The Twelfth Church Visitation will take place on
Saturday 3rd September 2011
commencing 10.00 am
The Area to be Visited lies at
the Northern Extremities of the Diocese of Oxford,
and Lunch will be partaken at The Trigger Pond, Bucknell, at 12.30 pm Bucknell, BICESTER, OX27 7NE This is a Wadworth's House.
Please
also bring the
Psalter
and Sacred HARP.
a BOOK OF MUSIC CONTAINING THE ABOVE LIST, AND
WHICH ALSO INCLUDES ONE OR TWO OTHERS, MORE WELL
KNOWN, WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE DAY
The
following Churches will be visited:
Ardley,
St Mary
(just to the south of Junction 10 on the
M40)
10.00 am
OX27 7NR It is
thought that Flora Thomson's grandfather sang and played in the still extant west gallery.
NB - No Loos here - you are recommended to
use the
Service Station at Junction 10 on the north
side of the M40 at junction 10.
Middleton Stoney, All Saints
11.00 am
OX25
4AW OS
Ref SP531232
Previously a
church serving the Estate village, the neighbouring houses were demolished to enlarge the park in 1824/25. The church therefore stands alone. NB
- No cows will be found to endanger visitors; these are
in the field
opposite.
Lunch
at The Trigger Pond, Bucknell 12.15 pm for
12.30 pm
Somerton, St James
2.00 pm
OX25 6LN
OS Ref SP496286
One of the few Grade 1
Listed Churches
in this area, it forms
the centrepiece for this year's Visitation.
Spot the owl and Green Man in the roof
timbers, binoculars help! History
everywhere!!
Weston on the Green,
St Mary
3.15 pm
OX25 3QS
In 1743 and 1744 was
rebuilt by Norreys Bertie whose initials and
arms and the date 1743 can be found on
rainwater heads. Repaired in 1810 and
restored in 1870s. Organ dates from 1885,
and it is thought there must have been an
earlier band and quire. Ten Commandments are
used in the Altar backdrop, rather than a
window.
Kidlington,
St Mary the Virgin
Tea in the church refectory 4.30 pm
Singing 5.15 pm
OX5 2AZ
The tall spire of this
fabulous early mediaeval building
is visible from afar. The present church
dates from 1220
when a new one was built in the Early
English style on
the foundations of an earlier church.
As last year, there will be a small charge to cover the cost of music books, and we ask visitors to be generous in their support
of the churches we visit.
Tea will be taken at Kidlington, courtesy of
the Kidlington WI.
Cost not yet ascertained, but will be advised on the day.
Thank you for your patience in
awaiting details,
but there have been a number of problems along the way
which have prevented these being available.
See below for contact address, etc,
for the Oxford Occasionals.
Africa, by William Billings, sung by
the Oxford Occasionals in St Michael's, Northgate, Oxford, in 2008.
Recorded using AKG C391 (x2) and an Olympus LS10. Recorded at 24-bit
96K.
Since
September 2000, a group of singers and instrumentalists from many different
parts of England have spent a day each year, touring churches and chapels in
different parts of the County and Diocese of Oxford, to recreate the psalmody and
hymnody of more than 150 years ago.
The
Oxford Occasionals are all members of the
West Gallery Music Association, formed
in 1990 to revive the music of the rural parish churches, so much beloved
of Thomas Hardy and exemplified in his novels and poetry.
Hardy wrote
of times past, the days when his father and grandfather were members of the
local church ‘band’, playing to accompany the quire in the specially
constructed ‘west gallery’ in
Stinsford Church.
The psalm tunes used during, before and after services in country churches,
were often by local, untutored composers, frequently bearing the
names of local streets, villages or landmarks. This raw and exciting
music was much beloved, and jealously guarded, by its custodians in the west
gallery; records exist of quires refusing the vicar’s instruction to sing a
particular tune to the psalm of the day, preferring to use another more to
their liking. With the passing of the years, all too frequently what
was initially a tussle for control of the conduct of services became an
issue of conflict with the clergy and the squire as patron.
The
emergence of Tractarianism and the
Oxford Movement, together with the
introduction of Hymns Ancient & Modern in 1861,saw the
wresting back of control by the church establishment, with the introduction
of surpliced choirs, often with small boys taking the tune, previously the
sinecure of adult, male, tenors. The installation of keyboard
instruments, such as harmoniums, barrel or finger organs spelt the end of
the accompanying band of cellos, clarinets,
violins, flutes, bassoons and the (more than) occasional serpent.
These instrumentalists, and their singing companions, first found their way
to the Independent chapels, where they continued to sing and play the old
tunes they loved, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, in all but
a few outposts, the old way of church psalmody was lost and virtually
forgotten in England.
Such a fate
did not attend the descendants of those settlers who took English country
psalmody to America. In New England, from as early as the middle of the
eighteenth century, English psalm tune books were being sold in Boston
within months of their publication in England. This music inspired
native-born composers, just as untutored as their compatriots on the other
side of the Atlantic, and by 1770 a leather tanner,
William Billings
of Boston, had produced the first compilation of psalm tunes by a colonist.
There was a flowering of ethnic composition immediately before and after the
War of Independence, and the fervour for native psalmody spread throughout
the Eastern United States, finding its firmest and what has become a
permanent
foothold to this day, in the southern states, particularly Alabama and
Georgia. Here the music notation has evolved with shaped note heads as
a singing aid, rather than the ordinary round note heads and thus the term
‘shape-note music’ is often used to describe American psalmody.
The Oxford Occasionals sing psalmody from both the English
and the American tradition. Our native tunes are usually accompanied, as
they were intended to be, but the psalm tunes of our American cousins are
sung à capella. These tunes are vibrant and exciting, and are a great joy to
sing and play. The group have as their watchword the instruction of a
Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford - John Wesley - to “sing lustily and with good
courage”.
Pictures are taken from the West Gallery
Music Association publication Good Singing Still by Rollo G Woods, Totton, Hants 1995 ISBN: 1 899947 00 0. Some of
them have previously appeared in an edition of a novel by Washington Irvine.
