Church Music Corner › Third Sunday after Epiphany 2026 [loc-002Z]

Dóminus secus mare Galiláeae vidit duos fratres, Petrum et Andréam, et vocávit eos: Veníte post me: fáciam vos fíeri piscatóres hóminum.

Adoráte Deum omnes Angeli eius audívit, et lætáta est Sion: et exsultavérunt fíliæ Iudæ.
It's good to be back at St. Michael and All Saints.

This Sunday I sang with two choirs: St. Michael and All Saints for the morning mass and Old St. Paul's for evensong, which included lucernarium and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. In the morning we sang Franck's Panis Angelicus and a simple choral mass setting whose composer I can't now recall.

Panis angelicus Bread of angels
fit panis hominum; Becomes the bread of men;
Dat panis cœlicus figuris terminum: The heavenly bread ends the old figures:
O res mirabilis! O wondrous thing!
Manducat Dominum To eat of the Lord
pauper, servus et humilis. The poor, the servant, the humble.

I cantored for the propers. In the evening, as it's the Conversion of St. Paul, the namesake of the church, we performed some ambitious repertoire, including the Bairstow Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, as well as Palestrina's Magnus Sanctus Paulus for eight voices, which I can't find a recording of anywhere.

Magnus sanctus Paulus, Saint Paul the Great,
vas electiónis The vessel that was chosen,
vere digne est glorificándus, truly worthy to be praised,
qui et thronum duodécimum méruit possidére. who merited the twelfth throne.
intercéde pro nobis ad Deum, Intercede for us to God,
qui te elegit, ut digni efficiamur gratia Dei. who chose thee, that we may be made worthy of the grace of God.

We also performed Widor's Tantum Ergo for the Benediction.

In between those two services I also stopped in to hear Evensong at St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh's west end. The choir there is very good, and I always like attending evensong there, although one of the sopranos was annoyingly out of tune this time.