St Bride's Church, Fleet Street

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The week's reflection opens with an extract from the Mass Propers for Easter Day by William Byrd which were published as part of his 1607 Gradualia. The propers are a selection of texts from a mass liturgy which vary depending on the season. The Easter Sequence from those...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. St Bride's Choir opens this week's reflection with the Hallelujah Chorus, which concludes the second part of Handel's great oratorio "Messiah"; what better way to celebrate the great miracle of Easter, that triumph of love and life over death. Our reading recalls St Matthe...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week is Palm Sunday, recalling the jubilant crowd laying palm fronds before Jesus as he rides triumphantly into Jerusalem and shouting: "Hosanna to the Son of David." Our reflection opens with Thomas Weelkes's setting of those words. Its rich texture transitions effor...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The opening anthem is the best-known work of the Venetian Baroque composer, Antonio Lotti. Lotti's music is full of expressive word painting, suspensions and chromaticism and he was particularly skilled at writing for the voice. It's a perfect piece for Passion Sunday whic...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Brahms serene and simply beautiful anthem "Geistliches Leid", which calls on us to not worry about today, but be calm, steadfast and to trust in God, opens this week's reflection. Our reading is a short extract from St John's passion narrative and recounts two of Jesus's f...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. A beautiful and poignant soprano solo opens our reflection this week in a setting of Psalm 51 – Wash me throughly from my wickedness – by Samuel Sebastian Wesley who died 250 years ago. Wesley was less critically acclaimed than his outstanding musician father, Samuel Wesle...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. During Lent, which began this week, we sing the Kyries instead of the Gloria from our weekly mass setting at Choral Eucharist on Sunday mornings. This week's setting in church is the "Messe en l'honneur du Saint-Sacrement Op 130" by the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen. He...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week's Gospel reading which we hear describes St Matthew's account of the transfiguration of Christ. "O nata lux de lumine" by Thomas Tallis is a simple yet beautifully refined setting of two verses from a hymn for the feast of the transfiguration. It was published in...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our opening anthem – Everything holds together – is a song for the season of creation which was commissioned for St Bride's Choir by the Church of England's Environment Working Group. It is a setting composed by Ian Stephens of a poem by Malcolm Guite and is a timely remin...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. St Bride's Choir begins this week's reflection with Henry Purcell's setting of the Nunc Dimittis – those words of the aged Simeon when Christ was presented for the first time in the temple: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for min...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. "How lovely are the messengers that preach us the gospel of peace" are the opening words of the anthem which begins our reflection this week. They are from Felix Mendelssohn's great oratorio "St Paul" which premiered in Düsseldorf in 1836. Mendelssohn played this gentle a...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The Epiphany anthem "Omnes de Saba venient" by Orlandus Lassus opens our reflection this week. Lassus was one of the masters of sixteenth century Renaissance polyphony. Born in modern-day Belgium little is definitively known of his early life although the story persists th...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week's reflection opens with an anthem by the former King's Singer, Grayston Ives, which sets the poem "Listen sweet dove unto my song" by the 17th century priest and metaphysical poet, George Herbert. The beautiful first verse reads: "Listen sweet dove unto my song,...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The first reflection of the new year opens with Jonathan Dove's evocative setting of the poem The Three Kings by Dorothy L Sayers which begins and ends in melancholic mood and imaginatively depicts kings of very different ages and the varied gifts they bear. Sayers was be...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. A fifteenth century carol text "There is no rose" from the Trinity Carol Roll opens this week's reflection on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The setting is by composer Robin Hodson. Many with a particular interest in Brigid our matron saint and her Celtic Christian connecti...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reflection opens with a another setting of the "Benedicite, omnia opera" – the great song of praise and blessing for all of creation that we traditionally sing in Advent. This week's is by the prominent English cathedral musician, Herbert Sumsion, who spent most of his...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reflection for the second Sunday in Advent opens with the words of the Venerable Bede in a paraphrased setting of the text by Andrew Carter in his anthem "A maiden most gentle." The French melody and sparkling organ accompaniment captures the simplicity of the Christm...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week's reflection opens with a setting of the "Benedicite, omnia opera" – the great song of praise and blessing for all of creation that we traditionally sing in Advent. It is composed by the English cathedral organist and choirmaster, Robert Ashfield, who served as o...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Today is the feast of Christ the King which brings to an end the church's year as we proclaim Christ enthroned in heaven as sovereign king over all creation. The cycle then begins anew with Advent – that season of expectation and preparation for Christmas and the birth of...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Stanford's most dramatic anthem – For lo, I raise up – opens this week's reflection. Written at the outbreak of the First World War, it sets Habakkuk’s Old Testament prophecies, beginning with a depiction of the violence and destruction of war but ending with a message of...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week we mark Remembrance Sunday when we as we gather, along with others across the nations, to pay tribute to those who lost their lives fighting for peace. In church, St Bride's Choir & Orchestra will perform Duruflé's Requiem as a mass for the fallen and this reflec...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The choir begins this week's reflection singing verses from Psalm 84 – "O how amiable are thy dwellings : thou Lord of hosts!" – to a chant by the English composer Sir Edward Bairstow. Bairstow was very much wedded to his dwelling place of Yorkshire, the county of his birt...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The late-Renaissance, English composer Thomas Weelkes – famed for his wonderful music and his wayward behaviour – set words from Psalm 132 in the jubilant seven-part anthem "O Lord, arise into thy resting-place" which the choir sings at the start of this reflection. He die...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Today in church we celebrate Harvest Festival and Creationtide at our two services so what better anthem to open this week's reflection than Haydn's "Achieved is the glorious work". It is the final movement of Part 2 of his most-accomplished work, The Creation, and closes...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The choir opens this reflection with a beautiful double-choir setting of the Gloria from the mass "Missa Bell' Amfitrit' altera" by the sixteenth century composer, Orlandus Lassus. Although Flemish by birth, Lassus choose to live and work in Bavaria, first as a singer and...