Peter Lea-Cox and the Music Ministry at the Lutheran Church
of St. Anne and St. Agnes in London
by Ronald T. Englund
from CrossAccent
Journal of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians
2004. Volume 12. Number 111
An amazing musical event took place at St. Anne and St. Agnes, the Lutheran church in the City of London, on July 28, 2004, the 254th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some forty English professional musicians plus many other musical friends gathered for five hours of impromptu music-making in celebration of Peter Lea-Cox, a musical icon who was leaving after twenty-two remarkable years at this historic church. Peter had served as an organist, choir director and later cantor at this Christopher Wren church built in 1680 and located around the corner from St. Paul’s Cathedral. I worked with Peter during his entire time at St. Anne’s, for sixteen years in London and for the past six years part-time, organizing his tours to the USA plus the occasional Bach Cantata Series concerts in London.
The climax of the day came when singers and instrumentalists sang the final chorus and chorale from Bach’s St. John Passion. Many eyes were moist when the music ended at 8:47 pm, the exact moment of Bach’s death. Total silence followed. Later in the evening, the party continued at “Pub Vespers,” a long-time tradition at St Anne’s.
Earlier works during this musical marathon, all performed from scratch at a high standard, included two Bach cantatas. They were Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen BWV 51, and Hercules auf dem Scheidewege, BWV 213, a secular cantata from which Bach borrowed six movements for his Christmas Oratorio. There were also trio sonatas by Bach, works by Telemann and a rarely-performed concerto for two trumpets by a seventeenth-century Italian, Petronia Franceschini.
Words of appreciation for Peter’s ministry had been spoken on behalf of the congregation by the Rev. Jana Jeruma Grinberga, pastor of St. Anne’s. Robin Daniel, a singer with the Lecosaldi Ensemble, presented Peter with a generous gifts from friends, his first ever computer plus Sibelius, a program for writing music.
This bittersweet musical farewell party had followed the final concert of the ninth annual Bach Festival at St. Anne’s. This annual festival always ends on July 28, the anniversary of Bach’s death. It had started under the leadership of Angela Kilmartin, who chaired St. Anne’s Music Society, and the Rev. Paul Schmiege, now of New York City, who served as pastor for five years. The hugely successful 2004 festival included four lunchtime concerts plus a mass that included the motet, Jesu meine Freude and the “Lutheran” Missa in F. The Lecosaldi Ensemble, a band of professionals based at St Anne’s and directed by Peter, provided the music for the entire festival. “Lecosaldi” is a pseudonym for Lea-Cox that Peter uses when he composes in baroque style. His compositions in contemporary style are by Lea-Cox. For years this has been a kind of inside joke at St. Anne’s as visitors frequently ask about this obscure eighteenth-century composer, Pietro Lecosaldi, whose music is heard regularly at the church. Some have even tried to find Lecosaldi in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Peter’s years at this historic church, rebuilt after World War II following Wren’s plans, were marked by performances of an enormous number of musical works, both in worship and in concert. The sheer volume of music performed during more than one hundred concerts and musical services each year was staggering. Blessed with a professional musician and composer with a deep love for Bach’s music, we at St. Anne’s decided that the congregation would focus on the finest in worship and in music in the Lutheran tradition, especially works from northern Europe. Enthusiastic musicians, both amateurs and professionals, played and sang to a very high standard. The church grew rapidly and attracted many people who knew little or nothing about Lutherans. People who would never normally consider attending a Christian service would turn up and often comment, “I’ve come for the music.” Many found that they were receiving more than they had imagined and a significant number were led to Christian faith.
In 1997 Peter completed performances of all two hundred fifteen or so extant Bach cantatas, most of them included in the Lecosaldi Bach Vespers. This popular Sunday evening service uses a liturgy for choir and congregation that Peter has based on Bach’s music and the liturgy used in Leipzig when the cantatas were first performed.
National radio and television in the United Kingdom as well as BBC World Service have broadcast Bach Vespers and other services from St. Anne’s on many occasions. These were often linked with special “Lutheran” celebrations such as Reformation Day.
Bach has been the focus of music at St Anne’s during the Lea-Cox era. “The music is so versatile,” Peter claims. “allowing you to perform it quickly or slowly or to change the instrumentation, and it still sounds effective. With some composers it can only go a certain way.” An example is the new Lea-Cox arrangement of Bach’s organ trio, BWV 527, for flute, oboe and bassoon. It was first performed during the St. Anne’s Bach Festival in July and will be repeated at Bach Vespers at Christian Lutheran Church in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on November 6. Peter continues about Bach: “Emotionally the music is ungraspable: you unwrap a layer, and there’s another one. This enjoyable complexity rubs off on the hearers. The music’s enduring qualities are sort of a miracle.”
During his time at St. Anne’s, Peter has conducted almost every choral and instrumental work composed by Bach. Sacred choral works were typically included in services. An exception is the B-Minor Mass, which was performed in the majestic Goldsmiths’ Hall, across the street from St. Anne’s. The great Bach passions, both the St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion, were included in services. Peter also directed the Ensemble in the available parts of the St. Mark Passion plus the St. Luke Passion, BWV 246, which is now considered spurious. I have had the unusual opportunity of preaching five-minute homilies at services that include full performances of all the Bach passions. Bach’s four Missa Breve, the so-called Lutheran masses (BWV 233–236), have been performed several times at St. Anne’s and always in celebrations of Holy Communion. Through the years, the six motets for chorus (BWV 225–230) have typically been included in services and not performed in concerts. Besides all of church and secular cantatas, Peter has directed several performances of the Magnificat (both the versions in E-flat and in D), the Christmas Oratorio, the Easter Oratorio and the Ascension Oratorio.
More than one hundred different church cantatas by Georg Philipp Telemann were performed in worship, mostly during midweek services that were held at lunchtime every Wednesday for several years. Because St. Anne’s is in the heart of the City of London, an area similar to Wall Street in New York City, lunchtime services and concerts are popular. For many years, we held three weekly services in English at St. Anne’s: Sundays at 11 am and 7 pm and Wednesdays at 1:10 pm (the beginning of the lunch hour in England). This provided opportunity to explore many choral and instrumental works in worship. Lunchtime concerts are still held at 1:10 pm on Mondays and Fridays, except during a six-week break in the summer.
For many years the Sunday evening services followed a regular pattern each month. There was a choral mass, usually with instrumental accompaniment, on the first Sunday; Lutheran Choral Vespers, from the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW), often with special music, on the second Sunday; Bach Vespers on the third Sunday; and Jazz Vespers the fourth Sunday (not directed by Peter). Fifth Sundays were reserved for “special” evening services such as a hymn festivals. A hymn festival was held with a local Polish Lutheran congregation in May 1992 to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jiři Tranovskỳ. Both the Poles (who spell his name “Trzanowski”) and the Slovaks claim Tranovskỳ, the “Slavic Luther.” Jaroslav J. Vajda, a Tranovskỳ scholar, provided us with valuable information for planning this service. Other hymn festival celebrated the Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist and Moravian traditions.
Midweek services included Telemann’s entire Harmonsiche Gottesdienst, a cycle of cantatas for each Sunday of the church year with texts based on the Epistle for the day. Telemann sold these works, scored for solo voice, obligato instrument and continuo, to smaller Lutheran churches in the Hamburg area whose music directors were required to perform a cantata every Sunday. After completing this entire Telemann cantata cycle, opportunity came to include works by other composers at Wednesday services. These fifty-minute weekday services included hymns, prayers, lessons, a brief homily plus the musical work for singers and instruments.
St Anne’s always celebrated Holy Week and Easter with special musical services led by Peter and the Lecosaldi Ensemble. They were often joined by the St. Anne’s Choir and the Camden Chamber Choir, a fine amateur musical group directed by Peter. The 2004 Holy Week service schedule was typical. The Palm Sunday evening Eucharist featured a Requiem by Thomàs Luis Victoria. A Wednesday lunchtime service featured The Lamentations of Jeremiah by Johann David Heinichen. Bach’s St. John Passion was performed in a liturgical setting on Wednesday evening. Maundy Thursday’s Holy Communion included Passion music from Messiah by Handel. The Good Friday morning service featured the St. Luke Passion by Peter Lea-Cox. Bach’s Easter Oratorio highlighted Bach Vespers on Easter.
More than two decades of musical services at least twice-weekly enabled Peter and the Lecosaldi Ensemble to perform much of the choral and orchestral repertoire. Wednesday lunchtime services and Sunday vespers included many works by early north German Lutheran composers - Schütz, Scheidt and Schein as well as Andreas Hammerschmidt and other lesser-known musicians. Cantatas and other vocal works by Buxtehude were often performed. Settings of the Magnificat by Telemann and Pergolesi have been performed several times. In addition to many performances of Messiah, Peter has directed seldom-performed works by Handel. They include the Brockes Passion, St. John Passion, La Resurrectione as well as a number of sacred concert arias. Secular works by Handel such as Acis and Galatea were included in concert programs. For many years, Peter directed the Lecosaldi Ensemble in an annual performance of Handel’s Messiah during the evening rush hour at Paddington Station or Liverpool Street Station, where London commuters catch their trains home at the end of the work day.
Larger choral works were performed in concerts. These include oratorios by C.P.E. Bach such as Die Israeliten in der Wüste (The Israelites in the Desert) and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus); and J.C.F. Bach’s oratorio, Die Kindheit Jesu (The childhood of Jesus). A Telemann St. Matthew passion was also performed. There were more unusual works such as Der Tod Jesu (The death of Jesus), a passion oratorio by Karl Heinrich Graun, a contemporary of Bach, which was the most popular passion in Germany in the early nineteenth century. It was performed in Berlin every Good Friday until supplanted by Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.
We sought out other obscure works and believe that a number of first ever London performances took place at St. Anne’s. While Peter was in Leipzig on a concert tour where he played at Bach’s church, the Thomaskirche, we were browsing in a shop that sold used musical scores. I found a Lenten work by Johann Adolph Hasse, another Bach contemporary, called Die Pilger (The Pilgrims). The single used copy was a vocal score with a piano reduction. Peter wrote out the parts and St. Anne’s held a memorable performance of this interesting work. We have not found any additional information about this music. The Lecosaldi Ensemble has repeated performances of Die Pilger as well as Hasse’s Miserere.
The Sunday evening choral mass gave opportunity for Lecosaldi to perform a wide variety of works, both a capella and with instrumental accompaniment. Bach’s short “Lutheran” masses have been included in worship several times. We moved on in these communion services to several mass settings by Franz Josef Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. Other Sunday choral masses included familiar musical settings by Bruckner and Dvorak. More unusual masses directed by Peter have been by Michael Haydn; Then Svenska Messan (The Swedish Mass) by Johann Helmich Roman, a contemporary of Handel and Bach; the lovely Estonian Mass by Urmas Sisask, who was born in 1960; and a mass by the twentieth-century German composer, Karl Marx. There were raised eyebrows when we announced a Lutheran service featuring a choral work by Karl Marx (no relation, of course, to the political philosopher and socialist with the same name).
An annual requiem mass (with a solidly evangelical interpretation!) on the evening of All Saints’ Sunday became a tradition at St. Anne’s. This gave us opportunity to explore other musical masterpieces in a worship setting. When the Mozart Requiem is included in a Lutheran Eucharist, there is a liturgy that includes a hymn and brief homily. Other familiar requiem settings, by Cherubini, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Duruflé and Rutter, have been included in this annual service.
These are only some of works performed during the Lea-Cox years at St Anne and St Agnes. The emphasis was on the north German Lutheran tradition from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with occasional music from the Romantic era plus contemporary works by composers other than Lea-Cox. The high quality of music at St. Anne’s attracted a loyal following from many backgrounds in addition to tourists and other visitors. A typical Sunday evening service would attract a congregation of more than hundred people with only a handful of Lutherans present. Attendance at Wednesday lunchtime services would range from thirty to sixty, often with no Lutherans in the congregation.
As the music program developed at St. Anne’s, we realized that the church needed a larger organ. An excellent three rank extension organ by Noel P. Mander, had served St. Anne’s well for some 25 years. Mander had built the instrument for Coventry Cathedral where it was used before its main organ was completed. In 1992 we completed building of a new “second-hand” organ for St. Anne’s. The frame and bellows came from the organ in a Methodist Church that had been torn down in Norfolk, while most of the pipe-work came from another organ, built about 1790. The church now has an instrument with nineteen registers over two tracker action keyboards and electric action pedals. Peter directed the installation of the instrument.
It all began with Bach Vespers
I first met Peter Lea-Cox in 1982 when he was on the teaching and administrative staff of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six years earlier Peter had started a Bach Cantata Series of monthly lunchtime concerts at St. Mary-at-Hill, another Christopher Wren church in the City of London. Students and faculty at the Academy, as it is known, made up the Lecosaldi Ensemble. My wife, Ruth, and I were beginning to volunteer to help at monthly lunchtime concerts at St Anne’s. When I read about Peter and the Lecosaldi Ensemble, I thought that it would be wonderful to perform a Bach cantata in our Lutheran church. Little did I realize that introducing myself to Peter at St. Mary-at-Hill, following a Bach Cantata concert would begin more than two decades of friendship and collaboration which continues to this day. Peter agreed to repeat a Bach cantata concert at St. Anne’s. Out of this event came our plan to begin Bach Vespers at the Lutheran church in the City of London. In preparation I visited Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York City, with its long tradition of Bach Vespers. Armed with helpful ideas from Holy Trinity, we had to decide when to begin our London Bach Vespers: on a Sunday, when the City of London is deserted, or sometime during the week. Local Anglican clergy warned me not to try to hold a Sunday evening service in the City of London. “Even St. Paul’s can’t attract a crowd on Sunday evening,” one priest told me. With fear and trembling, we launched Bach Vespers on September 26, 1982, the evening of the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, with Cantata 161, “Komm, du süße Todesstunde.” Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041, was also included in the service, with one of the movements serving as prelude, offertory and postlude. The church was filled, with more than one hundred twenty-five people in the congregation, and the series took off. For many years it was a monthly fixture at St. Anne’s. Some years later I received what I considered a high compliment while attending Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity in New York City. A man came up to me and said excitedly, “I know you. You’re from Bach Vespers at St. Anne and St. Agnes in London.” We had arrived!
The fifteenth anniversary of Bach Vespers was celebrated on September 21, 1997, and the twentieth anniversary of Bach Vespers was celebrated on September 29, 2002. Never did any of us dream that this service would continue for so many years and that Peter and the Ensemble would complete performances of all the two hundred plus extant Bach cantatas in 1997. Most of the cantatas have been performed at St Anne’s, but it all started with the Bach Cantata Series at St. Mary-at-Hill that later moved to St. Anne and St. Agnes. Speaking of anniversaries, the twenty-fifth anniversary of this Bach Cantata Series was celebrated at St. Anne’s on November 20, 2001.
Bach Vespers follows a liturgy which Peter and I developed with ideas from Günther Stiller’s book JS Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig. Robin Leaver, the Bach scholar, was helpful in the early days, giving advice and preaching at Bach Vespers on several occasions. Cantatas selected for vespers are always determined by the liturgical calendar. Peter has arranged liturgical responses from appropriate music by Bach. Luther’s setting of the Apostles’ Creed, “We All Believe in One True God” (WIR GLAUBEN ALL), LBW 374, is sung at every service. It is wonderful to hear this great hymn sung a capella with enthusiasm by a congregation in which only a tiny percentage are Lutherans. St. Anne’s has found that Bach’s church cantatas take on a deeper meaning when placed in worship on the appropriate Sunday of the church year, as originally intended. Hymns at the vespers, which are preceded by a brief chorale prelude, must have been “known by Bach or could have been known by Bach.”
Mark Argent summed it up well in his review of Bach Vespers at St Anne’s in the December-January 2002 issue of Early Music News. He calls Bach Vespers “a remarkable project” that has been going on for nearly twenty years, adding: “Here Bach cantatas are sung in a liturgical context to a very high standard. Here will find a cantor directing a small ensemble of singers and players in music which is an integral part of the liturgy, in a way very highly reminiscent of Bach, the working church musician.” He also speaks of “a sense of liberation at being effectively freed to pray with the music” and his “ultimate impression of a tradition that is alive and kicking.” He adds that “the service was not a dead museum piece, but was about worshipping God with the aid of Herr Kapellmeister Bach.”
More recently, Tim Martin gave his impressions of Bach Vespers in classic English fashion in a review in The Times (London) on May 22, 2004: “They take their music seriously here. Before the service even starts we have a suite for oboe, strings and cotninuo; then the choir leap to their feet and crack off a motet; then Peter Lea-Cox, the donnish-looking cantor, haprsichordist, conductor and organist, nips round the corner and shakes the dust from the organ pipes with a resounding prelude. As if at a prearranged signal, the worshippers rocket to their feet and begin the first hymm at what seems to me a ferocious pace. . . . What a pleasure the Ascension Oratorio is. These musicians are all freelance professionals, operating for a derisory fee, and the continuance of these monthly services – full settings of Bach’s music, in its original context – entirely depends on the generosity of the congregation. No charge is made, though a donation is suggested. And the musicianship is truly superb. Still to come, of course, are sung responses, a race through the wonderfully-named Wipo of Burgundy’s Victimae Paschali and an absolutely eye-popping organ improvisation from Lea-Cox, whose verve seems no whit diminished by the hour and a half of continuous music he’s been making. Dismissed with ‘Christ is risen! Alleluia,’ we stumble outside into the twilight. . . . ‘Beautiful’ is a common sentiment. ‘I shall be coming to the lunchtime concerts,’ says one woman quietly to her companion.’ ‘If it’s all like this, I’m going to become a Lutheran,’ says mine.”
The Lecosaldi Bach Vespers has been held in four churches outside of St. Anne and St. Agnes, two in England two in the United States. A sixth Bach Vespers is planned for Christ Lutheran Church in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on November 6, 2004. Peter directed a Lecosaldi Bach Vespers in Westminster Abbey on two occasions, in 1983 to mark the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth and in 1990; and in Canterbury Cathedral in 2000. Bach Vespers were later held in two Episcopal churches in New Hampshire, USA, All Saints in Peterborough in 2002 and St James in Keene in 2003. In a review on the Bach Cantata website, Jane Newble wrote of the Canterbury Cathedral service: “Never before has Canterbury Cathedral seen Lutheran Vespers in its more than 900 year history. The cantata (BWV 85) was wonderful. The singers had lovely ‘baroque’ voices, and the conductor took everything at a lively, cheerful speed. Sitting in that wonderful enormous old cathedral I thought of Bach, and how bemused and pleased he would be.”
Introducing Peter Lea-Cox
Born in Bournemouth, England, in 1945, Peter Lea-Cox had his musical training at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1963–66 where he studied organ with Douglas Hawkridge. In 1967 he was awarded a London University Certificate of Education. He served as Assistant Music Master at Oundle School in Northamptonshire from 1967–1972. In 1973 he joined the staff at the Royal Academy of Music where he combined teaching with administrative work for fourteen years. He taught choral conducting, harmony and sight-singing among other subjects. In 1987 he left the Royal Academy to devote full-time as Cantor at Anne and St. Agnes. During his years at the Royal Academy he also served two Anglican churches. He was Director of Music at St. Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, and at St. Mary-at-Hill in the City of London. He could serve both churches because St. Mary-at-Hill, like many Wren Churches in the City, held only weekday services with rare exceptions.
One cannot earn a living as director of music in the vast majority of English parish churches and, for the only Lutheran church in the City of London, this is most certainly true. Peter has conducted a number of choral societies including the People’s Palace Choral Society (1975–82), the Apollo Singers (1987–91) and the Wendover Choral Society (1988–93). From 1984 to the present he has directed the London-based Camden Chamber Choir. He also tours the United Kingdom as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Established in 1889, the Associated Board is the world’s leading examining body for music conducting more than 600,000 exams in more than ninety countries around the world each year. It is linked with four Royal Schools of music in the UK: the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Royal Northern College of Music and Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. As time is available, Peter teaches organ, coaches singers and instrumentalists as well as serving as an organ soloist and continuo player. For several years he has been a full-time tutor at the annual Oxford Baroque Week held each summer.
Peter married Gillian Humphreys, one of his students at the Royal Academy of Music, at St. Anne and St. Agnes on December 3, 1986 the exact date of Johann Sebastian Bach’s marriage to Anna Magdalena Wülcken. Gilly is sixteen years younger than Peter, the same age difference between Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena. Gilly is a music teacher and singer who is also an accomplished potter and cake-maker. They are a happy, delightful couple with marvelous senses of humor.
Peter and Gilly share their home with Titus, a small stuffed-toy dinosaur who scrupulously observes the proper colors for the seasons and festivals of the church year. Titus travels with them to church services and concerts, sitting on the organ regaled in the proper liturgical vestment for the day. Friends in several continents have sewn vestments for Titus whose distinctive accent leads him to exclaim often, “God blesh you!” A delightful Titus Liturgical Calendar was produced recently by Gilly’s brother, Stephen Humphreys. There are plans to produce more copies and it should sell briskly.
Professional violinist Martin Smith, who has played with the Lecosaldi Ensemble for twenty years, has listed some of his ongoing memories about Peter. They include “the booming laugh; the organ improvisations, especially those involving eternal pedal notes; Titus, the dinosaur, a small cloth object with an alarming grin which practically lives on the harpsichord; Peter’s way of playing Bach preludes and fugues as though making them up on the spur of the moment; the way music awakes in his hands, sounding always fresh and alive; the sudden appearance of some extraordinary plant which is he is about to take back to his garden in Devon; and the sheer unselfishness of his approach to music.”
Since 1993 Peter and Gilly have lived in a hamlet named Pottlelake in rural Devon, twenty-five miles east of Exeter and one hundred fifty-five miles west of London. For more than a decade, Peter has made the three hundred ten mile round trip by car or train from their home to St. Anne’s at least twice each week. Many Lecosaldi choral and organ compositions have been composed on the train to and from London.
The Lea-Coxes live in a thatched-roof cottage that was built about 1560, only 14 years after the death of Martin Luther! An upper story was added to the house in 1770 and an adjoining chapel was built in 1893. The chapel contains four musical instruments – a piano, harpsichord, portative organ and a two-manual tracker organ built by Vincent Woodstock in 1990.
Peter’s love of gardening is evident in the unusual plants in the garden of their Devon home. They include palm trees and banana plants as well as Biblical plants. There are olive plants, a fig tree, a date palm and vines with many grapes. “I believe that I inherited by love of music and gardening from my maternal grandfather,” Peter explains. He views gardening as “a creative thing, like music, where you may get a good result if you work hard.”
Peter has another non-musical passion, the weather. Since 1956 he has kept a daily record of the weather whenever he has been at home. This includes rainfall, humidity, temperature and wind direction. Special meteorological equipment adorns the top of their home in Devon. Needless to say, when Peter arrives in the United States, one of the first things he does is to turn on a TV to the weather channel.
Celebrating the Lutheran Book of Worship with hymns and liturgy
Worship and music are central to the ministry of Peter Lea-Cox. Throughout more than two decades at St Anne and St Agnes, Peter and I explored thoroughly the rich variety of the LBW. We called Evening Prayer “Lutheran Choral Vespers” and used it regularly on Sunday evenings. Peter has used the Chorale Service of Holy Communion, Luther’s Deutsche Messe, more than twenty times, often using his arrangement of this historic service. He has also used Luther’s Formulae Missae at least six times, with most of the service in Latin. With Lutherans something of a curiosity in England, we chose these ways to introduce and to affirm our Lutheran musical and liturgical tradition. We felt this to be a contribution to the Christian witness in London. British people are bemused when Lutherans refer to their worship book and hymnal as the LBW. In the United Kingdom LBW always means “leg before wicket,” a well-known cricket term which refers to a way in which you make an out.
In the celebrations of Holy Communion every Sunday, all three settings of the LBW were used during the various seasons of the church year. There is a Church of England parish in south London, St Leonard’s Church in Streatham, which has used the LBW Third Setting during Lent for nearly a decade now. The Rector, the Rev. Jeffry Wilcox, heard this liturgical setting when he was a guest preacher at St. Anne’s, liked it and asked if he might use it at St. Leonard’s. It is now an established favorite with this Anglican parish which simply calls it “the Lutheran setting.” It is ironic that this setting is so popular, yet it is the LBW setting least-used in the United States. My wife, Ruth, and I, who lived in Streatham for twenty-five years and return regularly, always enjoy opportunities to worship at St. Leonard’s, especially during Lent.
Peter has composed baroque-style settings of the appointed Verse and Offertory for each Sunday of the church year and they were sung weekly. These were the only “anthems” sung by the St. Anne’s Choir on Sunday mornings. Typically the verse setting is in three vocal parts with continuo supplied by organ and an occasional instrument like a cello. The offertory setting is usually scored for solo voice and continuo. There is figured bass accompaniment but no written realization. The only choir rehearsal was on Sunday mornings. This was the only realistic way as many members travel more than an hour each way to reach St. Anne’s. Sunday rehearsals began at 10:30 am and lasted for twenty minutes, in preparation for the 11 am Holy Communion. Scores of next Sunday’s verse were available if they had been composed by that time, but most of the volunteer singers were seeing the music for the first time on the day it was to be used. The choir, made up of anywhere from four to twenty singers, would sing from hand-written scores that looked formidable until you became adept at deciphering Lecosaldi’s writing. This schedule can be daunting for volunteer singers but the excitement of these liturgical works enriched worship at St. Anne and St Agnes. Singers soon grew to love these Lecosaldi verses.
Lyn Patterson, a choir member and an organist at St Anne’s for many years, is now Director of Music Ministry and organist at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Chula Vista, California. She is also studying for a Master of Arts in Church Music at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. Lyn explains what it is like to sing under Peter on Sunday mornings “What stands out for me are all those Sunday mornings of learning the alto line in twenty minutes in a newly-composed Lecosaldi verse and then hyperventilating with worry until we were through that part of the service! It was worship with terror and fear, but it was wonderful. Another wonderful thing about singing at Peter’s rehearsals was being forced to sight-read the voice parts a capella. Here in the States we play the parts for our choir as they read new music. Sight-reading a capella was terrorizing for me at first because it was new method, but it’s the best way to improve your reading and listening skills. I improved dramatically in a short time.” Peter has the gift of perfect pitch, which helps during choir rehearsals.
Angela Kilmartin, an English singer and writer with a professional degree in music, became a Lutheran after joining the St. Anne’s Choir. She also comments about Peter: “His offertory settings for Sunday mornings were never less than four-pages and usually six, written either on the train or at other locations than the keyboard. These works, based on the appointed verse and offertory for the day, always captured their mood perfectly. Working under Peter at many concert events has highlighted my musical career. The Sunday choral verses and solo offertories were an attainment not achieved elsewhere. It has been a privilege to serve this ministry even though it was often a case of ‘worship with fear.’”
Former St. Anne’s members and worshippers have introduced Lecosaldi verse settings for festivals such as Easter to congregations in America. Sounds Lutheran, a popular audio-cassette produced some years ago by St. Anne’s Music Society, featured the volunteer St. Anne’s Choir in a selection of these verses and offertories interspersed with chorale preludes by Lecosaldi. Charles R. Anders of Danbury, Wisconsin, a retired Lutheran pastor who has composed some fine hymn tunes, wrote after hearing Sounds Lutheran: “It is simply amazing! Where did you ever discover Peter Lea-Cox? The man is Purcell-Handel-Telemann reincarnated!”
Perhaps Peter Lea-Cox’s most important contribution to worship at St. Anne’s has been hymn accompaniment. Singing hymns with Lecosaldi at the organ is a memorable experience. Not everyone may agree with his style or philosophy, but for Peter the meaning of the words is essential in determining how to sing and play. Music must serve the text and its meaning. Even the punctuation of a hymn text is significant. Peter firmly believes in that old story about asking an organist who is trying out for a church job to play a certain hymn. If the organist doesn’t ask, “Which verse?”, don’t hire that person.
Choral preludes introduced hymns at St. Anne’s. During these chorale preludes, the congregation was encouraged to have hymnbooks open in order to meditate about the meaning of the text. This is how you prepared to sing hymns. Peter regularly uses his incredible gift of improvisation to introduce hymns. We often called him “the Paul Manz of London.” Barbara and Ebbe Magnusson of Holte, Denmark, who organize Peter’s annual organ recital tour in their country, note that Danish churches always ask Peter to improvise at his organ recitals and workshops. Someone in the audience suggests a hymn tune (Peter never knows which one beforehand) and Peter improvises on it. One memorable moment came during a recital Peter gave in 1995 at the Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen in Halle, Germany, where Handel was baptized and confirmed and took his first organ lessons. Peter was given two hymn tunes and combined them in a brilliant improvisation.
Many of us can recall the “spiritual high” of contemplating the text of a hymn during a Lea-Cox improvisation, followed by thrilling congregational singing. I can still remember a Sunday in Advent when we heard an incredible improvisation on HELMSLEY before singing, “Lo, he comes with clouds descending.” It was an unforgettable worship experience!
Peter believes that hymns should be sung in unison with the accompaniment illustrating the meaning of the text. And some hymns should be sung without accompaniment. He would agree with John Bell of the Iona Community about whom the hymnologist Ian Bradley comments: “John Bell wages an international crusade against the performance ethic, which is threatening to turn hymnody into a passive spectator sport. He is a champion of unaccompanied congregational singing.” To Peter, music is a servant of the words and everything should focus on enabling the congregation to sing. Lyn Patterson comments on this: “Sundays at St. Anne’s taught me creativity with hymns in terms of introducing them with chorale preludes and word painting of the text. My congregation now eagerly awaits the chorale prelude for hymns and listens for musical ‘illustrations’ of the text. They tell me so! And I enjoy the challenge.”
Leslie-Jane Rogers, a English soprano soloist whose professional career takes her throughout the United Kingdom and continental Europe, is a long-time member of the Lecosaldi Ensemble and a regular soloist at Bach Vespers. She explains: “I love working with Peter because, for him, words are paramount. For me as a soprano soloist, one begins with the text and then sees how the composer has set it; Peter allows the composer’s voice to ring through, and any resultant word-painting is naturally conveyed. But it’s not only in written works that this is the case. Peter’s organ improvisations and hymn playing is legendary! Again the words are foremost, so if there is mention of “hell” then the accompaniment will be low and ominous; if there is mention of “heaven” it will go high and sweet. Birds will twitter, brooks will babble, and, on a deeper level, Peter has ways of conveying God, too. For example, at the mention of the Holy Trinity he will tend to play triplets to represent the nature of the Trinity. In fact it can at times be quite distracting trying to second-guess how he might convey the next line. But it is always, always interesting.” As an aside, Peter continues to receive royalties several times each year for performances of his organ improvisations that are used in films and television programs around the world.
Lesley-Jane Rogers also recalls “some years ago rehearsing for a performance of Messiah which had nothing to do with Peter.” She remembers that “the conductor suggested to the orchestra that they shape their phrases in imitation of the vocal lines. This was a professional band, yet it was as if he had asked them something quite extraordinary, almost as if they hadn’t noticed that there were singers about. I was appalled that so many apparently good players seemed to be in such ignorance! With Lecosaldi Ensemble, under Peter’s direction, all our players are extremely sensitive to what the singers are trying to convey, and I think this results in very telling performances.”
Professional oboist Nicholas Benda calls Peter “very much a ‘speaking’ as opposed to a ‘singing’ musician. He makes sense of music rather than wandering off into some realm of pure sound, which I’d say was the predominant approach these days. The way he points a Bach chorale when working with the choir leaves other conductors looking very saccharine.”
Peter’s traces his inspiration for musical word-painting with hymns and other texts to the music of Bach. Through more than two decades of Bach Vespers, Peter has completed use of all the three hundred eighty-nine chorale settings in the Bach Choralgesänge, a collection of Bach’s chorale settings compiled by his son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, between 1784–1787. Peter chooses each setting carefully to fit each of the verses of the hymns sung at Bach Vespers. If there are Bach settings that are missing for certain chorales, Peter harmonizes them. He finds the C.P.E. Bach volume more helpful than Albert Riemenschneider’s 371 Harmonized Chorales and 69 Chorale Melodies with Figures Bass, published in 1941. Although he has used both volumes extensively, Lecosaldi favors the C.P.E. Bach collection because the chorale settings are “slightly more elaborate, have words and indicate where Bach used them.” Peter cites a Bach setting of Für Freuden lasst uns springen (a Christmas chorale which is number 106 in the collection) as a classic example of word-painting. “Bach begins with a scale moving up an octave and a half in the bass,” he notes. “The music must be right to fit the words.”
“Times and Seasons” are another emphasis in music and worship involving Peter Lea-Cox. St. Anne’s followed the church year strictly in its worship schedule. The cantata for Bach Vespers, for example, always had to be one appointed for the day. Even when planning a weekday Bach Cantata Series concert, we selected works that were written for the Sunday before or Sunday after the concert. Advent became a problem because of the pervasive celebrating of Christmas early in December. We did our best to begin Christmas music on December 24 and continued celebrating into Epiphany. We even held a carol service every Candlemas, February 2, The Presentation of Our Lord. Peter has an uncanny memory for dates and hardly needs to keep a written diary or appointment book. If you want to know the day of the week on which certain dates fall in past years or coming years, he can most likely tell you.
The composer: Lecosaldi and Lea-Cox
Peter hopes to organize and catalog his hundreds of compositions now that he has left St. Anne and St. Agnes and has more time, theoretically at least. It is likely that the baroque-style Lecosaldi compositions outnumber Lea-Cox compositions in contemporary style. The complete Lecosaldi settings of Verses and Offertories for the entire church year are a major part of his work. Many Sundays of the church year have several settings, reflecting the musical resources available to Peter when they were first performed. He sometimes quickly rewrites verses for the choir on Sunday mornings when he has discovers that there will be no tenors or basses present. He has produced many vocal works, for choir and for single voice, composed for special occasions. Many are composed for soprano and organ, and sung by his wife, Gilly. She and Peter performed the Lea-Cox Agnus Dei for soprano and organ at a service in August 1995 at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Peter has arranged Luther’s Deutsche Messe for congregation, choir and organ and it has been used many times at St. Anne’s. There are many other settings of various parts of the liturgy as well as works for festivals of the church year. Only Peter knows how many there are and he may well have forgotten some that are stored away in some cupboard.
Some of the most significant Lea-Cox compositions may be the four recently-composed Passions used at the annual Good Friday services at St Anne’s. For many years the annual Good Friday liturgy featured sixteenth-century passions by Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries in Germany and other parts of Europe. These Passion settings last from thirty to forty minutes and use small forces, in contrast to the Bach passions.
Peter felt the need “to do something in English” and has now completed four passions, all in modern idiom but modeled after these earlier works. The St. Matthew Passion is in sixteenth-century style. It includes recitatives and choruses, all a capella. Next comes the St. Mark Passion, which is similar in style to the St. Matthew setting, but includes chorales for the congregation to sing. The St. Luke Passion is modeled the same way, but uses organ continuo. It also includes chorales for the congregation and uses hymns from various traditions. For example, the congregation sings verse three of “Saviour, When in Dust to You,” LBW 91 to Joseph Parry’s tune ABERYSTWYTH. This passion also includes “Cup of Blessing That We Share,” LBW 204 set to TORSHOV by Knut Nystedt as well as “The Royal Banners Forward Go,” LBW 125 with its tune based on plainsong.
The Lea-Cox St John Passion, first performed on Good Friday in 2002, follows the same model and includes the Passion Chorale sung quietly by the choir underneath a long recitative. “What language can I borrow” is sung in long note values as the final drama in John’s passion account comes to a climax. It’s something like the enormous recitatives at the end of Bach’s St. John Passion.
Though these Lea-Cox Passions have not yet been published, we hope that they might soon become available to interested churches and musicians. Peter calls them “reasonably different and challenging.” There is another unusual Holy Week work by Lea-Cox used in the Maundy Thursday liturgy in earlier years at St. Anne’s. It’s a hauntingly beautiful unaccompanied cor anglais that was played during the stripping of the altar and the traditional reading of Psalm 22. Peter was usually the reader to make sure that text and music stay together properly. The inspiration for this work came from an article of some fifteen years ago, perhaps in one of the publications of the ALCM, which suggested that such an accompaniment would be an attractive addition to the Maundy Thursday liturgy.
The new Lea-Cox setting of the Lutheran liturgy is being tested this year by the Lutheran Church in Great Britain (LCIGB). Peter serves as musical consultant to the LCIGB and this new liturgy had been studied and discussed for many months. For a long time, the LCIGB has hoped to develop its own liturgical setting, accessible to smaller congregations with limited resources. St. Anne’s began using the Lea-Cox setting on Trinity Sunday 2004 on a trial basis.
Some Lecosaldi compositions have now been published by Maureen McAllister and Robin Jackson of Corsham, Wiltshire, England. They are professional organists who specialize in music for organ duo. Robin, who was once an organ student of Peter Lea-Cox, has been on the music faculty at the University of Bath since 1980. The Lecosaldi Sonata for Organ Duet was first performed at Hexham Abbey and parish churches in Cromer, Norfolk and Corsham, in the summer of 1997. Organists from several continents have now requesed the music. An earlier composition by Lecosaldi, Cascade for Organ Duet, was published in 1999. A Lecosaldi Suite for Organ Duet, five movements in baroque style, is in preparation.
One Lecosaldi organ work unlikely to be published is the Pièce pour cinq orgues (Piece for five organs) which has had only one performance, on September 4, 2003 at St. Andreas Church in Copenhagen. Peter, who has now made eighteen recital tours of Denmark, composed this unusual work for the five restored village church organs that are in a long row in the great gallery of this church. André Palsgård, a medical doctor in Copenhagen, found these organs in various parts of Denmark, restored them and placed them in the church gallery. Peter thought it would be interesting to compose a work for the five instruments. Following Peter’s 2003 organ recital at St. Andreas Church, five Danish church organists played the work, directed by Peter using a carefully crafted system of mirrors. Dr. Palsgård has now found a sixth organ for the church gallery and Peter will conduct the first performance of a Lecosaldi Fugue for Five Organs and Continuo in 2005. The sixth organ will play the continuo.
Memorable moments with Lea-Cox and Lecosaldi
There were many memorable and unusual experiences during the Lea-Cox era at St Anne and St Agnes. A few stand out in my mind:
The Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the Life and Work or J.S. Bach held Sunday morning April 14, 1985, the Bach Tercentenary Year. Lesley-Jane Rogers sang Cantata 51, Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen, with Peter directing the Lecosaldi Ensemble. More than two hundred forty people crammed into the church with the help of borrowed chairs from the nearby Goldsmiths Hall. Since the pews at St. Anne’s seat about eighty, this may have been an all-time high attendance for a Sunday service.
Choral Vespers on Palm Sunday, March 24, 1991, when a visiting choir, the Kollegium Bethel Youth Choir from Bielefeld, Germany, sang the Rutter Requiem and Te Deum in the service. John Rutter unexpectedly came to the vespers and signed nearly one hundred autographs following the service. In July 2002, Peter Lea-Cox and John Rutter led a week-long choral workshop at St. Anne’s.
A performance of Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo for Glass Armonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola and Cello, K.617, Peter conducting the Lecosaldi Ensemble with visiting soloist, Jamie Turner, from the United States as soloist on these rarely-heard glasses.
The 1990 performance of the Concerto No. 1 in G for Concertina and Orchestra by Wilhelm Bernhard Molique, a nineteenth-century German composer. Douglas Rodgers of the London College of Music was concertina soloist with Peter directing the Lecosaldi Ensemble.
A performance of Beethoven’s early Piano Concerto in E-flat, WoO4, with David Owen Norris as soloist with the Lecosaldi Ensemble directed by Peter. This work, written when Beethoven was only 14, survives only in a manuscript for the solo piano part with Beethoven’s reduction of the orchestral passages. The Swiss musicologist Willy Hess reconstructed the work that was published in 1939 and first performed by pianist Edwin Fischer in 1943.
Richard Hodkinson, who reviewed two Lecosaldi lunchtime concerts in the November 2003 issue of City and Islington News in London, praised St Anne’s as being even more active in producing imaginative concert series than most local venues. “It is like the Royal Albert Hall with added Lutherans.” He reviewed concerts on successive days that included performances of Schubert’s Fifth Sympony, a bassoon concerto by Johann Christoph Graupner and Bach’s cantata, Ich habe meine Zuervsicht, BWV 188. His conclusion: “It is good to note that these concerts were very well attended, because there are cities in the UK where concerts of this standard are a precious rarity. It is astonishing that music-making of such quality can be heard on our doorsteps for free on a weekday lunchtime.”
Paying for all this wonderful music
How on earth do you finance a musical program such as St. Anne’s during Peter Lea-Cox’s years at the church? No money came from the congregation’s treasury, a condition for getting endorsement to launch the program. A church with less than two hundred members could never consider such an ambitious musical ministry and it all began with the assurance that funding would come from other sources. This made it possible, but also carried the weakness of not having some in the congregation take “ownership” of the new weekday music ministry.
Peter would never have had opportunity to serve at St. Anne’s in such an extraordinary way were it not for the vision and support of the Division of World Mission and Ecumenism (DWME) of the former Lutheran Church in America. In 1983, when I proposed that the DWME of the LCA allow me to move from staff of the World Association for Christian Communication to begin an experimental ministry at St. John’s Lutheran Church (now St. Anne’s Lutheran Church), they gave full support. We salute DWME leaders like the late David L. Vikner, the late John Mangum, Arthur O. F. Bauer and Norman H. Nuding. All were wonderfully supportive of this new weekday ministry in the City of London. We called the program Lutheran Special Ministries and it included music and worship as well as the Swahili-speaking congregation of East Africans that I had started at the church when I arrived in London in 1974. It all thrived and we are thankful to God.
The success of Lutheran Special Ministries, especially its emphasis on music, came also through hard work in planning and promoting services and concerts. St. Anne’s developed a passionate concern for the biblical concept of “welcoming the stranger” and people of more than thirty-six countries were part of the congregation. We are grateful for Christine McGee, who headed the office for some fifteen years and supervised several other fulltime and part-time staff as well as a host of volunteers. All this cost money, but it paid off handsomely in outreach to the community.
Support for Bach Vespers and for the more than one hundred other concerts and musical services held each year came from offerings at these events plus special gifts from interested individuals. Admission was charged only at evening concerts. At lunchtime concerts, people contributed in a basket at the door. In addition we sought help from the business community and foundations in the City of London. More than thirty sponsors gave annual gifts ranging from £100 to £1,000 ($200 to $2,000, depending on the exchange rate) each year. Generous annual support came from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hannover and from the Martin Luther Bund, both in Germany. We founded St. Anne’s Books Limited, which brought annual earnings that topped $50,000 for several years. The LCA and then the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America continued its valuable support by paying my salary for a number of years. Beginning in the early 1990s, this support was reduced by twenty percent annually until the church became self-supporting before my retirement as full-time pastor at the end of 1995. We lived from hand-to-mouth, but it seemed to work out, even when we began a service or a concert without having the funding needed to cover the costs.
Another vital factor that has made music at St. Anne’s possible is the willingness of professional musicians to perform with Peter for derisory fees. Many had worked with Peter as students and continued as their professional careers blossomed. I sometimes felt guilty thinking we were exploitative by offering token compensation. Some of London’s top musicians came for no fee at all. Artists such as violinist Simon Standage and conductor-pianist Lionel Friend would bring their musician friends to provide outstanding lunchtime concerts at St. Anne’s. They appreciated the opportunity to try out new repertoire before a large and enthusiastic audience.
Bach Vespers and other services and concerts involving the Lecosaldi Ensemble concerts cost the equivalent of US $500 to $1200, depending on how many musicians took part. The individual musician’s fee of about $50 did not even cover travel costs for some professionals who lived nearly one hundred miles away from London. As rehearsals were held in the hours before each service or concert, this meant only one journey and this helped. Still the musicians were willing to take part.
Bass soloist, Simon Preece, may speak for many fellow professionals when he explains his willingness to remain in the Lecosaldi Ensemble: “Even today opportunities to perform or witness performances of most of Bach’s oeuvre are surprisingly rare. Peter, through his energy and sheer hard work, has for two decades and more provided such opportunities. His remarkable skills as a keyboardist of wit and invention, as well as the breadth and depth of his musical knowledge, are always at the service of the music. Through his humanity he provides a relaxed but focussed rehearsal environment, in which he manifests his openness to the ideas of others. His ability to draw out those ideas leads to the creation of a framework within which the performers feel able to explore and be led in the moment of performance where the music seems to want to go. For Peter no performance can be definitive, but his constant search for musical truth has helped create some of the most musically enriching experiences of my performing life. That is why I work with him regardless of limited rehearsal and pitiful fees.”
The future
Peter sees his resignation as cantor at St. Anne’s as an opportunity. He plans to compose more music and to organize his many compositions for possible publication. He also plans to do more teaching and performing, encouraged by the enthusiastic response to his annual tutoring at the Oxford Baroque Week, which completed its twenty-seventh year in August. A number of singers and instrumentalists have asked Peter to coach them. He will continue to conduct the Camden Chamber Choir, a volunteer singing group of very high standard, has planned four concerts for 2004–2005 at St. Mary’s Primrose Hill, a London church with long musical connections. In addition he will continue his examining for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
Peter is often asked to lead workshops to rehearse a single choral work. Both amateurs and professionals are invited to these events, which are either held on one day or over a weekend, and are usually followed by a “workshop performance.” Last New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Peter led enthusiastic singers and instrumentalists in rehearsals of all six cantatas in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. A performance followed on New Year’s Day. He will lead a similar end-of-the-year workshop this year featuring Bach’s B-Minor Mass. In November of this year (2004), he is scheduled to hold another choral workshop in the United States. Singers and instrumentalists will gather at Christ Lutheran Church in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Saturday, November 6, to rehearse Bach’s Cantata No.115, Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit. Bach Vespers to be held at the church at 7 pm that evening. This tour is also to include performances of Bach’s Cantata 79, Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Silver Spring, Maryland, on Reformation Day, Sunday, October 31. That afternoon he is to give an organ recital at the National Cathedral in Washington before a Lutheran-Roman Catholic service to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
Peter has brought Lecosaldi Ensemble singers and instrumentalists to the United States on two occasions. In 1989 they took part in the second biennial conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians held in Rochester, New York. In 1996 Peter came to the USA with another group to give concerts and lead services at Muhlenberg College, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, as well as at Lutheran churches in Lancaster and Reading, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and Clifton, New Jersey. Peter, accompanied by Gilly, has made musical tours in the USA to lead choral workshops and give organ recitals in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 and now in 2004.
With more time available, Peter hopes to travel more “and share what we’ve done at St. Anne’s.” While few churches have the resources which were available in the City of London and could not duplicate its musical program, there is no doubt that Peter Lea-Cox has much to offer churches and their musicians, even those with limited resources.
Violinist Martin Smith sums it up well: “As a freelance musician, even a relatively successful one, I have done my full share of concerts which are tired and cynical. For twenty years, making music with Peter at St. Anne’s has been a very special way of recharging my batteries. . . .When God created Peter I think he didn’t so much break the mould as lay it reverently to one side, murmuring, ‘Well, that was a one-off.’ I do not know where I may next have the chance to make music with him, but wherever it is, I look forward to the next twenty years.”
Ronald T. Englund is a retired Lutheran pastor with a life-long passion for music who now lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He served congregations in Jersey City and East Orange, New Jersey before moving to Tanzania, where he served congregations in Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo. He then spent 25 years in England, where he worked with Peter Lea-Cox in developing the music program at St. Anne and St. Agnes. Ronald Englund’s email address is: englund@cape.com
