April 16th: Choir Papers
St. Matthias’ was officially founded as a mission of St. George’s, Place du Canada, in 1873, which means our community is 150 this year! For the next 12 months, we’ll be diving into the archives to shine the spotlight on particularly interesting parts of our history.
Today’s St. Matthias’ choristers get their weekly assignments via email (and whiteboard), but they otherwise aren’t all that different from the assignments of the 1930s and 1940s. Words that might seem cryptic to non-musicians, in both cases, turn out to be the names of the composers of settings for parts of the liturgy; numbers refer to whatever the choirmaster has deemed the main hymnbook. Choristers still lead the congregation in Psalms, and special anthems ornament the service. But one piece of paperwork has gone missing at some point in the past few decades, and your humble historian is on the case.
On the 57th anniversary of the first service in St. Matthias’ new building, an otherwise ordinary Morning Prayer service at 11am included not one but two special rites: a baptism (of one Michael John Molson), and the installation of a head chorister (Timothy Morton), deputy head chorister (Andrew Bourne), and regular choristers (Tyler Cobbett and Darcy Lorimer). “Installation” is a word almost exclusively used, in liturgical contexts, for important clerical positions – one might be installed as Bishop of Montreal, for instance – but if we consider the literal meaning of the word, it’s clear that if anyone should be installed in a church, it’s a chorister.
In the above images, you can see what are traditionally referred to as stalls, in the front of the building in 1890, 1934, and 1968, and in the back of the building in 2018 (where they still are, albeit turned inward!). To install someone somewhere, in a liturgical context, means to place them in their appropriate stall, usually accompanied by prayers and thanksgivings, blessings for the new ministry that they will perform from this stall. And, while bishops, canons, deans, and other ecclesiastical figures minister well beyond the bounds of their physical seats, choristers shine directly from choir stalls. Although by 1998 St. Matthias’ had moved to calling this liturgy “Admission of a Chorister,” the implication of a blessing for new ministry remained.
The liturgy, which involves the chorister promising to take leadership and keep the rules, includes a prayer that was first used in English in the 1930s, although it bears a striking resemblance to a Latin prayer used in Roman Catholic churches in the 16th century to install new cantors. The Chorister’s Prayer, as it was called in The Choirboy’s Pocket Book, asks God to help the chorister show in their lives what they believe in their hearts, beliefs that are to be reflected also in the words that they sing. It is still in use in admission services today (Portsmouth Cathedral 2021, Norwich Cathedral 2022), although neither it nor the chorister’s promises have been in use at St. Matthias’ in recent years.
Why not, in this season of celebrating all of the many hands and feet and voices that have manned the ship of St. Matthias’ over the past 150 years, consider following our own past example, to bless and give thanks for the ministry of the musicians whose interpretation of liturgical settings, Psalms, anthems, and hymns is so central to our identity?