Presently Karen is a member of the Cathedral Evensong Choir as well as the Cathedral Chamber Choir. This means that this Christmas season we have had the Carol Service at 5pm on Christmas Eve and the Orchestral Mass on Christmas Day morning at 10am. As with all choirs there is a last-minute warm-up and rehearsal. We arrive at the Cathedral an hour or more before the service and I am left in the car while she goes to rehearse
This means that I have an opportunity to read while waiting. As the service times approaches, I make my way into the Cathedral. Because of the large crowds at Christmas, I went in at least half-an-hour before the service. To read my ‘whodunnit’ crime thriller in the car park is one thing but to read it in the Cathedral seems inappropriate. So I took along with me two poetry books by well know spiritual poets.
On Christmas Eve I read some of R. S. Thomas’s poems. Once again, it was his poem In Church which touched me. I spoke about it before https://dappergeni.co.za/wp/2021/03/18/r-s-thomas-the-east-end-cross/ when I discussed the cross at the east end of St Margaret’s, Fish Hoek.
The next day I took a book edited by Philip Sheldrake, discussing George Herbert poetry. As it was Christmas Day I though it best to look up ‘Christmas’ in the index and found this poem:
The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for Thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out sing the daylight hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I find a sun
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipped suns look sadly.
Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n His beams sing, and my music shine.
Herbert uses a typical conceit of his period as he compares his soul to the shepherds ‘watching their flocks by night.’ His soul shepherds his thoughts, words, and deeds. His sheep are feed on God’s word and watered by God’s grace. Filled with this heavenly food and drink, both sheep and shepherd sing, out singing the daylight. Their musical theme is ‘one common Lord.’ Just as the winter sun looks dull and sad so Herbert’s singing of the light will outshine the very sun and God the Son’s light shall ‘twine’ with his light, his soul making God’s beam to sing and God’s light making Herbert’s music shine.
Having read that, I sat quietly in the Cathedral then had the privilege of hearing the wonderful Mozart “Spatzen” Mass in C (K220) sung in a liturgical setting. And, of course, the hymn/carol ‘O Come all ye faithful’ with the wonderful CHORD in the last verse ‘Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing’ which cheered my breast and my music shine.
Footnote:
“The Chord” is an unexpected change of harmony in the organ accompaniment in the last verse of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” corresponding to the line “Word of the Father.” In the language of music theorists, The Chord is a B half-diminished seventh. Read more about it and Sir David Willcocks contribution to choral music at: