Communion music
This week we shall be listening to “A Prayer of St Richard of Chichester”, by L. J. White (1910–1973), performed by the Choir of Trinity College, Melbourne.
The words are from a prayer traditionally attributed to St Richard (1197–1253) on his deathbed. Richard was Chancellor first of Oxford and then of Canterbury before being made Bishop of Chichester in 1244, a role in which he was noted for his pastoral care and reform of abuses. Leonard White, organist and choirmaster at Willesden Green, a church with a fine musical tradition, wrote this touchingly simple setting for two soprano lines in 1947.