With the death of Bruce E. Ford on February 28, 2025, the Church lost the gifts and faith of a man who, in the words of one admirer, “engaged and applied Canon [Charles Winfred] Douglas’s work and subsequent scholarship over decades in a way that no one else has,” and who set 21 different chants for publication in The Hymnal 1982.
Born in 1947 and raised in Rumson, New Jersey, Bruce was a professional librarian, studying for his Bachelor's and Master's at Rutgers University, where he later served as an adjunct professor. For his 38 years as a librarian, he was a beloved employee of the Newark Public Library, retiring as Assistant Director in 2009, having also written a “brief” 31-page history of the library. Despite his work there, his stature in the church loomed large as well, publishing a chant compendium entitled The American Gradual, being commissioned by Church Publishing to update the Gradual Psalms first pointed in the 1970s and 1980s by Richard Crocker for the Revised Common Lectionary, and writing a ceremonial entitled Notes on the Celebration of the Eucharist, which was published in 1986.
Bruce was a proud member of the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) from 2003 until his passing, and requested that his Gradual Psalms, which had since fallen out of publication, be hosted by the organization on his behalf. AAM, which seeks to keep the Episcopal Church’s strong musical tradition healthy and vibrant, has partnered with Episcopal Chant to host these and other works from Bruce’s œuvre. You can learn more about AAM by visiting their website at anglicanmusicians.org .
In the original Gradual Psalms, about a third of all services did not include a selected Alleluia verse or Tract, with Ford offering 14 different verses for use ad libitum. However, based on the experiences of this site’s developers, most parishes either don’t have the time to figure out which verses to use or may find that the way that these verses do not connect to the readings makes them less effective in public worship.
As such, Episcopal Chant is offering settings of the Alleluia verses for those services based, as Bruce’s were, on the selections from The Lectionary for Mass, the 2002 lectionary of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. You can find them at this link.