Music Note: SANCTUARY DOVES is the title of a poem by William Reed Huntington, Rector of All Saints Church 1862-1883, from a collection Sonnets and a Dream (New York: Gorham, 1922). The poem relates the story of doves nesting in rafters over the future altar when his small Parish, then some 40 years old, was rebuilding on a new site after a fire in 1874. This event was wondrously repeated when rebuilding after another fire in 1932; construction again paused until the doves had raised their young. Painted high above the altar is a visible reminder of this story. In the musical setting, Huntington’s poem is combined with two other elements: passages from the Psalms, and the hymn “For all the Saints,” two stanzas of which may be sung by a congregation/audience. The work was commissioned for our 175th Anniversary Three Choirs Festival Concert next March 14 by the Sacred Music Series at All Saints. The complete work lasts thirteen minutes and includes a flute and echo choir in the rear gallery, and percussion; today's performance is of an abridged version for typical service use, omitting the extra musicians, participation by the congregation, and some of the psalm verses.
Like the poem itself, the first word of Huntington’s title seems deliberately to suggest at once three layers of meaning: popular Protestant reference to an entire church Nave, Anglo-Catholic reference to its sacramental area surrounding the altar, and a general refuge. The poem is also not a specifically Christian one, and especially when surrounded by Psalm verses (sung to a chant by Sir Hubert Parry), reflects a universal, timeless thought. Doves might also refer to those who sing in God’s Sanctuary.
As the pair of doves found raw materials from the construction site below them, gradually to create their nest, so does the main melody of the music unfold, being built a few notes at a time. Recognizable phrases are glimpsed, only to be altered again as the hymn tune Sine Nomine by Ralph Vaughan Williams takes form. Elements of the hymn and the chant are woven throughout the work, stopping by a cameo of the famous opening phrases from a movement of Brahms’s Requiem (How lovely is thy dwelling place). |
Choral
No. 2 in B minor ~ César Franck