St Bride's Church, Fleet Street

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. Instead of Choral Evensong in church this Sunday we have a special service celebrating the gift of marriage and love's enduring grace. The service incudes readings and music on that theme including the anthem which opens this reflection – "My true love hath my heart" by Jo...

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. Charles Villiers Stanford wrote his set of Three Motets, Op 38, while he was organist at Trinity College, Cambridge. They are among his best-known works. The final motet, "Beati quorum via", is in six vocal parts and is more restrained and prayerful than the other two. It...

Each year the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper makers returns to St Bride’s to honour one of its most traditional commitments: the Richard Johnson “Bubble” Service. Our Rector, The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, serves as Company Chaplain and this year added her voice to a long succession of clergy who have risen to the challenge of preaching at the service on Johnson’s chosen text, Vit...

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. "Christe, adoramus te" – Christ, we adore you – are the opening words of the short but moving choral anthem by Claudio Monteverdi which opens this week's reflection. Monteverdi was maestro di cappella at St Mark's, Venice for 30 years in the first half of the seventeenth c...

Reflection in words & music - Sunday 14th June 2026 by St Bride's Church, Fleet Street

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 the third in a set of four anthems which the English composer Herbert Howells wrote in 1941 – "Like as the hart" – which sets the opening verses of Psalm 42. It is a deeply moving expression of spiritual longing and hope and one of his bes...

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 composer George Dyson was a caring and loving family man although undemonstrative in his affections. We hear the Magnificat from his Evening Canticles in F which reflect this gentle character. It is modest and understated, but beautiful nonetheless. On this Trinity Sun...

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 celebrate the feast of Pentecost. Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes the coming of the Holy Spirit, empowering all who received it to begin the work of making disciples of all nations. The choir opens our reflection with the celebrated motet '...

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 Sunday is the Sunday after Ascension when Jesus rose bodily into heaven. St Bride's Choir opens our reflection with the Gloria from the Ascension Mass by the finest of the Spanish Renaissance composers, Tomás Luis de Victoria. In our reading from Acts, Jesus tells the...

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 our weekly reflection with the psalm appointed for the day – psalm 87, which celebrates Jerusalem as the city loved by God and the spiritual birthplace of all nations. The psalm chant is by Charles Frederick South, who was organist at Salisbury Cathedral 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. This week's reflection opens with the anthem "Greater love hath no man than this" by John Ireland. This moving piece was written in 1912 and it resonated strongly across the nation when war broke out in 1914 and casualties soon mounted, particularly the moving line "Great...

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. "Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace" – the words of the aged Simeon upon seeing Jesus when he was presented at the temple. These are the opening words of the Nunc Dimittis which St Bride's Choir sings every week as part of Choral Evensong. This setting opens...

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,...