Music and Liturgy for February 26: The First Sunday in Lent
Today as we observe the First Sunday in Lent, our services take on a more penitential character in stark contrast to the jubilant "alleluias" with which we ended our worship on the Last Sunday of Epiphany. At 9AM, St. Bart's Singers sing Erik Routley's Prayer of Manasseh. The words of this canticle are a prayer of repentance by the historical Manasseh, king of Judah as recorded in II Chronicles 33:1-20. Although this text appears for the first time in our current Book of Common Prayer, it was used in the early church, particularly in the Mozarabic rite during the season of Lent. Dr. Routley was one of the major forces in hymnody in the 20th century and as such published many books on the subject and edited many modern hymnals.
At 11AM, the music also takes on an austere mood with the singing of a plainsong mass setting. The liturgical book assembling plainsong masses is called the Kyriale. It contains eighteen settings of the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei), which are uniquely identified with a moniker such as today's Missa "Kyrie fons bonitatis." These names are taken from medieval tropes, which were textual additions to a chant that served as mnemonic devices designed to aid in learning a difficult melody. Thus, to a medieval monastic community learning by rote, today's setting would have been the one to which the words "fons bonitatis" (etc.) were added to the Kyrie. This morning’s organ prelude by Scheidemann is based upon this setting of the Kyrie.
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