Our church has a graceful bell tower attached to the entrance of the Parish House. It supports one tolling bell, with the pitch of C Sharp. Continuing the series of preludes taken from Henry Mulet’s “Esquisses Byzantine,” “Byzantine Sketches,” today’s is “Campanile,” “Bell Tower.” There are many bells in the tower of Sacré Coeur in Paris, and Mulet incorporates several of the actual ringing patterns used there in this descriptive aural picture.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The communion is a little piece imitating tower bells: “Carillon,” in memory of Hubert Parry by his fellow Englishman, Herbert Brewer. The postlude is another “Carillon” by another French composer, Jules Massenet, best known for his operas.
At the offertory the choir is singing “Not here for high and holy things,” (Hymn 9), a canon or round written in the mountain folk idiom by Elkanah Dare.
John Roberts, Organist and Choirmaster
Church of the Epiphany, Norfolk, VA
