Angelus ad Virginem: An Annunciation Carol
By Geoffrey Williams, D.M.A., Assistant Professor of Church Music and Director of Chapel Music at Nashotah House
Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, eds., “Angelus ad Virginem Gabriel fram HevenKing,” New Oxford Book of Carols, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Carol #16, pp.16.
The jaunty carol "Angelus ad Virginem" about the Annunciation is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), and one can imagine it being sung in procession by those road-weary pilgrims to Canterbury Cathedral to pay homage at the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Curiously, the earliest manuscript dates from fourteenth-century Dublin in a Troper — or book of tropes meant to be sung interspersed in the midst of the music for the Mass such as the Kyrie eleison or the Sanctus. The piece has had a long life since the Middle Ages, with arrangements in polyphony from the early Renaissance and an "Englished" version, Gabriel from heven's king. The Nashotah House Choral Scholars have spent much of our pandemic music-making time outdoors and have explored the vast repertoire of monody, or single melody music without harmony or polyphony.
Dr. Geoffrey Williams, D.M.A., was appointed Professor of Church Music and Director of Chapel Music at Nashotah Theological Seminary in July 2019. In June 2022, Dr. Williams will direct the Church Musicians Workshop at Nashotah House.
Acclaimed for his “deeply hued countertenor" (The New York Times), Dr. Williams is in demand as a singer, conductor, teacher, and early music specialist throughout the United States and abroad. He is founder and artistic director of the GRAMMY-nominated male classical vocal quartet New York Polyphony. He also performs regularly with Vox Vocal Ensemble, Early Music New York, and the Clarion Music Society and each summer serves on the faculty of the Amherst Early Music Festival.
Dr. Williams hails from the Midwest and began his musical life as a treble in the American Boychoir. A devoted church musician, he has served the parishes of Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church in Champaign, Illinois; St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square; Trinity Church at Princeton; Washington National Cathedral; and was for a decade a Gentleman of the Choir of Men and Boys at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, in New York City.