The Offertory Anthem, A Meditation, by English composer Francis John Dolben Pott (b. 1957), received its first hearing at St. Peter’s on the First Sunday in Lent, 2016, in the presence of the composer. Pott traces “an awakening of creativity” to his experience as a chorister at New College, Oxford. His “dramatic and emotionally challenging music unites a distinctive personal voice with a highly disciplined but versatile technique rooted in a keen awareness of the past.” About A Meditation, Pott writes: “The music seeks to respond to the touching felicities of [Thomas] Traherne’s prose (from his Centuries of Meditations) with a simple candour of its own, and needs no further introduction.”

In conjunction with the 500^th anniversary of his birth, we continue our exploration of the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–1594) with his motet “Super flumina Babylonis.”