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KING’S COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE
A SEQUENCE OF WORDS AND MUSIC TO MARK
THE 500TH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE COMPLETION
OF THE STONE FABRIC OF THE CHAPEL
Sung by the College Choir and King’s Voices
Organ Prelude
Wild Mossy Mountains Judith Weir
KC 1976
Hon. Fellow 2003
¶ All stand at the entrance of the Choir and clergy.
Introit The Founder’s Prayer
Domine, Jesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti, et preordinasti ad hoc
quod sum; tu scis quæ de me facere vis; fac de me secundum
voluntatem tuam cum misericordia. Amen.
O Lord Jesus Christ, who hast created and redeemed me and hast
foreordained me unto that which now I am; thou knowest what thou
wouldst do with me; do with me according to thy will, in thy mercy.
Amen.
Words: King Henry VI
Music: Henry Ley (Precentor of Eton College 1926-1945)
¶ All remain standing.
The Dean reads the Bidding
We gather this evening to begin together our commemoration of the
500th
anniversary of the completion of this Chapel. In words and
with music we trace the story of five centuries, beginning with the
piety and will of our beloved Founder, King Henry VI.
For half a millennium this wonderful building has stood at the heart
of Cambridge. Envisaged as a house of prayer and music for
scholars, it has become an internationally recognised icon for the
College, the University and the City. A place where people have
gathered for ceremonies of admission to the College and the election
of Provosts, it has become a destination for thousands of tourists
from all over the world.
On the inside the great windows, unrivalled vault, and the majestic
screen from which the great organ rises as a ‘harmonious
anachronism’ feed the heart as well as the eye. From the outside, the
sheer elevations and glorious pinnacles raise minds and aspirations
upwards. It is no accident, perhaps, that a good number of major
developments in human knowledge and thought have happened
within quarter of a mile of this transcending structure. Just as the
Chapel speaks of Cambridge to the world, so it speaks to Cambridge
of the holy ambition for truth, beauty and wisdom.
And because this place is consecrated and dedicated to common
prayer, let us speak from our hearts the prayer taught by Christ
himself, and which has been said here countless times these past five
hundred years: Our Father,
All
Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we
forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation; But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
May God bless us, may St Mary and St Nicolas be our companions,
and may we open our hearts to the history of this place and, in our
own way, contribute worthily to its future.
All Amen.
¶ The congregation sits.
From the Will of King Henry VI 1448.
In the name of the blessed Trinity, the Father, the Sonne, and the
Holy Ghost, oure Lady St Marie mother of Christ, and all the holy
companie of heaven: I, Henry by the grace of God King of England,
and of France, and lorde of Ireland, after the conquest of England the
Sixt, for divers great and notable causes moving me at the making of
theise presents, have do my will and mine intent to be written in
manner that followeth:
As touching the dimensions of the church of my said college of our
Lady and St. Nicholas at Cambrige, I have devised and apointed that
the same church shall containe 288 feete of assise in length, without
any yles, and all of the wideness of 40 feete, and the length of the
same church from the west end to the altare at the quier doore, shall
containe 120 feete, and from the provosts stall unto the greece called
Gradus Chori 90 feete, for 36 stalles on either side of the same quire,
answering to 70 fellowes and ten priests conducts, which must be de
prima forma. And from the said stalles unto the est end of the said
church 72 feete of assize: also a reredost bearing the roodelofte
departing the quier and the body of the church, containing in length
40 feete, and in breadth 14 feete; the walles of the same church to be
in height 90 feete, imbattelled, vawted, and chare roffed, sufficiently
butteraced, and every butterace finished with finials; and in the east
end of the said church shall be a windowe of nine dayes, and betwixt
every butterace a windowe of five dayes, and betwixt every of the
same butteraces in the body of the church, on both sides of the same
church, a closet with an altare therein, containing in length 20 feete,
and in breadth 10 feete, vawted and finished undre the soyle of the
yle windows.
And I will that both my said colleges be edified of the most
substantiall and best abiding stuffe of stone, lead, glasse, and yron,
that may best be had and provided thereto: and that the church of St.
John (Zachary), which must be taken to the enlarging of my said
college, be well and sufficiently made againe in the grounde in
which the provost and schollars abovesayd now be lodged, or nigh
by where it may be thought most convenient, to the intent that
Divine service shall now be done therein worshipfully to the honour
of God, our Blessed Lady Christes mother, St. John Baptist, and all
saints.
Anthem
Laudate nomen Domini, vos servi Domini,
Ab ortu solis usque ad occasum eius.
Decreta Dei justa sunt, et cor exhilarant.
Laudate Deum, principes et omnes populi.
O come, ye servants of the Lord, and praise his holy name:
from early morn to setting sun, his might on earth proclaim.
His laws are just, and glad the heart: he makes his mercies known:
ye princes, come, ye people too, and bow before his throne.
Words: Psalm 113: 1,3
Music: Christopher Tye (Chorister c 1510)
From King’s College Chapel 1515 – 2015.
Austen Leigh suggests that by the early seventeenth century the
Chapel had become ‘the Cathedral of Cambridge’. He notes the
1619 regulation of James I concerning the maintenance of services in
the Cambridge College Chapels, and the prohibition against women
attending services at any of them, with the exception of ordinary
prayers in King’s Chapel. From an early period, it seems that there
were few limitations on visiting the Chapel and, perhaps more
surprisingly, on going up to the Chapel roof. For Samuel Pepys, the
Chapel was part of an itinerary of Cambridge sites (along with
Trinity College and St John’s Library) to be visited with his wife and
friends. John Evelyn toured Caius College and Ling’s Chapel, and
in 1697 Celia Fiennes took in a number of colleges, reporting most
extensively on Trinity College and King’s Chapel. The Chapel was
not only visited by Elizabeth I and James I, but also by Charles I and
Queen Henrietta Maria (1631), Charles II (1641, 1671 and 1681) and
King William (1689). In 1669, no less than Cosimo de Medici
observed the schools, ‘& and from thence went to King’s College
Chappell where they had a music divertisement’. A University
correspondent wrote to Matthew Prior that the social season of 1700
took its toll on the inhabitants of Cambridge: ‘while the season lasted
at Newmarket I was plagued with visitants from thence who came to
see King’s College Chapel, etc. When I thought this fatigue over,
Mr Boyle (I thank him) sent me Captain Delval with a brace of
Mahometans from Mechanes, to whom I was obliged to show our
University (or rather them to it).’ The eighteenth century historian
of Cambridge, Edmund Carter, is explicit that the Chapel is ‘the only
Public Chapel in Town, and …. On a Sunday afternoon (especially
in the Summertime and fine Weather) you may see it well filled, and
amongst them Numbers of ladies’. In the early nineteenth century,
the anonymously published Alma Mater, a text partly written in the
‘university wit’ tradition, notes that there was a service in the Chapel
every afternoon at 3.00 pm:
To hear the chanting and anthem of which many gownsmen and
other attend, promenading the spacious antechapel. On Sundays,
like the Chapel at Trinity, we have also a pretty sprinkling of the
lady-snobbesses (university slang for townspeople), who likewise go
(emphatically be it understood) to see and be seen.
Nicolette Zeeman
Fellow 1995
Anthem
O clap your hands together, all ye people: O sing unto God with the
voice of melody. For the Lord is high, and to be feared: he is the
great King of all the earth, he is the great King upon all the earth.
He shall subdue the people under us: and the nations under our feet.
He shall choose out an heritage for us: ev’n the worship of Jacob,
whom he loved.
Words, Psalm 47, vv 1-4
Music, Orlando Gibbons (Chorister 1596)
1820 Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only—this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
What awful perspective! While from our sight
With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide
Their Portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed
In the soft chequerings of a sleepy light.
Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite,
Who’er ye be, that thus, yourselves unseen,
Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,
Shine on, until ye fade with coming Night!
But from the arms of silence – list! O list!
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed
By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife;
Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before the eye
Of the devout, a veil of ecstasy!
Ecclesiastical Sonnets 43-44
William Wordsworth
Anthem
Silence, come first. I see a sleeping swan,
Wings closed and drifting where the water leads,
A winter moon, a grove where shadows dream,
A hand out-stretched to gather hollow reeds.
The four winds in their litanies can tell
All of earth’s stories as they weep and cry,
The sea names all the treasure of her tides,
The birds rejoice between the earth and sky.
Voices of grief and from the heart of joy;
So near to comprehension do we stand
That wind and sea and all of winged delight
Lie in the octaves of man’s voice and hand
And music wakes from silence, where it slept.
Words: Ursula Vaughan Williams
Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams
From a paper written during the First World War.
Thought upon the services of the Chapel takes its colour from the
use to which we desire to put the building.
For instance, at one extreme, it can be regarded almost entirely from
the point of view of serving the College, its Fellows and
Undergraduates.
At the other, it can be regarded as the typical Church, not only of the
College, not only of Cambridge University, but of the English
University world. So it is vaguely but quite commonly regarded by
people outside.
These two aims do not for one moment conflict. But within the
College the first view perhaps is most easily and naturally held.
None of us would consent for a moment to any use that would
impoverish the religious provision for the College.
On the other hand, the second aim is more ambitious, and naturally
would not especially appeal or even occur to those of us who have
no intimate touch upon the larger problems and life of the Church of
England. Usually therefore it falls into the background; the
extraordinary potentialities of our Chapel for the whole religious life
of England tend to be forgotten. At the present moment of utter
chaos, and of superb hope in Church, as in State, we have a chance
which, boldly taken, might make Kings one of the most important
churches in the land.
The particular moment affords us opportunity. There can be no
doubt that we are on the threshold of, are witnessing – a second
Reformation. The practices and policies of the Church are called in
question, not by unsympathetic critics who may be disregarded, but
by the keenest of the clergy and laity alike. The Bishops are asking
for experiments. The administrative side of the Church is to be
drastically overhauled, the connection with the State modified,
relations with separated bodies have changed out of recognition,
party spirit is dying fast. The reform of the public worship of the
Church is demanded on all sides, the lectionary has already been
revised, and the Prayer-book at a slower pace is yet following.
I suggest that in the matter of public worship, no Church in the land
is more fitted than ours to take a lead. We are free from the
ecclesiastical authority which governs even the most ‘live’
cathedrals. We have, I hope, both the learning and the sober sense
which will prevent the extravagances either of ignorance or of one-
sided enthusiasms – both of them serious dangers at the moment.
We have unrivalled musical resources. It is my passionate
conviction that if we could catch and crystallise the wisest principles
of liturgical reform in the worship of our Chapel, we should be doing
a great work, not only for the college and university, but also for the
Church and for the Empire.
Cambridge exists to exercise such leadership in the purely
intellectual sphere. It does not seem to be an unreasonable ambition
that Kings Chapel should seek to do this in its own religious sphere;
the teaching that might issue from its services would not be less
influential than that which issues from lecture-rooms.
Eric Milner-White
Fellow and Dean 1918-1941
Anthem
’Twas in the year that King Uzziah died,
A vision by Isaiah was espied;
A lofty throne, the Lord was set thereon;
And with his glory all the temple shone.
Bright seraphim were standing round about.
Six wings had ev’ry of that quire devout;
With twain he awesome veil’d his face, and so
With twain he dreadful veil’d his feet below.
With twain did he now hither, thither fly:
And thus aloud did one to other cry:
Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth,
Full of his glory are earth and heav’n, both.
And at their cry the lintels moved apace,
And clouds of incense fill’d the holy place.
Alleluia.
Words: G.R. Woodward
Music: George Benjamin
KC 1981
Hon. Fellow 2014
1954 ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Chapel, Cambridge’.
File into yellow candle light, fair choristers of King’s
Lost in the shadowy silence of canopied Renaissance stalls
In blazing glass above the dark glow skies and thrones and wings
Blue, ruby, gold and green between the whiteness of the walls
And with what rich precision the stonework soars and springs
To fountain out a spreading vault – a shower that never falls.
The white of windy Cambridge courts, the cobbles brown and dry,
The gold of plaster Gothic with ivy overgrown,
The apple-red, the silver fronts, the wide green flats and, high,
The yellowing elm-trees circled out on islands of their own –
Oh, here behold all colours change that catch the flying sky
To waves of pearly light that heave along the shafted stone.
In far East Anglian churches, the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass
Buttress with prayer this vaulted roof so white and light and strong
And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.
A Few Late Chrysanthemums
John Betjeman
Anthem
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to [the] evensong,
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours [do,] and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.
Words: Robert Herrick
Music: Benjamin Britten
From the University Sermon of 1984.
I believe that for lovers of painting the speed and sureness of
Rubens’s invention and execution contained in this picture are
breath-taking. I believe that for those who care for this royal Chapel,
and who savour its history as a marvellous growth through more than
five centuries of change since the Founder planned it, the changes
wrought the coming of the Rubens in the 20th
century are as
assimilable as the no less monumental changes wrought to its late
Gothic strangeness in the early 16th
century gallery of Antwerp
glaziers’ work, or in the late 17th
century by a fully baroque organ-
case, or indeed in the early 18th
century by marble flooring in the
style used by the Antwerp Jesuits. I believe that for those who come
to worship in a place dedicated to Our Lady and St Nicholas, this
magniloquent display of the Epiphany to the Gentiles, an
unforgettable moment in the story of Mary and her son, can by its
carnality and by its charm, as well as by its grandeur and its grace,
warm their devotions and guide them like a star. The vision
vouchsafed beyond the altar and beneath the window’s show of
gnarled and awesome cruelty, lightens us. Through the wisdom ,
through the journey, through the adoration of the magi those
sacrificial mysteries were first seen to be open to the apprehension of
any who would be Christian. The story told by our picture is that
Christendom is to be worldwide and wonderful, not just the cult of a
chosen tribe.
Michael Jaffé
Fellow 1952 - 1997
Te Deum Collegium Regale
We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.
To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein.
To thee cherubin and seraphin continually do cry;
Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.
The glorious company of the apostles praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee.
The noble army of martyrs praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee;
The Father of an infinite majesty;
Thine honourable, true and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.
Thou art the King of glory O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the
Virgin’s womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open
the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed
with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints, in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage.
Govern them and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name, ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.
Words: Matins, Book of Common Prayer
Music: Herbert Howells
¶ All stand to sing the Hymn.
Rex Henricus, sis amicus
Nobis in angustia;
Cujus prece nos a nece
Salvemur perpetua.
Lampas morum, spes aegrorum,
Ferens medicamina,
Sis tuorum famulorum
Ductor ad caelestia.
Ut jucundas cervus undas
Aestuans desiderat,
Sic ad rivum Dei vivum
Mens fidelis properat.
Pax in terra: non sit Guerra
Orbis per confinia
Virtus crescat, et fervescat
Caritas per Omnia
Non sudore vel dolore
Moriamur subito:
Sed vivamus et plaudamus
Caelis sine termino
King Henry, be a friend
To us in time of trouble;
By your prayer may we be saved
From everlasting death.
Light of morals, hope of the sick
Bringing them medicines,
Be for your band of servants
Leader to heavenly things.
As the hart, heated in the chase,
Desires refreshing waters,
So to the living stream of God,
The faithful heart hastens.
Peace on earth: let there be no
war
Within the bounds of the world:
Let virtue grow, and charity
Glow through everything.
Let us not, through toil or pain,
Meet with sudden death:
But let us live and clap our hands,
In heaven without end.
Trans., Patrick Wilkinson
Fellow 1932 – 1985
¶ The congregation remains standing.
Dean Let us pray.
A Prayer of Brooke Foss Westcott, Professorial Fellow c1882-1901
We beseech thee, O God, the God of Truth, that what we know not
of things we ought to know, thou wilt teach us. That what we know
of Truth, though wilt keep us therein. That in what we are mistaken,
as we must be, thou wilt correct. That at whatsoever things we
stumble, thou wilt yet establish us. And from all things that are false,
and from all knowledge that would be hurtful, thou wilt evermore
defend us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
All Amen.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to
shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the
light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace. And the
blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit be among you and remain with you always.
All Amen.
Organ voluntary
Alleluyas Simon Preston
Chorister 1949
Organ Scholar 1958