St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Welcomes you with open arms

Music Ministry

The music ministry at St. Paul's starts with the parishioners in the pews who sing joyfully every Sunday morning.  Visitors, we welcome you and hope you feel comfortable worshipping with us.

Hymns at St. Paul’s

As from the power of sacred lays

The spheres began to move,

And sung the great Creator's praise

To all the Blest above;

So when the last and dreadful hour

This crumbling pageant shall devour,

The trumpet shall be heard on high,

The dead shall live, the living die,

And Music shall untune the sky!

The above quote from John Dryden's A Song for St. Cecilia's Day perfectly describes the power of music: to create, to move, to "untune the sky" with a trumpet blast on the Day of Judgment.  The hymns we sing at St. Paul's encourage us in our faith and connect us to that great "democracy of the dead," as G.K. Chesterton put it -- to all of the Christians who came before us in the last two thousand years. 

The organist selects the hymns for the 10:30 service, using the Episcopal Musician’s Handbook and the results of a parish survey asking our parishioners to list their favorite hymns.  We sing a mixture of hymns from the 1982 hymnal; some are based on early plainsong melodies, some are from the great Wesleyan and Lutheran hymnody traditions, some are early American tunes, and others come from our Anglican and Episcopal heritage.  We encourage parishioners to sing in 4-part harmony, and we usually sing the final verse in unison so that the organist may play a reharmonization of the tune.

Adult Choir

The St. Paul’s adult choir sings every Sunday at the 10:30 service.  During our regular season from September through Trinity Sunday, we rehearse at 8:45 on Sunday mornings.   Anyone is welcome to join our “summer” choir, which meets at 10:00 a.m. on Sundays to prepare the hymns for the service.

Anthems sung during the 2008-2009 season include:

“O Lord Most Merciful” by Cesar Frank

An arrangement from Gabriel Faure’s requiem

The shaped-note tune “Wondrous Love”

Harold Darke's “In the Bleak Midwinter”

“To a Virgin Meek and Mild” arranged by David N. Johnson

William Byrd’s “Sacerdotes Domini” and “Lord Jesus Christ, Be Present Now”

“Ah, Holy Jesus” by J.S. Bach

The hymn “O filii et filae”

“Come, Ye Faithful” by R.S. Thatcher

Mozart’s “Agnus Dei” and “Alleluia”

Children’s Choir

The St. Paul’s children’s choir rehearses and sings during the fall and spring semesters.  We eat dinner together immediately following our 2 half-hour sessions, the first with ages 7 and up, the second with ages 4 and up.

During the 2008-2009 season, the 18 choir members sang arrangements of the old shaped-note tune Warrenton, the hymn tune St. Stephen, the hymn “How Far Is it to Bethlehem?,” and the Swedish hymn “Children of the Heavenly Father.” We also sang Vicki Hancock Wright’s arrangements of the hymns St. Columba and Ellacombe.