In the early 1970s, an LP vinyl entitled Alleluia, Sing: Music for the Liturgy Sung by Members of the Community at Nashotah House was released. The recording was directed by the Rev. Dr. Louis Weil, Assistant Professor of Liturgics and Church Music at Nashotah House from 1971-1988. 

The recording featured two new settings of the Mass Ordinary for the “trial use” rites, which would become Rite II in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Included along with the music for the Eucharist were a number of works regularly sung in the chapel, including music for Holy Week, such as “The Reproaches” by Victoria and “Crux fidelis” by John IV of Portugal, and many hymns beloved by the community.  

Fifty years after the release of that LP, a new recording aims to capture the daily rhythms of St. Mary’s Chapel once again. 

Recorded over three days in March, We Praise Our God re-creates the experience of the Alleluia, Sing LP recording, from the opening track of Nashotah’s beloved bell, Michael, to new settings of the Mass Ordinary used in chapel, along with compositions by Nashotah House faculty.

The recording was made primarily from live services during the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary on March 24 and 25, 2022.  

The daily liturgies in the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin at Nashotah House are sung by the whole community —students and faculty together. A number of students serve as choral scholars and spend several hours per week preparing the music for the Daily Office and the Mass to lead the community with confidence and conviction. On feast days, the musicians may offer anthems or choral settings of the Mass and canticles at the Daily Office.

Each day begins with Morning Prayer and Holy Eucharist. The day ends with Evensong, the music taken from The Hymnal 1982 and the Nashotah House Plainsong Psalter or the New Nashotah House Anglican Chant Psalter. On Thursdays, the day begins with sung Matins in the morning, followed by a community music rehearsal when new music and a brief singing lesson are offered. Thursday’s Solemn High Eucharist in the evening is usually attended by the wider community of student and faculty families.  

We Praise Our God includes two settings of music for the Daily Eucharist offered at Nashotah House. The first is composed by Dr. Andrew Smith for St. Edmund’s Church, the Anglican Church in Oslo, Norway. Smith was born in Liverpool and moved with his family to Norway at the age of 14, later studying at the University of Oslo. His “neo-medieval” style incorporates melodies influenced by plainsong and stark harmonies which bridge the gap between centuries of music and musical idiom with a style that harks back to both ancient polyphony and pop music. Of particular note is the poignant setting of the contemporary text of the Lord’s Prayer. 

The second short Mass setting, by Dr. Geoffrey Williams, Assistant Professor of Church Music and Director of St. Mary’s Chapel, re-imagines Lenten hymn tunes to the texts of the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Williams came to Nashotah House in 2019, though his history with the seminary dates back as far as his baptism while his father was a student at the House in the 1970s. His settings of the Suffrages and Phos Hilaron sung at the Daily Office were composed for the class of 2022.  

The hymns on the record include two beloved school songs. The first, “Jerusalem the Golden” (Ewing), was something like an alma mater for the institution until it was supplanted by the beloved Seminary Hymn, “Firmly I Believe, and Truly,” composed in 1992 for the seminary sesquicentennial by Canon Dr. Joseph A. Kucharski, Professor of Church Music from 1990 to 2015. 

The title track, “We Praise Our God,” was composed by Williams and dedicated to the Rev. Beth Maynard, Rector of Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church in Champaign, Illinois.  

The psalmody follows the two great traditions of plainsong and Anglican chant. The former was edited in a beautiful volume by Kucharski. The latter is a project by Williams to create a new edition of the Psalter using Anglican chant tunes to the 1979 Psalter, after the model of the New St. Paul’s Cathedral Psalter (ed. John Scott), which is the standard by which many psalters are measured. While the plainsong style is quite objective in its declamation of the text, without drama, the Anglican chant style allows for a more subjective, interpretive, and personal approach to singing the Psalms. The Psalms serve as the backbone of our daily prayer life and without them the Book of Common Prayer would not exist. Each year at Commencement, this setting of Psalm 67 is sung to Anglican chant composed by C. Hylton Stewart.  

We Praise Our God was released Oct. 21, 2022, and is available for purchase on Amazon and for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.