Music at Kilbarchan East
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Our small but musically ambitious Choir, under the direction of Mr. Ian Trushell, our Master of Music, is affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music. They provide two introits and an anthem every Sunday, as well as leading our singing, and rehearse every Wednesday as a rule. They aim very high, but are a friendly crew, and welcome people seriously interested in providing music of the highest possible standard to lift hearts and minds, and dignify the worship of God in God's house.
Our organ is an interesting three-manual instrument, originally a library-organ from a mansion. Information about it is to be found here:
http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=R00325
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The National Pipe Organ Register is a treasury of information for lovers of the pipe organ! This instrument isn’t large, and dictates the musical possibilities open to us quite closely. Nevertheless, it is a delightful and musicianly instrument, and well suited to the ambitions of choir and congregation. | |
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We also have a splendid Yamaha C3 Grand Piano, brand new, supplied by Peter Smith Pianos of Back Sneddon Street, Paisley, the gift of an anonymous donor, and a Yamaha Clavinova, gifted by the Musical Group (as in: the Group that Puts On Musicals – and this has been another high-aiming area of our musical life; the congregation has benefitted directly from the input of this group to the music-making of Kilbarchan East.) All of this lets us tackle the widest possible range of music, including the most modern, for which our multi-instrument Music Group (still looking for a name! ) sometimes join the music-making.
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Special Services with Music
The choir also prepare two services a year in which the musical input is just exactly what opens up the possibilities of worship. On these occasions, they are often accompanied by Mr. Kenneth Hand, and augmented by friends; last year and this, they were delighted to be joined by the soprano Irene Drummond, a daughter of the congregation.
Nine Lessons and Carols
It has become part of many people’s approach to Christmas in Kilbarchan and beyond that they come along to our Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, which is the full traditional service, and includes several substantial and ambitious works; in recent years these have included Rachmaninov’s Ave Maria, Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Shephard’s Song of Mary. The readings are done by members and friends of the congregation who represent an imaginative cross-section of Kilbarchan community life. Maundy Thusday Service Equally ambitious, but quite contrasting in terms of aim and effect, it has become a tradition at Kilbarchan East that Maundy Thursday Communion involve our Choir in a substantial work, and that, on this Thursday when we remember Jesus Christ instituting the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, we do so in a way which reflects all the complex themes of this night: reverence, awe, foreboding on the eve of Good Friday, the joy of what we are given in this worship which comes from Christ himself, and the awesome and awful realization of what it actually means to say "God so loved the world that he sent his Son..." and "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us..." The shape, content and worship-logic of this service blends the traditionally Presbyterian (most of the congregational singings are from the Scottish metrical versions of Psalms 113-118 – the Hallel psalms which Jesus and his disciples would have sung at any Passover meal, and therefore at the Last Supper) and the more broadly traditional. The theme of celebration arises out of both the musical complexity and richness and also the uncertainty and oppression of the night, generated by a sequential reading of Mark chapter 14, up to the climax of communion itself, where it seems the shadows have finally been banished, and the Benediction. After that, there is no more music, and the shadows return; the congregation stands for the reading of Mark 14:26-42, ending with the words “Arise, let us be going; my betrayer is at hand…” Then the Elders, assisted by the choir, strip away every vestige of colour and decoration from the front of the church, leaving bare wood, and process out into the Session House, leaving the congregation to disperse into the night, thinking, perhaps, of the disciples that Thursday evening: “You will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter…” The music the choir prepared in 2007 was Haydn's "St. Nicholas Mass". These notes are reproduced with permission of their author:
St Nicholas Mass - Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)
For much of his life Haydn’s energies were devoted primarily to composing orchestral and instrumental music. The St. Nicholas Mass, which was written in 1772, is one of comparatively few choral works that he wrote before he was fifty. The supreme choral masterpieces of his old age – The Creation, The Seasons and the six great Masses, including the well-known Nelson Mass – were all composed during the last fifteen years of his life.
The autographed manuscript of the St. Nicholas Mass and all the original orchestral parts were found intact in the Esterhazy archives at
John Bawden Musical Director (1994 -2006)
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