Mass in G Minor

This Sunday, March 5, Saint Philip’s adult choir will present several movements from the Mass in G Minor by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. This is one of the most important works by a composer of huge stature, as Andrew Gant reminds us in his history of English Church Music, Sing Unto the Lord.

Vaughan Williams seemed to have combined a great many valuable qualities into one large musical output, and one that has been closely associated with English identity (if not nationalism). His penchant for a good melody, particularly English folk melody, his willingness to write hymns for the ordinary Englishman, his use of ancient melodic modes and associated archaic harmonic faux pas, which Gant points out with no modicum of glee, allow him to transcend the time-bound language of his teachers Stanford and Parry (what a duo of teachers!) and create something truly ‘iconic’ of British musical life.

The Mass in G Minor is no exception. It is refreshingly direct, by means of large regions of simple yet moving chordal and modal writing, yet embedded with certain textural subtleties, such as imitative polyphony, that delight the ear. Its unique composition for double choir and a separate quartet of soloists matches the construction of his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as Gant points out, and he implies that this latter work explores a kind of mystical/sacred/folk metaspace, quoting the contemporary critic J. A. Fuller Maitland, that the Fantasia brought one 'into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling.' Arguably, the mass also does just that, if not actually transporting us to another time.

Vaughan William’s Mass in G Minor paints a modern, vivid interpretation of the past, through his unique use of medieval modes, not unlike the way Victorian Pre-Raphaelite artists painted 'antique' subjects in the late 19th century.

—Justin Appel, Director of Music