how is a Baptist like me familiar with it at all?
Partly it’s my knowledge of western classical music. But I also have a little practical experience: I used to play piano once a month in a church that sang an English congregational version of the Mass. And then there’s my uncle Gary, who served as an Anglican priest. I have fond memories of watching him conduct services at various small churches – he always made the text and the ceremony come alive, his enthusiastic and candid manner helping everyone to feel involved.
After Gary died in 2021, my Aunty Robyn commissioned me to compose something to remember him by. The result was my Piano Sonata No.2: Portrait of Gary Priest (you can hear it on Portraits: Volume I). One of the perspectives of Gary I wanted to include was ‘At Church’, and for this movement I simply put the English words of the entire ‘Ordinary’ to a tune, and turned it into a piano solo.
Here are a few bars from the piano sonata to show you what I mean. Below the melody, I’ve written in the words I had in mind when composing it.
(I’ve come across a few other composers who’ve also used this method of ‘silently’ setting a text in an instrumental piece. It’s like using some ready-made scaffolding when building a new work, which makes the blank page feel a little less daunting!)
It was always my intention to one day turn this into a singable liturgical version. And now I have the perfect opportunity!
But… it’s not going to be as easy as I thought.
I’ve found out that Christ Church North Adelaide would like an older version of the English text, corresponding with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which they use in their worship. The text I had ‘set’ in my piano piece was a newer ‘Common Worship’ version, and although the words are only subtly different, most of the rhythms just won’t work for the older text…
It was always my intention to one day turn this into a singable liturgical version. And now I have the perfect opportunity!
But… it’s not going to be as easy as I thought.
I’ve found out that Christ Church North Adelaide would like an older version of the English text, corresponding with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which they use in their worship. The text I had ‘set’ in my piano piece was a newer ‘Common Worship’ version, and although the words are only subtly different, most of the rhythms just won’t work for the older text…
I still want to use the musical material from the piano sonata, but I can see that I’m going to have to change things fairly substantially…
Kyrie
Lord, have mercy
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
This is oldest text of the Communion Service. Even in the Latin version of the Mass, these words are in Greek (the first language of the New Testament): Kyrie eleison. In fact, the phrase can be traced even further back, found in several Psalms.
It’s pretty humbling to be saying these words first up every week in church. It really reminds you that you have no place speaking to God at all without his grace and forgiveness. It’s a prayer of confession.
The idea that this is a good way to begin a church service seems to come from one of Jesus’ parables, in which he contrasts the proud prayers of the Pharisees, trusting in their own righteousness, with the humble attitude of a repentant tax collector. “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” the tax collector cries, standing at a distance and “unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven” (Luke 18:13).
A plea for mercy like this suggests music of sorrow and desolation, but in many Masses and Communion Services the tone is instead rather peaceful. This got me thinking, and eventually I decided to take a similar approach.
You see, I don’t think it’s just a request for mercy. I think it’s a reminder to ourselves that God is merciful. We don’t repeat the words every week because we doubt God’s mercy, but because we know it – and need it.
So the music should express God’s mercy, not just our humility.
There’s a lovely threefold structure to the prayer, emphasised by many composers (including me) with triplicate repetitions. I’ve gone even further, and phrased it into nine bars of 3/4 time…
It’s pretty humbling to be saying these words first up every week in church. It really reminds you that you have no place speaking to God at all without his grace and forgiveness. It’s a prayer of confession.
The idea that this is a good way to begin a church service seems to come from one of Jesus’ parables, in which he contrasts the proud prayers of the Pharisees, trusting in their own righteousness, with the humble attitude of a repentant tax collector. “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” the tax collector cries, standing at a distance and “unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven” (Luke 18:13).
A plea for mercy like this suggests music of sorrow and desolation, but in many Masses and Communion Services the tone is instead rather peaceful. This got me thinking, and eventually I decided to take a similar approach.
You see, I don’t think it’s just a request for mercy. I think it’s a reminder to ourselves that God is merciful. We don’t repeat the words every week because we doubt God’s mercy, but because we know it – and need it.
So the music should express God’s mercy, not just our humility.
There’s a lovely threefold structure to the prayer, emphasised by many composers (including me) with triplicate repetitions. I’ve gone even further, and phrased it into nine bars of 3/4 time…
I love the effect of breaking the phrasing into 2, 3 and 4 bars (instead of just 3 x 3) – it slows down the prayer, and almost forces meditation on the words as you hear them.
The melody is basically just a chant between two notes a third apart – simplicity is key to expressing humility!
I was able to take this melody straight from my Piano Sonata, but had to find a way to work in the extra words from the BCP (Book of Common Prayer): “Lord have mercy upon us”…
The melody is basically just a chant between two notes a third apart – simplicity is key to expressing humility!
I was able to take this melody straight from my Piano Sonata, but had to find a way to work in the extra words from the BCP (Book of Common Prayer): “Lord have mercy upon us”…
But actually, these little interludes work nicely to draw out the prayer, fitting over the nine-bar phrases. So each line of the prayer gets its own space, as though we are praying to each member of the Trinity in turn.
I think I’ve found my key motif for the rest of the Communion Service as well… those organ chords built with fourths are simple and distinctive…
I think I’ve found my key motif for the rest of the Communion Service as well… those organ chords built with fourths are simple and distinctive…
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Sanctus
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy...
The ‘Sanctus’ has always felt to me like the most exciting part of the service. When my Uncle Gary was locum priest at St Mary’s in Adelaide, he would always make sure that the bell in the bell tower was rung at this point of the service!
What’s so exciting? Well, the text comes from Isaiah 6, and it’s an awesome vision of the LORD God himself, holy and glorious and downright terrifying. God’s holiness is good… too good.
How to express holiness in music? There are lots of different approaches, and many of my favourites are quite mystical – I love the ‘Sanctus’ of Harold Darke’s Collegium Regale Communion Service in E, for instance. But, with that church bell in mind, I wanted something with a bit more force and energy – something to wake people up!
“Holy, holy, holy” – as in the Kyrie, there’s an inherent threeness to this text, which can’t help but come out in the music. More nine-bar phrases punctuate the opening…
What’s so exciting? Well, the text comes from Isaiah 6, and it’s an awesome vision of the LORD God himself, holy and glorious and downright terrifying. God’s holiness is good… too good.
How to express holiness in music? There are lots of different approaches, and many of my favourites are quite mystical – I love the ‘Sanctus’ of Harold Darke’s Collegium Regale Communion Service in E, for instance. But, with that church bell in mind, I wanted something with a bit more force and energy – something to wake people up!
“Holy, holy, holy” – as in the Kyrie, there’s an inherent threeness to this text, which can’t help but come out in the music. More nine-bar phrases punctuate the opening…
But the other key number here is seven. It’s a significant biblical number (connoting perfection, completeness), and it’s also the number of notes in a typical scale. So I put a continuously ascending scale in the bass (disguised at first by ‘hiding’ every third note – see above) and let it loop itself over and over.
At first it works against the nine-bar phrases (making for some cool harmonies), but later it comes into its own. There’s no mistaking the endlessly rising scale in this bit...
At first it works against the nine-bar phrases (making for some cool harmonies), but later it comes into its own. There’s no mistaking the endlessly rising scale in this bit...
(I love how the text lets me overlap the word 'glory' like that!)
Eventually it needs to be cut off so that we can go on… but what better way to do this than with an abrupt change of key? A sudden arrival in E-flat major heralds the interruption of the ‘Benedictus’…
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord… |
This line comes from Psalm 118:26, and all four Gospel accounts have it explicitly referencing the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion. I’m not the first composer to think that a solo voice here makes for good dramatic effect!
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I’ve written the ‘hosannas’ as quiet responses to this, bringing out the poignancy of this moment. ‘Hosanna!’ is a shout of praise, although it literally means ‘Save us!’ – and this, in context, is what Jesus is about to do. But it will take dying on the Cross.
Agnus Dei
Lamb of God
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O Lamb of God, The ‘Agnus Dei’ is sung directly before Communion is taken, focusing our attention on Jesus Christ as the one who gave his body and blood to atone for our sin. It is almost always quiet, and its gentle repetitions encourage meditation.
The opening melody that the choir sings (after the organ gives them almost every note except for the one they have to start singing!) is based on a little tune in my Piano Sonata that I never expected to use in this way. Here’s its original context, right at the beginning of the ‘At Church’ movement, sounding lively and a little mischievous…
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And here’s how I’ve transformed it to use in the Agnus Dei…
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I turn the phrase downwards at the end, to paint the sadness of “the sins of the world”, and I leave the choir hanging for a moment without the organ… Then comes the peaceful supplication, “have mercy on us.”
The words here deliberately echo the opening ‘Kyrie’, asking for mercy. So I thought it made sense to do this with the music as well. I put the nine-bar phrasing of the ‘Kyrie’ chant in the organ, underneath the simple words of the choir…
The words here deliberately echo the opening ‘Kyrie’, asking for mercy. So I thought it made sense to do this with the music as well. I put the nine-bar phrasing of the ‘Kyrie’ chant in the organ, underneath the simple words of the choir…
After that, the music simply follows repetitions of the text, but changing key to arrive at a particularly expressive chord at the start of the last stanza. From there I had to find a quick but gentle way back to the home key (C) to ensure it sounds like the prayer is answered!
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Gloria
Glory be to God on high
Glory be to God on high... In most liturgical contexts that I know of, the ‘Gloria’ comes after the ‘Kyrie’, quite early on in the service. But the 1662 Book of Common Prayer saves this hymn of praise until after Communion, and I really like the thinking behind that.
There’s about as much text in this movement as in the other three put together, but I didn’t want it to feel too long, especially as it comes at the end. Fortunately, most of the words invite fast and active music, full of joy and exultation. But because it follows Communion, I didn’t want it to start with a crash (the way some Glorias do). So I found a way to build up gradually to its full excitement, using those ‘chords of fourths’ that are in all the other movements…
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The opening of the ‘Gloria’ comes from the words that the angels sang to the shepherds when proclaiming the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem (see Luke 2:14). I love that I’m joining so many other composers in trying to re-imagine how wonderful that must have sounded!
Keeping in mind that “great multitude of the heavenly host”, when the tempo picks up I get the upper half of the choir singing a bar or two behind the lower half. This makes a cool effect: cascading waves of sound. And the other simple way to build excitement is with melodies that gradually get higher and higher, like this…
Keeping in mind that “great multitude of the heavenly host”, when the tempo picks up I get the upper half of the choir singing a bar or two behind the lower half. This makes a cool effect: cascading waves of sound. And the other simple way to build excitement is with melodies that gradually get higher and higher, like this…
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But what’s really interesting about the ‘Gloria’ is how much of the text is about – once again – the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The whole middle third is all “Lamb of God” and “have mercy on us” again.
I have to admit, I was going to try and gloss over this somewhat, thinking that we’ve got the picture and we should just get on with celebrating, but all that text wouldn’t let me! It invites a reprise of the quiet, reflective ‘Agnus Dei’ music, as well as the supplications of the ‘Kyrie’, so I duly obliged. And in doing so, found a new, deeper level of expression (it’s amazing what a key change will do)…
I have to admit, I was going to try and gloss over this somewhat, thinking that we’ve got the picture and we should just get on with celebrating, but all that text wouldn’t let me! It invites a reprise of the quiet, reflective ‘Agnus Dei’ music, as well as the supplications of the ‘Kyrie’, so I duly obliged. And in doing so, found a new, deeper level of expression (it’s amazing what a key change will do)…
arriving at my favourite chord in the whole piece!
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And, in all that, I finally realised that the reason for all this text is to draw our attention to what we are glorifying God for most of all – which is his mercy, his grace, his love to us expressed in Christ. It’s all very well to glorify him for being omnipotent, omniscient, and all the other ‘big’ things like that. But we’ve missed the point if we don’t find the greatest glory of God expressed in Christ.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) |
Having reached that point, it’s time to pick up the tempo again and race to the end in celebration! Not having exhausted the musical possibilities by the time I reached the end of the text, I figured I could justify one of those elaborate ‘Amens’…
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And the closing bars echo back a climactic bit of the ‘Sanctus’ – so now every other movement has made a reappearance in this one!
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Praise God! This was so much fun to write. I wouldn’t mind doing it all again…