Another English composer with a Carmelite connection

I wrote about the Carmelite connection of English Catholic convert musician Sir Lennox Berkeley yesterday, and that made me think of another English Catholic convert musician  also with a Carmelite connection – Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986).  The two men were almost exact contemporaries but from different spheres socially.  While Berkeley was from an aristocratic family, Rubbra was born in the prosaic shoemaking town of Northampton and he started work at fourteen in a shoemaking business.  Rubbra was a prolific composer well-known in the mid-twentieth century, but his name has been largely forgotten outside specialist circles today, although his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis are said to be still performed in Anglican churches.  Originally a Congregationalist, he became a Catholic in 1947 and his Carmelite connection is that he went on to write a mass in honour of St Teresa in 1981.  Berkeley had been a Catholic since 1929.  The two men met in 1947 through their connection with the BBC.  A commentator writes that their Catholic faith informed some of their best works.

Intercessions:

Louise Aldred OCDS RIP – a long-time member of the Nottingham Secular community

Brian Davis – cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela caring for him) - cancer

Siena, Elara – sick children

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant

Rebekah – in hospital