LATE BREAKING ANNOUNCEMENTS
(More announcements are in the monthly newsletter, available in the narthex)

Here is today’s Sunday school schedule:

2-3 year olds  –  Room B-202

Pre-K & K  –  Room B-203

1st graders  –  Creation Corner 1 (B-214)

2nd graders  –  Mission Possible (B-205)

3rd graders  –  Prophet’s Playhouse (B-210)

4th graders  –  Creation Corner 2 (B-206)

5th graders  –  The Welcome Table (B-119/120)

6th and 7th graders  –  Lile Hall

Today is the Christ Church ANNUAL MEETING BRUNCH following the 9:30 service:

BRUNCH will be served in Barnwell Hall immediately after the service; the brief annual business meeting will follow.

All are welcome. Childcare provided as well as supervised activities for school age children during the meeting. Cost* of the brunch is $10 per adult, $5 per child. Please pay at the door.

*everyone is welcome, please speak with a minister if hardship exists

Today’s anthem, “Kittery,” was written by William Billings, who lived in Boston from 1746 until his death in 1800. He was a composer and teacher of choral singing, though he had no formal musical training--he worked as a tanner in the leather trade at various times throughout his life. He began teaching singing schools in Boston, which led him to musical leadership in many of the city’s most fashionable churches. During the Revolutionary War he was friends with such individuals as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. He had a short leg, one eye and a withered arm, but these did not keep him from becoming the leading figure in a group of largely self-trained composers who arose in New England during the late 1700s to early 1800s. The indigenous sacred music they created, to be sung by their friends and neighbors, achieved a great popularity. A reform movement that began in the 1790s suppressed this music and led to a European-oriented repertory. After 1820, little of Billings' music is found in mainstream American sacred music collections, and during the 19th century his music was denigrated as crude in technique and irreverent in spirit. However, his style and pieces were kept alive by the southern shaped-note singers in the American rural south. Following World War II a new generation of scholars and performers rediscovered his music. Billings composed over 340 compositions, almost all of which were sacred choral pieces for a cappella choir.