St Margaret's Church Prestwich

This article first appeared in the March 2024 edition of our parish magazine.

For a while I have been considering writing a series of articles on the various movements of Communion Settings. This year, as March falls entirely within Lent, it seems the ideal time to make a start with the Kyrie.

The Kyrie is only sung during two seasons each year: Advent and Lent. It takes the place of the Gloria, which is not sung in those seasons as it is too celebratory. Interestingly, there is also a tradition of prohibiting the use of instruments – including the organ – during Lent and Advent (other than to support singing) for the same reason.

The Kyrie is a penitential sung prayer, originally in Greek:

Kyrie eleison                        Lord have mercy

Christe eleison                    Christ have mercy

Kyrie eleison                        Lord have mercy

The setting used at St Margaret’s was written by Maurice Greening, and if you’re unsure how it goes, there is a recording on the website, here: https://stmargaretsprestwich.com/music-at-st-margarets/

There are so many other settings of these words, some fully orchestrated, some using folk tunes, some ancient, some contemporary. Here are a few examples:

• The Armed Man: a mass for peace (Karl Jenkins) I have been fortunate enough to sing this a number of times with the Manchester Chorale in the Bridgewater Hall, under the baton of the composer himself. There are no videos of these live performances, but here is the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain https://youtu.be/C5BfirqTqm8?feature=shared
• Five-part Mass (William Byrd) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5pW0awAb-U
• Mass in Blue (Will Todd) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XM0x_qSeOk
• Missa Brevis (Jonathan Dove) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVFZjeZRaJc
• Missa Brevis in D (Mozart) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-68Lvr41XU Missa Brevis literally means “short mass”, and Mozart wrote this one especially for a client who liked his worship to be concise!
• Jazz Mass (Don Gillthorpe) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDCI6ihQpJI Sacred music can be written in any style, and this Jazz Missa Brevis was composed by a Sing for Pleasure tutor, whilst recovering from spinal surgery. Do you see me in the choir?
• Little Organ Mass (Haydn) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p8fSMpqGfU
• Ghanaian Kyrie (trad.) Sacred Trinity in Salford is the Northwest hub for HeartEdge, which is the brainchild or St Martin in the Fields. Back in 2022 (I think), they started a series of workshops about seasonal music and liturgy – the first being on Music and Liturgy for Lent. Tom and I went along, and that’s where we heard this gorgeous setting of the Kyrie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vot6wFBL51c
• Taize chants: there are many of these, here’s Kyrie Chant 1 https://youtu.be/cm4AiBjlu9c?feature=shared

Next month we celebrate Easter, so we’ll take a look at the Gloria.

Carol P