| View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | I am delighted to be able to tell you that the new silver candlesticks by Stella Campion have been paid for. We already had gifts of £1500 and now the late Anne Hart has left a bequest in her will which will cover the remainder. And, since she was sacristan for so many years, responsible for the altar linen, candles and sacred vessels, it is particularly appropriate that her bequest should be used in this way. As they say, ‘It is just what she would have wanted.’
Last Sunday was a five star, bonanza day: fifty people at the Family Christingle Service in the morning, followed by a large congregation at the Eucharist and a huge congregation at the International Carol Service. Next up, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on 20 December at 6pm. Bring your family and friends.
The church will be very busy during the rest of the Advent season: tomorrow a Christmas concert for University donors, three more concerts, a Business School seminar and dinner, the Physics Department Carol Service, the staff Christmas Party and our planning for Christmas itself, not least the Christmas Crib service. But can we call it that, now that we don’t have a crib? Perhaps the Christmas Eve Children’s Service will suffice; but if that’s too prosaic, send in your ideas.
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
|
| |
|
|
|
| | | Services in December
—
Tuesdays & Thursdays
12.15 pm Lunchtime Eucharist
—
Sunday 13th December 2015
Third Sunday of Advent
10.30am- Sung Eucharist, Advent III
—
Sunday 20th December 2015
Third Sunday of Advent
10.30am- Sung Eucharist, Advent IV
6.00pm- Christmas Carol Service with the University Church Choir
—
Thursday 24th December 2015
Christmas Eve
4.30pm- Children’s Crib Service
11.30pm – Midnight Mass with Carols
—
Friday 25th December 2015
Christmas Day
10.30am- Christmas Day Eucharist
|
| | | | Forthcoming Concerts
—
Saturday 12th December 7.30pm City of Oxford Choir - Time of Snow Wednesday 16th December 7.30pm
Muscular Dystrophy UK: Oxford Spirit of Christmas Concert
Saturday 19th December 7.30pm Instruments of Time & Truth - Handel's Messiah
|
| |
| |
| | | Poetry corner — That yongë Child
That yongë child when it gan weep
With song she lullèd him asleep:
That was so sweet a melody
It passèd alle minstrelsy.
The nightingalë sang also:
Her song is hoarse and nought thereto:
Whoso attendeth to her song
And leaveth the first then doth he wrong.
(Anonymous, 14th century)
Some of the most beautiful poetry in Middle English takes as its subject the Nativity: this piece, set by Benjamin Britten in 1942 as part of his ‘Ceremony of Carols’, is no exception. The first, on hearing Mary’s song, to leave ‘does wrong’, says the poem; there is something of mesmerising beauty both in the scene it describes (Mary outstripping the nightingale in her song) and in the way it expresses it.
We’ll be thinking more about the relationship between words and music – in hymns, plainchant, polyphony and sacred songs – in next term’s series, which will look at the history of church music.
|
|
|
