St Luke's Mt Waverley

Category: Music

  • The Call

    Here’s a perfect marriage between words and music. You might be familiar with “The Call” either as one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Five Mystical Songs” for baritone solo (1911) or as the hymn “Come, my way, my truth, my life,” which is a simplified version of the song for congregational singing. A rendition of the…

  • Kyrie eleison II

    In a recent post I promised to return to a link between a modern song and ancient chant. Could Nick and Anita Haigh’s “Kyrie eleison (empty, broken)” be an example of the essence of an ancient Kyrie melody persisting in a modern song? “Kyrie eleison” is a pre-Christian prayer that was adapted into Christian liturgy very early…

  • Kyrie eleison

    Kyrie eleison means “Lord, have mercy,” a phrase that appears often in popular song and speech, perhaps because it voices our response in the face of the world’s largeness and our smallness – whether we’re overwhelmed by life’s demands or lost in wonder. But what does “Lord, have mercy” give utterance to in liturgy? More…

  • Take This Moment and Go Make a Difference

    Happy New Year! The music for tonight’s Watch Night service makes me grateful for our neighbours. We have John Bell’s “Take This Moment” thanks to Frances McKinnon, the music director at High Street Road Uniting Church, who not only suggested the piece for our choir but loaned us their set of sheet music. We have…

  • Rejoice! I’m gonna say it again…

    We said it again last Sunday with The Mustard Seeds’ rendition of the carol “Gaudete!” Fresh from a workshop with our in-house orchestral percussionist (thanks Clare!), choir members devised their own accompaniment using triangle, bells and drum. Not only did we learn the techniques to play a range of hand percussion, but experimenting with musical…

  • “O Come Emmanuel” and the Great “O” Antiphons

    It’s the season of Advent and at St Luke’s we are singing “O come, O come, Emmanuel” through the whole season, adding a verse each week, which is not necessarily a usual way to sing a hymn, but is not too distant from the spirit of this hymn’s ancestors, the so-called Great “O” Antiphons. Let’s…

  • Ye gates, lift up your heads

    Recently we explored the meaning of antiphon and antiphonal in Sound returning sound. My basic definition of antiphonal music as we now us the term, and as it has been used for much of its history in church music, is: a performance style in which the ensemble is divided into distinct groups, which perform alternately…

  • Sound returning sound

    You might have heard of the terms antiphon and antiphonal in relation to church music (as well as music generally). These terms are so nearly identical that it’s a surprise to find that they mean quite different things, even though they were derived from the same root words. Here’s a short definition of each: antiphonal,…

  • Pause and Rest

    Today I glanced at a page of sheet music and my attention was captured by a tiny part of the page that suggested a sort of pun – a pause and a rest together. A pause (also called fermata, meaning held) invites the player or singer to linger, hold that moment in music for a…

  • Practising the presence of us II

    More about how to participate in worship when you have a special role to play. In an earlier post, Practising the presence of us, we looked at distractions and anxieties that prevent you from attending to what’s going on throughout the service. But what about when carrying out your role physically prevents you from participating…