CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, RI

On Sunday, November 8, the Adult Choir will sing an excerpt from “As the Leaves Fall” by Harold Darke.  We do this annually at Central except for last year when the organ was out for restoration and it wouldn’t have been musically feasible on the piano.

This is one of a few specific anthems we do at Central for which many in the congregation ask by name and look forward to each year.  “The Palms” on Palm Sunday is another.

We commemorate the loss of life among our veterans in this country on Veteran’s Day.  In the Church of England, they observe Remembrance Day on the second Sunday in November.  We present “As the Leaves Fall” at this time of year with its timely appropriate text and obvious metaphor in the seasonal falling of autumn leaves.

The text comes from a poem by Lieutenant Joseph Courtney who served in the English military.  World War I losses of life in England numbered well over 300,000, and the country’s collective mourning weighed heavily in those times and still today.  The author wrote this poem expressing that sorrow, but also the hope that we draw from our faith.

In the text, St. Michael, the patron saint of the military, summons his legion of angels to sweep up the fallen like leaves on an “unseen wind” to the throne of God, where Christ himself appears to raise them to new and eternal life.  The music poignantly paints these images, leading to a glorious culmination where the choir sings “there is no death.”

As Choirmaster for fifty years at St. Michael’s church in London, composer Harold Darke (1888-1976) likely knew well the church’s patron saint  and his iconic pageantry and legendry.  In addition to his distinguished choir service there he began the oldest and longest-running series of lunchtime recitals that continue even today, and served as interim Director of Music at Kings College, Cambridge, during World War II when its director Boris Ord was called to military service.

During the prelude to our Thanksgiving Festival Worship on Sunday, November 22, you will hear another of Darke’s works, “The Sower,” a harvest cantata.