Advent program explores Anglican music

This month, a College associate professor and a local priest will use that awareness to explore the history and tradition of sacred music.

"Music in the Anglican Tradition" will be presented by Daniel Harrison, chair of the music department at the College, and the Rev. Clare Yarborough, a priest on staff at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The program will be presented on Wednesday, December 8, and Wednesday, December 15, at 6 p.m. in St. Paul's Church, 25 Westminster Road.

During the December 8 session, Harrison will look at the relationships between hymn texts and music, and how melody illuminates and underscores the subject and words. The December 15 session will examine the different settings of the Magnificat (Song of Mary), an important canticle dating back to the Middle Ages. The prayer, in which Mary praises God upon learning of the conception of Jesus, has approximately 1,000 musical versions in the Anglican tradition.

The program will focus on Advent music--songs that anticipate the arrival of Jesus by looking at subjects like St. John the Baptist--and Christmas music, which celebrates the images surrounding the actual holiday, like the birth of Christ and the adoration by the Magi.

Harrison earned his bachelor's degree at Stanford University and his master's degree and doctorate at Yale University. Before coming to the University in 1987, he was on the faculty at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale, where he taught in the graduate choral program.

Yarborough has a Master of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., with a specialization in liturgics, and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona.

For more program information, contact the St. Paul's Church office, 271-2240.

Maintained by University Public Relations
Please send your comments and suggestions to:
Public Relations.