Pew Sheet – 12th July 2020

The Rector writes  ‘It was so lovely to be back in Church last Sunday!  Many of you were also very moved to just be together again.   I know there is no music at the 9am service but during the 10am and 11am services it was wonderful to hear music being played again. Thank you to Kay & Bébhinn !  Today Roger joins us for the 10am service in St John’s as he normally does on the 2nd Sunday (although there is no Choral Evensong this month) and we will be welcoming back Kevin to St Mary’s for the 4th Sundays of the month. We are so lucky to have such a great musical team.

I have always thought this but perhaps it’s true to say that the lockdown reminded me of just how lucky we are to have live music each week. I know we are not singing hymns at the minute but hopefully it won’t be too much longer before we can resume. I am very keen that we don’t rush anything in our parish. I would absolutely hate to think that something we did had caused one of our community to get ill. For the next little while, we will always err on the side of caution, however irritating that seems to be at the time. 

Finally may I recommend the Covid Tracker App if you have a smart phone? It will prove its worth in the coming months I’m sure. The more people using the App, the more effective the Contact Tracing will become. ‘

Music notes 12/07/2020

Hymns in St. Mary’s for today are:

385       ‘Rise and hear! The Lord is speaking

384       Lord thy word abideth

611        Christ be beside me

454       Forth in the peace of Christ we go.

The words of numbers 611 and 454 were written by James Quinn (1919-2010). He was a Scotsman born in Glasgow who entered the  Jesuit Order in 1939. Like Daniel Schutte, whom we discussed a few weeks ago in connection with ‘Here I am Lord’, he began to write hymns in response to the Second Vatican Council. Catholic masses were now in the vernacular of each country for the first time in

centuries and hymns were needed to enhance the liturgy in place of Gregorian chant and hymns in Latin.

‘Forth in the peace of Christ we go’ (454) is a paraphrase of the Latin Nunc dimittis. It is sung to a melody called Duke Street – named after the street where it’s composer, John Hatton, lived in the eighteenth century. The melody has been described as ‘soaring, subsiding, like the flight of a bird’ and always makes for an uplifting end to the service.

 ‘Christ be beside me’ (611) is a translation of part of a hymn written in Old Irish and attributed to St. Patrick. The complete text is found in the hymn book as ‘I bind unto myself today’ (St. Patrick’s Breastplate). ‘Christ be beside me’ is sung to a traditional Scottish melody named Bunessan, a more gentle and meditative melody than the cheery Kelvingrove we heard last week.

James Quinn was an ecumenist who finished his career as Episcopal Vicar for Ecumenism in the Edinburgh diocese. His hymns have become popular throughout the Christian community and appear in the hymnals of many denominations.

This week saw the passing of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone (1928-2020). We heard his ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ some weeks ago, a piece taken from his score for the film ‘The Mission’ a story about Jesuit missionaries in South America. Morricone was originally a trumpeter who also trained as a composer at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome where he was born. He was a prolific and brilliant film composer famous for scores such as ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ and ‘Cinema Paradiso’. He only wrote one liturgical piece, a mass commissioned by the Jesuit Order to commemorate their two hundredth anniversary.

Interesting how good music knows no boundaries of faith or geography!

Bébhinn

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 Random Notes CCCXLVIII

Readers of Random Notes may be interested to learn of the publication of an excellent and recently published book, ‘The Buildings of Ireland, Cork City and County’ by Frank Keohane in which the Churches both at Monkstown, and at Carrigaline  receive a entry. The book is the sixth volume of a series  to deal with Ireland,  and is a continuation of the well established and highly respected  Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’ s forty-six volume survey Buildings of England series , published between 1951 and 1974, followed shorty afterwards by ten volumes covering Scotland, and later a further seven detailing the buildings of Wales.

‘Carrigaline, St. Mary (Cof I), Church Road. 1824 by George R. Pain, A well-appointed First Fruits Church, replacing one built in 1723, Gothic. Neatly squared limestone rather than the usual rendered rubble. Two stage W tower with a tall belfry stage with chamfered corners rising to diagonally set pinnacles and an elegant ribbed spire, all very typical of the Pain brothers. The nave has delicate corner pinnacles, and towards the centre of the S facade three grouped windows separated by buttresses. Shallow chancel, richly pinnacled and flanked by square battlemented vestry rooms, N transept added c.1850 [in fact c.1835]. Timber perpendicular tracery, on the south side sadly replaced. The interior retains its original coved ceiling, panelled dado and delicate galleries with arcaded fronts. In 1893 William H. Hill replaced the pews, panelled the chancel and opened a new window in the nave S wall. Wooden pulpit with perpendicular arcading. Octagonal limestone font on octagonal pillar, dated 1637. – Stained glass, St. George by Hubert Mc Goldrick, 1923.

Monkstown, St. John (C of I), 1831-2. A picturesque little Church on a Greek-cross plan by William Hill, closely based on an earlier competition entry by George R. Pain. Rubble sandstone masonry with limestone dressings. Two tier stage (ritual) W tower with angle buttresses and a too thin octagonal spire rising from within the battlemented parapet. Alterations in 1864-5, presumably to designs of Welland & Gillespie, saw the removal of the original chancel, and the addition of a further pair of transepts E of the original transepts, and a large chancel with polygonal apse, with gables over each window, and flanking vestry rooms. Hill’s timber perpendicular windows survive in part. Victorianised interior with open roof. – Carved oak pulpit and reading desk by Harry Hems of Exeter, 1883. – Stained glass, Varied windows, the earliest, in the N. transept, with small-scale panels depicting Saul and St. Paul at Corinth by Hardman & Co., 1874, Larger figures of SS Peter and Paul in the chancel by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1904.’