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Our Nine Lessons and Carols service happens in the season of Advent, and our service this year contains two hymns where that actual music comes to us from thirteen hundred years ago. "Of the Father's Love Begotten" and "Creator of the Stars of Night" are similar in that they both share this ancient heritage.
This is slow-moving, single-line music where stone walls, arches and a high roof reflect sound at odd angles. This is music not designed to impress an audience - but rather to involve the community in an act of worship. This is not a formal concert with visible performers - but rather music intended to evoke mystery - and darkness and candlelight only serve to heighten that mystery. In the music, there is a complete absence of harmony - simply because composers had yet to learn how to combine note with note to form a logical, pleasing sound. For the medieval peasant who entered Notre Dame in Paris, it must have been a totally overwhelming experience, where many senses were engaged - sight, hearing, and touch. The vestments, the processions, the stained glass windows and the singing all combined into a unity of beauty and reverence. It is impossible to replicate this same sense of awe and wonder in our own time - but at our upcoming service, if you are lucky and have read this newsletter, you might catch a faint glimmer of a medieval, earlier time when we sing those two hymns. Malcolm V. Edwards
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Malcolm EdwardsMalcolm Edwards was born in Halifax, England and emigrated to Canada in 1967. He is a graduate of Sheffield College of Education (UK), Trinity College of Music, London, the University of Lethbridge, the University of Montana and has done further graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado. He taught music in junior and senior high school for twelve years in southern Alberta before joining the University of Calgary as a Professor of Music Education in 1980. He retired from the university after thirty-one years of service in 2011. In the community he was affiliated with the Youth Singers of Calgary for 21 years directing the Act Three and Senior divisions. In his retirement, he is now employed as an Adjunct Professor of Music at St Mary’s University, as the Artistic Director of the Calgary Men’s Chorus and as the Senior Choir Director at St John’s Choir Schola. He has held leadership positions within the Alberta Choral Federation, the Association of Canadian Choral Communities, served on the Board of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and is active as a choral adjudicator and workshop leader in schools and churches. He is the recipient of two awards from the Provincial Federation – one in recognition of advocacy in arts education and the second in recognition of exemplary service to choral music within the Province of Alberta. In 2004 he received recognition from the national body (ACCC) for twenty-five years of service to the Canadian choral community. Archives
December 2025
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