Music at St Paul's

The Chaplain’s View

The sole purpose of music in Church is the worship of God and therefore it is a form of prayer. At St Paul’s our Director of Music composes specific arrangements and settings to help us to express this during our services.

Excellence matters and so while we enjoy the wonderful contribution of the Ristretto singers, everyone is invited to engage with music during the service, offering their best to God.

What does that mean? In this context it means you don’t have to be a great singer to be part of a musical triumph that takes us to a higher plane and elevates us all toward the divine.

The Musical Director’s View

I was honoured to asked to take up the position of St Paul’s Director of Music in 2020 as I believe music in church worship is an offering to God, deserving the best resources that are available. Music is also an act of sharing – which includes listening together as well as singing together.

In Monaco we are lucky to have access to a wide range of talented professional performers through the ballet, opera and symphony orchestra, so our offering can range from hymns and simple congregational Mass settings to sacred works by composers from the Renaissance to the present day.

The Ristretto Singers

Formed by Errol Girdlestone in 2012 this group of professional and gifted amateur singers from across the region joins us regularly to lead music during worship.

The vocal ensemble is joined by instrumentalists on special occasions in the church’s calendar as well for performances of Masses by Haydn, Schubert and the renowned annual concert presentation of Handel’s Messiah.

Look out for a programme of music that profiles the church’s musical literature including Baroque composers and the resumption of the series of Bach’s cantatas and motets inaugurated prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Music for November

Sunday 3rd 10.30am Holy Communion

Setting

Missa in Tempore Alligatum (Girdlestone)

Hymns

2, 386, 787, 296

Motet

Ave Regina (Gounod)

Sunday 10th 10.30am a form of Morning Prayer and Act of Remembrance

Processional

Pavane (Fauré)

Hymns

357, 823 (words as per sheet), 579, 623, Hymne Monégasque, 578

Recessional

Solemn Melody (Walford Davies)

Monday 11th 7pm Choral Evensong

Preces and Responses

William Smith

Psalm

61

Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis

Stanford in G

Anthem

And I saw a new Heaven (Edgar Bainton)

Hymn

The Supreme Sacrifice

Sunday 17th 10.30am Holy Communion

Setting

Darke in F

Hymns

3, 255, 453, 710

Motet

Come, Holy Ghost (Attwood)

Saturday 23rd 7pm Handel’s Messiah by Ristretto Choir & Orchestra

Soloist

Elenor Bowers-Jolley (soprano) / Clint van der Linde (countertenor) / Andrew Gavin (tenor) / Thomas Dear (Bass)

Sunday 24th 10.30am Holy Communion

Hymns

698, 704, 766, 754

Music Matters: Don’t call us – we’ll call you

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Edgar_Bainton%2C_Head_of_Sydney_Conservatorium_as_Melbourne_radio_quest_judge_%2831658674421%29.jpg

The serious looking gentleman in this picture was at the time Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music in Australia (and I’m talking here of 1936, as you can probably surmise from the clunky antique telephone). 

His name? Edgar Bainton.  

Born in 1880 at Hackney, London, son of a Congregationalist minister, he rose through the ranks to become Principal of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conservatory of Music, and conductor of the Newcastle Bach Choir. Whilst an honorary Geordie, his visit to Germany to attend the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth in 1914 led to Bainton’s arrest as World War I broke out, subsequently being sent to a civilian detention centre near Berlin for four years, where was put in charge of the music. 

Music in a wartime detention camp? Yes, absolutely. Music has always been regarded in German culture as a necessity akin to food and drink. Indeed, after World War II Germany prioritised the rebuilding of opera houses and concert halls over domestic housing, so highly did the nation regard music as important to the restoration of public morale. Music was also considered by prison authorities as essential to the mental wellbeing of the prisoners – something which spilt over into World War II, during which the French composer Messaien composed and premiered with fellow inmates his Quartet for the End of Time at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz. 

Bainton’s face has a dauntingly judgemental look – indeed he turned down no less a candidate than Arnold Schoenberg for the post of professor in Harmony and Counterpoint at the above mentioned Australian musical academy. Needless to say, Schoenberg eventually went on to become a figure of pivotal importance in the history of 20th century music, whereas Bainton is nowadays largely forgotten, apart from his wonderfully inspired anthem And I saw a new Heaven, which we shall be singing at Choral Evensong on Armistice Day, the 11th November. (The service commences at 5pm.) Interestingly and very much to the point, Bainton had been a pupil of the legendary Charles Villiers Stanford, whose Evening Canticles in G we shall also be singing on the 11th. 

The name Stanford has already been cited in this column as being the teacher of several eminent UK composers, viz. Coleridge-Taylor, Holst, Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, and Herbert Howells, all of whom wrote music for the Church. Stanford was notorious for his critical severity. Indeed, in addition to the previously quoted counsel to a pupil: “Tear it up my boy, it’s no use” I can now pertinently add Bainton’s personal account of nervously awaiting Stanford’s verdict on one of his compositional exercises – just possibly “I like it, my boy” or more probably “It’s damned ugly, my boy”. 

I think we may confidently assume that the former would have been applicable in the case of And I saw a new Heaven 

Still better, if you come to Evensong on the 11th November you can, among other important things, judge for yourselves….. 

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    Errol Girdlestone BIOGRAPHY

    Church music has been important to Errol all his life – you might even say it was in his genes! Errol’s family has strong theological, academic, musical and even medical connections that coalesce through music, so he was a boy chorister and trained initially as an organist.

    Church music has provided the foundation for Errol’s rich and varied international career that has spanned many countries and an exciting range of genres, all featuring performances at the highest professional level. Here is a brief summary of the highlights:

    Religious music – Royal College of Church Music, London Trinity College, Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, Founder member of The Hilliard Ensemble.

    Opera – English National Opera (Wagner’s Ring Cycle and EMI recordings with the legendary Reginald Goodall), conductor at the Nice Opera, Syrinx Concerts Orchestra in Vence and Monaco, Musique Cordiales in the Var, Festival Georges Auric in Montpellier. Plus, permanent posts in South Africa and Norway.

    Freelance conductor and chorus master – Aix-en-Provence, Baden Baden, Cologne, Chicago, Montevideo, and the Wexford festival in Ireland.

    Symphony and oratorio conductor – Leipzig, Vienna, the Bregenz Festival, Canterbury Festival, and at the Yehudi Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, alongside artists such as Giuliano Carmignola and Alison Balsom.

    Commercial recordings – English National Opera, Pink Floyd.

    Compositions – Concerto for two flutes and orchestra Pièce de Concert was premiered at the Louvre in Paris, while his Rivers of Time (scored for solo cello, symphony orchestra, and large chorus) was given at the Cathedral on the Rock in Monaco.