Friday, November 10, 2006

Anthem and incense

During All Saints Day's solemn high mass at St. Paul's K Street, I videoed the anthem during the offertory and planned to post it here for you all to see in my post that night. For some reason, I couldn't get it to play once I uploaded it to my computer, and neither Ryan nor Jean could fix the file, either, but finally Svet came to our rescue and "zipped" the video on my camera's memory card and pulled it off that way; now it works. Thanks, Svet!

So, at long last, here is the Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church singing Edgar Bainton's "And I Saw a New Heaven." Forgive the cinematography; this was a "surreptitious" recording on my little point-and-click digital camera primarily to capture the sound, not to be a pretty picture. An added plus to the video is you get to watch the incensation of the altar in the traditional high church style.

About three minutes in to the video, the tenors introduce a new melodic theme whilst singing the words, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," that continues through the end of the anthem; I've long thought this was one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies in the post-Anglican Revival musical literature.

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