The beginning of the new year also marks the start of an exciting time for sacred music at the Oratory. We have a new Director of Music, Matthew Martin, a prominent composer and organist, as well as Director of Music and Fellow at Keble College. Matthew’s areas of special academic interest include the Roman liturgy and plainchant.

The Fathers of the Oratory, since the time of St Philip, have always valued music as a tool for drawing people into the worship and love of God. With this new appointment comes also a new approach to the Oratory Choir, a new organ scholarship, and a renewed commitment to invest in the future of music, following the principle that only our best is good enough for God.

New Director of Music: a biography

Matthew Martin studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and at the Royal Academy of Music and later with Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. Martin is Director of Music and a Fellow at Keble College, Oxford where he conducts the choir, teaches academic music, and runs the annual Keble Early Music Festival.

His ‘spikily dynamic style of composition’ (BBC Music Magazine) has led him to be commissioned to write for many prominent ensembles, including The Tallis Scholars, the choirs of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, St John’s College and Clare College in Cambridge.

Martin won the Liturgical category in the 2013 British Composer Awards for for his Festival Anthem I Saw the Lord and, in 2014, a disc of his choral music, Jubilate Deo, was recorded by The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford and Daniel Hyde and released on the Opus Arte label. In the same year he was commissioned by The Genesis Foundation to write a new setting of the Stabat Mater for The Sixteen and Harry Christophers.

At the 2015 Cheltenham Music Festival Martin premiered his Trumpet Sonata with Jason Evans. In 2016 Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars performed a new set of Lamentations at Cadogan Hall, London and a cycle of Petrarch Sonnets for Marcus Farnsworth and James Baillieu received their first performance at the 2016 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester.

His large-scale unaccompanied choral work, A Rose Magnificat, written for The Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh was first performed in 2017 at St John’s Smith Square, London. The work was subsequently recorded for release on the Winged Lion label in 2018. Other projects have included a re-imagining of Guerrero’s Ave Virgo sanctissima for ORA and Suzi Digby OBE, and Psalm 150, a Festival Anthem written to mark opening of the new organ in Manchester Cathedral, the premiere of which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 in September 2017.

www.matthewmartincomposer.co.uk

His Grace the Archbishop has today issued the following statement:

        “At the September Ad Limina visit of the Bishops to Rome the Congregation for the Causes of Saints indicated that there had been considerable progress with Cause for Canonisation of Blessed John Henry Newman. It may help if I try to explain the process.

         I understand that the medical board responsible for assessing a second miracle has now delivered a positive assessment to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. However there are several further stages between now and a possible canonisation. I believe the Congregation for the Causes of Saints is to meet in spring 2019 (gathering together its various Cardinal, Archbishop and Bishop members from across the world) to consider the medical board’s assessment and to make its own recommendation to the Holy Father.

           In the light of the positive assessment of the second miracle attributed to Blessed John Henry Newman, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints will then decide whether or not to recommend his canonisation. There is then a further moment of discernment when Pope Francis takes the final decision and sets a date for the Canonisation ceremony.

          It is wonderful news that the process for canonisation is now moving closer towards its conclusion and I pray that we may witness the canonisation of Blessed John Henry Newman within the coming year.   This will be a cause of great joy for the Catholic Church in Birmingham and for the Birmingham Oratory, I am sure that Pope Benedict XVI, who came to our city to beatify Cardinal Newman, will be joining us as we continue to pray for Blessed John Henry’s canonisation in the near future.”

+Bernard Longley

Archbishop of Birmingham

29 November 2018

Congratulations to those young people who today were confirmed By Bishop William Kenney, CP. Here are some of them with the Bishop after Mass:

Afterwards there was a reception in the Parish Centre:

Mr Walker moonlighting as a barman:

Wednesday was the feast of the Presentation of Our Lady.

The Presentation of the Virgin was painted by Paolo di Giovanni Fei c.1400 in Siena. It rewards serious inspection. The Blessed Virgin is seen as a child standing on the top step just outside the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. There, before the high priest, she consecrates herself, her perpetual virginity, to Almighty God. To the left of the painting we see her parents, Ss Ann and Joachim, to the right Simeon and S. Joseph. Joachim and Joseph are dressed identically, except the clothes of the virginal Joseph are shown in a slightly paler shade. Younger than Joachim, Joseph is still seen as an older man. Joachim extends his arm towards Joseph as if to pass over the care of his daughter to her would-be husband. Meanwhile, Simeon speaks to Joseph and explains to him the role of perfect guardianship that he is to undertake, in the fulness of time, towards this consecrated virgin child.

Being present at this sacred moment explains how S. Joseph, a just man, does not at any point doubt Mary’s fidelity to her vow even when he hears that she is with child by the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18). He seeks to separate himself from her because the immensity of the task before him is, he considers, beyond him. He believes himself to be unworthy. The archangel Gabriel, in a dream, persuades him otherwise (Mt 1:20-23).

Simeon, who visited the Temple so often, and clearly lived nearby, was inspired by the Holy Spirit to go into the Temple on the day that Mary and Joseph presented their child to God forty days after His birth (Lk 2:27). Whilst the Holy Spirit did indeed inspire him to recognize the significance of this child’s birth, nevertheless he recognized Mary and Joseph because he already knew them, and knew also that Mary had taken a vow of virginity to which she would always be faithful. This knowledge, accompanied by the grace of the Holy Spirit, enabled him to see the child as ‘the Christ of the Lord,’ (Lk 2:26), and to sing his hymn, theNunc Dmittis (Lk 2:29-32).

As we approach the centenary of that moment when the guns finally fell silent on the Western Front at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, we remember in particular those men from this parish who fell in the Great War, fighting for King and Country, as well as all those who have been killed in that and subsequent conflicts.

The Solemn Mass will begin at 11.20am on Sunday 11th, to enable people to attend the civic Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial on St Giles’.

A Solemn Requiem will be celebrated, with music by Fauré, and in the evening Vespers for the Dead will be sung.

Further information about our War Memorial, and some of the men recorded on it, may be found here:

http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/war/lists_only/st_aloysius.html

Our Forty Hours’ Devotion began this evening with a Solemn Mass of Exposition. At 11pm the Dominicans will sing Compline, and then there will be an all-night vigil for the especially hardy. 

On Saturday (13th) there will be a Musical Oratory of hymns and readings, “Praise O Zion thy Salvation” at 5pm, followed by the Mass for Peace at 6.30pm.

On Sunday evening there will be Solemn Vespers, Procession and Benediction at 5pm.

On Tuesday we celebrated the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman, our Cardinal. We were pleased to welcome Fr Pius Collins, o praem, to preach. Fr Pius was an undergraduate at Keble, and used to frequent our church during his time here. You can read his words below:

Feast of JHN – Oxford