Current Sunday Service Music & Schedule

Click below for past programming.
Recent / 2008-09 / 2007-08 / 2006-07 / 2005-06 / 2004-05 / 2003-04
2002-03 / 2001-02 / 1991-92 / 1978-79 / 1966-67 / 1964-65
Early History of Music at First Parish 1733-1964

Adult Choir Rehearsal Schedule : 8-9:30pm Thursdays (except holidays & school vacations) - NEW MEMBERS WELCOME
Intergenerational Family Orchestra Rehearsal Schedule : 612:15-1pm 2 Sundays per month and 6:45-7:30pm occasional Thursdays - NEW MEMBERS WELCOME

Mar. 21 Spring Music Service
First Parish Choir hosts the visiting UU choir from Newburyport, MA

• Prelude: I Was Glad by Sir Charles H. Parry
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/par-iwas.pdf
• Intergen: I Saw the Lord by John Stainer
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/d/db/I_saw_the_Lord_%28Stainer%29.pdf
• Candle Music: Remember not, Lord, Our Offences by Henry Purcell
• Offertory: When Music Sounds by Jennifer Kobayashi
  UUlations
• Anthem: one movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
• Postlude: Beati quorum via by Sir Charles V. Stanford
  Free online score: http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/d/d8/Beati_Quorum_Via.pdf

Mar. 28 Passover/Palm Sunday

• Prelude: "Lord, bow thine ear to our prayer" (The Drought) from Israel in Egypt by G. F. Handel (1685-1759)
  Chalice Singers & Adult Choir with two soprano soloists
  Part I of Israel in Egypt free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hand-54a.pdf
• Candle Music: "There Came a Great Darkness" and "But as For His People" (The Eclipse) from Israel in Egypt
  Chamber choir
• Offertory: The Lamb by Fenno Follensbea Heath, Jr.
  Text by William Blake
• Postlude: Organ

Apr. 4 Intergenerational Easter Service, 10am

• Prelude: First movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8
  Intergenerational Family Orchestra
• Chalice Singers Anthem: Rise Up, My Love by Healey Willan
  with Adult Choir
• Offertory: Piano
• Communion Music: Crux fidelis by King John VI of Portugal
  Chamber Choir
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/joh-crux.pdf
• Anthem: The Lamb by Fenno Heath
  Adult Choir
  Text: Little Lamb, who made thee?
  Dost thou know who made thee?
  Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
  By the stream and o'er the mead;
  Gave thee clothing of delight,
  Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
  Gave thee such a tender voice,
  Making all the vales rejoice?
  Little Lamb, who made thee?
  Dost thou know who made thee?
  Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
  Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.
  He is called by thy name,
  For He calls Himself a Lamb.
  He is meek, and He is mild;
  He became a little child.
  I a child, and thou a lamb,
  We are called by His name. Little Lamb,
  God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless thee!
  by William Blake (1757-1827), from Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789)
• Postlude: Organ

Apr. 10 Youth Group Coffeehouse

Apr. 11 Yom Hashoah: Music Commemorating Jewish History & Culture
2pm Spring Musicale & Talent Show

• Prelude: Meditation and Ma Tovu from Ernest Bloch's (1880-1959) Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service, 1933)
  Chamber Choir
  Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born, American-Jewish composer. His Sacred Service starts with a symphonic prelude followed by a traditional prayer: Ma tovu oholecho Ya'akov, mishkenosecho Yisroel.
  Translation: How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel. I come to worship in the temple and bow in reverence. May my prayer, humbly upraised, seem good in your eyes, as I come meekly. Answer me and grant me mercy.
• Music for Memorials (if this week): We Remember Them by Ben Steinberg
  Adult Choir
• Candle Music: O, pray for the peace of Jerusalem (1941) by Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
  Chamber Choir
  Howells was articled to Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral in 1905. In 1912 he won an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied with Stanford and Wood. Howells was to return to the Royal College as a teacher from 1920 and became almost as well known in that capacity and as an examiner and adjudicator as he was as a composer. He succeeded Gustav Hoist in 1936 as Director of Music at St Paul’s School in Hammersmith, a post he retained until 1962. In 1950 he was appointed King Edward VII Professor of Music at London University.
  Amongst Howells’s self-confessed influences were plainsong, the modes, the pentatonic scale, folk-song, his friendship with Ralph Vaughan Williams and a feeling of oneness with the Tudor period. Howells’s music is frequently contrasted with that of his contemporaries, Boughton, Bridge, Delius, Gurney, Hoist and Vaughan Williams; the young composer was particularly influenced by the first performance in 1910 of Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis”, which took place in Gloucester Cathedral. Howells is a testament to the fruits of the Second English Renaissance, and a fine composer in his own right.
  The anthem “O pray for the peace of Jerusalem” was completed on 5 January 1941 whilst the composer was in Cheltenham and is the first in a set of four short anthems. This work demonstrates the composer’s ability to build up seamlessly to a climax and then to release the tension and allow the music to slip away into the stillness of a great cathedral. This arch form is a structure that the composer often used to great effect. The work is dedicated to Sir Thomas Armstrong who at that time was organist at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.
  O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee.
  Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces. Psalm 122: 6-7
• Offertory: Sim sholom by Max Janowski
  Jean Renard Ward, tenor
  Adult Choir
  Notes - Max Janowski was born in Berlin, Germany. He was a prodigious 20th-century composer, conductor, and organist whose liturgical compositions have been performed in concert halls, synagogues, churches and colleges throughout the world. He emigrated to Japan and then to New York in 1937. He was the beloved music director, organist, and choir director at six Chicago-area synagogues and Unitarian congregations.
• Postlude: Shalom Rav by Ben Steinberg (1930-)
  TBD, cantor
  Adult Choir
  Notes: Composer Ben Steinberg, son of the late Cantor Alexander Steinberg, was born in Winnipeg, Canada and educated at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto. Involved in traditional synagogue music since childhood (he was a child soloist at age eight and conducted his first synagogue choir at age twelve) his career is a long and distinguished one. Having served Toronto's Temple Sinai as Director of Music since 1970, Mr. Steinberg was appointed its Composer-in-Residence in 1996. He is a widely-recognized conductor and lecturer, noted for his lecture-recitals on Jewish music history and style at major centers and universities in Canada and the U.S., including Cornell University, where he has twice been invited as Dean Sage Speaker. His works have been commissioned by numerous synagogues and other groups such as: The Royal Canadian College of Organists; The American Guild of Organists; Yale University in conjunction with Union Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College (NYC); and The American Conference of Cantors. He was invited by Israel's 1988 Zimriah (Choral Festival) to lecture on his choral compositions. Earlier, he was honored twice by the city of Jerusalem, which invited him to be an artist-in-residence at its creative retreat, "Mishkenot Sha'ananim" - an honor then reserved for composers, artists and writers of international stature.

Apr. 18 Chamber Music (Beginning of School Vacation)
Guest speaker
Sarah Haera Tocco accompanies BC High Choir in Italy

• Prelude-Postlude: Instrumental Chamber Music
  Hymns played by: TBA

Apr. 25
Sarah Haera Tocco accompanies BC High Choir in Italy

• Hymns played by: TBA
  Prelude: For the Future from Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish
  Sound file: http://prichard.net/fpuua/FPApracticefiles2004.html
  Chalice Singers and Adult Choir
• Candle Music: Great Trees from Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish
  Sound file: http://prichard.net/fpuua/FPApracticefiles2004.html
  Adult Choir
• Offertory: Finches from Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish
  Sound file: http://prichard.net/fpuua/FPApracticefiles2004.html
  Chmaber Choir
  Text by Kentucky Poet Wendell Berry:
  The ears stung with cold
  sun and frost of dawn
  in early April, comes
  
  the song of winter finches,
  their crimson bright, then
  dark as they move into
  
  and then against the light.
  May the year warm them
  soon. May they soon go
  
  north with their singing
  and the seasons follow.
  May the bare sticks soon
  
  live, and our minds go free
  of the ground
  into the shining of trees.
• Postlude:

May 1 (evening Vestry event) First Parish Jazz Coffeehouse & Organ Benefit

May 2 May Music - Band plays, no SHT
Afternoon Ordination of FPA member Christina Sillari in Newburyport

• Prelude: Now Is the Month of Maying by Thomas Morley
  Click here to hear an under-tempo but fun recording by the amateur German choir Canterino
  Midi practice files: http://www.oldmusicproject.com/madrigalia/Morley/mmaying.mid
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/morl-now.pdf
• Candle Music: Veris leta facies (The merry face of spring) from Carl Orff's Carmina burana
  Adult Choir (repeated from 1/15/09 service)
• Offertory: Omnia sol temperat (The sun warms everything) by Orff
  Baritone soloists TBD, no choir (repeated from 1/15/09 service)
• Postlude: Ecce gratum (Behold, the pleasant spring) by Orff
  Adult Choir

May 2 Possible afternoon Arlington Phil. Concert

May 9 Mother's Day Service
Family Band plays

• Prelude: Band
• Candle Music: Band
• Offertory: Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit from Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms
  Adult Choir (repeated from 11/8/09 service)
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/e/e0/JB45-4_Wie_lieblich_sind.pdf
• Postlude: Organ

May 9 Afternoon Cantilena Concert & AHS Pops

May 16 Senior Recognition Ceremony
Noon Annual Meeting & Budget Discussion

• Prelude: Organ
• Candle Music: Surge Illuminare from the second volume of Gradualia (1607) by William Byrd (c1540-1623)
  Chamber Choir
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/9a/BYRD-SUR.pdf
  Translation: "Arise, shine, O Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Alleluia." (Isaiah 60:1)
  The text is associated liturgically with the season of Epiphany, as is the verse from Isaiah that directly follows: "For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee."
  Notes: The greatest English composer of his generation, Byrd was a versatile musisian. He remained a Catholic during times of persecution in England, even though all of his Latin-language motets were banned in England after the 1605 Gunposder Plot. He aso, served as a member of the Chapel Royal under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, providing music for the liturgy of the Church of England which has been sung continuously in English cathedrals for the last 400 years. Biographical website on Byrd: http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/byrd.php
• Offertory: Ce moys de May by Clement Janequin (c1485-1558)
  Click here to see the score for this selection
  Click here to hear the parts played for this selection
  Click here to hear a live recording of this selection
• Postlude: Organ

May 22 First Parish Fundraising Auction & Gala Benefit (or, May 15)

May 23

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Postlude:

May 30 Memorial Day Weekend
RE Appreciation Sunday

• Prelude: Organ
• Candle Music: Piano
• Offertory: Piano
• Postlude: Organ

June 6 Coming of Age Service
Jr. High Musicians present special music

• Prelude: Organ
• Candle Music: One Voice by the Wailin' Jennys
  Women of the Adult Choir
• Offertory: Jr. High instrumentalists
• Anthem: Jr. High Singers
• Postlude: Organ
• Hymns & Readings: 414

June 13 Flower Communion

• Prelude: O, My Luv's Like a Red, Red Rose (Scottish Folk Song) arr. by James Mulholland
  Adult Choir
  Nice video of college choral performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUA2gbMbwNo
  Click here to hear the text spoken with a proper Scottish accent
  Click here to read a discussion of the text
• Candle Music: Contre Qui, Rose from the Rilke Flower Songs by Morten Lauridsen (1943-)
  The English translation by Barbara and Erica Muhl reads: “Against whom rose. Have you assumed these thorns? Is it your too fragile joy that forced you to become this armed thing? But from whom does it protect you, this exaggerated defense. How many enemies have I lifted from you who did not fear it at all? On the contrary, from summer to autumn you wound the affection that is given you.”
  Link to a short article on this text and its relevance to current events: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2006/03/contre_qui_rose.html
  Link to listening example:
  http://www.imeem.com/people/-YICDHM/music/orj5QRc3/morten_lauridsen_lauridsen_les_chansons_des_roses_2_cont/
• Flower Communion Processional: There is Sweet Music, op. 53, no. 1 (1908) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
  Chamber Choir
  Online introduction and performance by the BBC Chorus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkWOaFfkp2M
  Text by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892):
  There is sweet music here that softer falls
  Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
  Or night-dews on still waters between walls
  Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
  Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
  Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
  Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
  Here are cool mosses deep,
  And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
  And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
  And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
• Offertory: Hymne au Soleil (1912) by Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
  Click here for a biography of Lili Boulanger
  Text by Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843):
  Du soleil qui renaît bénissons la puissance.
  Avec tout l'univers célébrons son retour.
  Couronné de splendeur, il se lève, il s'élance.
  Le réveil de la terre est un hymne d'amour.
  Sept coursiers qu'en partant le Dieu contient à peine,
  Enflamment l'horizon de leur brûlante haleine.
  O soleil fécond, tu parais!
  Avec ses champs en fleurs, ses monts, ses bois épais,
  La vaste mer de tes feux embrasée,
  L'univers plus jeune et plus frais,
  Des vapeurs de matin sont brillants de rosée.
• Postlude:
• Hymns & Readings: 414

June 20

June 27

July 4

July 11

July 18

July 25

August 1

August 8

August 15

August 22

August 29

Sept. 5

Sept. 12 Water Communion

• Prelude: The Rapid Stream (1922) by Edward Elgar for boychoir and piano
• Candle Music: The Woodland Stream (1922) by Edward Elgar for boychoir and piano
• Offertory: Clear and Gentle Stream, op. 17 (1939) by Gerald Finzi (1910-1956)
  Click here to hear a recording by the Drake University Chamber Choir; poem by Robert Bridges
  Click here to read a detailed biography of the composer.
  Notes: Gerald Finzi, contemporary of Holst and Vaughan Williams, was active as a composer and organist throughout his short life. He was employed as a Professor of Music at Durham University; held organist positions at Wigan Parish, Leeds Parish, and Yorkminster Parish; and taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Considered a neo-romanticist, Finzi was influenced melodically and harmonically by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Walton. Finzi wrote his Seven Partsongs, op. 17, all to the poetry of Robert Bridges, from 1934 to 1937, several years after the poet’s death in 1930. The poems are metrical and represent the traditionalist phase in the poet’s body of work. This partsong balances textual declamation with melodic lyricism. It has a high degree of craftsmanship, and is a moving depiction of a sultry summer by the river.
• Anthem: The Shower, op. 71, no. 1 (1914) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
  Scores: http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/The_Shower%2C_Op._71%2C_No._1_%28Edward_Elgar%29
  Cloud, if as thou dost melt, and with thy train
  Of drops make soft the Earth, my eyes could weep
  O'er my hard heart, that's bound up and asleep;
  Perhaps at last,
  Some such showers past,
  My God would give a sunshine after rain.
  - by Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)
• Postlude:

Sept. 19

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Psalm 111 (Hallelujah) by Salomon Sulzer (1804-1880)
  Sulzer was born March 30, 1804 in Hohenems, a small town in Vorarlberg, an Austrian province between Tyrol and Switzerland. Schooled at the Yeshiva at Endigen, Switzerland, Sulzer concurrently studied music in Karlsruhe (Baden) and decided to become a cantor. At age 14 Sulzer was elected cantor in his hometown, but in 1826 on an extended leave of absence, he traveled to Vienna where he was engaged for the next twenty-one years as the chief cantor of the Vienna Jewish community. It was there that Sulzer undertook the serious study of composition, where he become close friends with Franz Schubert and other famous members of the Vienna Opera. It was, however, under the influence of the chief rabbi of Vienna, Isaac Noa Mannheimer, that Sulzer published three volumes of music that followed the Mannheimer's prayer-book (1839-1865). It was Sulzer's deliberate attention to proper diction, musical form, and harmony that wed liturgical words with sacred sounds; It can be said that he almost single-handed, reintroduced dignity and decorum into Jewish worship, through choral music, pioneering a renaissance of Jewish music.
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Sept. 26

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Kol Nidre: Adagio on Hebrew Melodies by Max Bruch (1838-1920)
  Click here to hear a recording by Alexander Skwortsow
  Click here for an article on the Kol Nidre with many links to recordings of the melody.
  Abraham Idelsohn, a noted scholar of Jewish music, wrote in 1929, "There is hardly any other traditional Jewish tune that attracted so much attention from the composers of the last century. Innumerable are the arrangements for voice with piano, organ or violin accompaniment and violoncello obligato. We have the exalted melody prepared for choir and small orchestra. And last but not least is the concerto by Max Bruch. In the first bars of Beethoven's C-sharp minor quartet, the opening theme of Kol Nidre is recognizable. Thus has the music world come to consider this the most characteristic tune of the synagogue. [Bruch's] melody was an interesting theme for a brilliant secular concerto. In his presentation, the melody entirely lost its original character. Bruch displayed a fine art, masterly technique and fantasy, but not Jewish sentiments. It is not a Jewish Kol Nidre which Bruch composed."
  Max Bruch himself wrote the following on Kol Nidre, in a letter to cantor and musicologist Eduard Birnbaum (4 December 1889), "...I became acquainted with Kol Nidre and other Jewish melodies in Berlin through the Lichtenstein family, who befriended me. Even though I am a Protestant, as an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of these melodies and therefore I gladly spread them through my arrangement. As a young man I had already ... studied folksongs of all nations with great enthusiasm, because the folksong is a wellspring at which one must repeatedly renew and refresh oneself---so lay the study of Jewish ethnic music on my path."
  Lichtenstein was the cantor-in-chief of Berlin, who was known to have friendly relations with many Christian musicians of that time. The conductor of Lichtenstein's choir was nobody less than Louis Lewandowski. Idelsohn proved that many of the compositions of Lewandowski were based on the chazzanut (cantorial solos) of Lichtenstein.
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 3

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 10

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 17

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 24

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 31 Hallowe'en

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Nov. 7

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Nov. 14

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Nov. 21

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Nov. 28

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Dec. 5

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: O Wild West Wind, op. 53, no. 3 (1908 ) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
  Score: http://www.doveton-music.de/PDFfree/ElgarOWildWestWind.pdf
  Text by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) from Ode to the West Wind:
  O wild West Wind, [...]
  Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
  What if my leaves are falling like its own!
  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
  Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
  Sweet though in sadness.
  Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit!
  Be thou me, impetuous one!
  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
  Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
  And, by the incantation of this verse,
  Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
  Be through my lips to unawakened earth
  The trumpet of a prophecy!
  O, Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Dec. 12

• Prelude, Intergen, & Candle Music: Magnificat by John Rutter
• Offertory: Tota pulchra es Maria by Maurice Duruflé
  Click here to practice this selection with soprano 1 emphasized
  Click here to practice this selection with soprano 2 emphasized
  Click here to practice this selection with soprano 3 emphasized
  Click here to practice this selection with alto 1 emphasized
  Click here to practice this selection with alto 2 emphasized
  Click here to practice this selection all parts emphasized equally
  Click here to hear a recording by the Cal Tech Women's Glee Club
  http://cyberbass.com/Major_Works/Poulenc_F/poulenc_XMAS_motets.htm
• Anthem, Benediction, & Postlude: Magnificat by John Rutter

Dec. 19

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem: The Lamb by John Taverner
  Notes: The Lamb is a hauntingly beautiful piece. It is for unaccompanied SATB choir. It is almost entirely syllabic which, along with its homophony, adds to the simplicity of the piece. Performance directions state that tempo should be flexible and also guided by the words, and Taverner uses contrapuntal varitations to develop his themes.
  In the second bar, the alto part sings an inversion (upside down) of the melody sung by the soprano. Bars 3 and 4 are also soprano solo, with bar 4 being the retrograde (reverse) of the previous bar. The same technique is used in the soprano part in bars 5 and 6, with the alto singing a retrograde inversion (combining both ideas, sung upside down and backwards). The overall effect of this section is blatant dissonance, though the fact that each line returns to the same point reaffirms a serene, uncomplicated mood.
  After an atonal start, the full chorus joins for the second half of the verse. The music here is gently dissonant, with a feeling of E-minor but without the expected D-sharps. This section is entirely based upon the opening soprano melody. The soprano and alto parts sing in thirds throughout, with the tenors and basses helping to create subtle suspensions. Each bar ends with an E-minor chord. The second verse is similar to the first, with the women's voices focusing on the tune in unison.
• Postlude:

Dec. 25 Evening Services

• Solstice by Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
  An exuberant setting (originally for solo voice) of Robert Lee Wolff’s poem.
  Refrain: "It's the solstice, the time when the sun stands still, outside you and inside you, you feel a bitter chill. It's the solstice, when the cold north wind could kill; but hold your breath and it's Christmas, Peace on earth, and to men good will."
  Click here to hear a recording of this selection
• The Last Month of the Year (When Was Jesus Born) traditional Gospel
• Christmas Greeting, op. 52 (1907) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) with text by Caroline Alice Elgar (1848-1920):
  Bowered on sloping hillsides rise
  In sunny glow, the purpling vine;
  Beneath the greyer English skies,
  In fair array, the red-gold apples shine.
  Refrain: To those in snow,
  To those in sun,
  Love is but one;
  Hearts beat and glow,
  By oak and palm.
  Friends, in storm or calm.
  On and on old Tiber speeds,
  Dark with the weight of ancient crime;
  Far north, thr' green and quiet meads,
  Flows on the Wye in mist and silv'ring rime.
  Refrain
  The pifferari wander far,
  They seek the shrines, and hymn the peace
  Which herald angels, 'neath the star,
  Foretold to shepherds, bidding strife to cease.
  Our England sleeps in shroud of snow,
  Bells, sadly sweet, knell life's swift flight,
  And tears, unbid, are wont to flow,
  As "Noel! Noel!" sounds across the night.
  Refrain
• The Oxen
  Text: Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
  "Now they are all on their knees,"
  An elder said as we sat in a flock
  By the embers in hearthside ease.
  We pictured the meek mild creatures where
  They dwelt in their strawy pen,
  Nor did it occur to one of us there
  To doubt they were kneeling then.
  So fair a fancy few would weave
  In these years!
  Yet, I feel,
  If someone said on Christmas Eve,
  "Come; see the oxen kneel,
  In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
  Our childhood used to know,"
  I should go with him in the gloom,
  Hoping it might be so.
  by Thomas Hardy
• Il est né, le divin Enfant
  It is not clear whether the word carol derives from the French "carole" or the Latin "carula" meaning a circular dance. In any case, the dancing seems to have been abandoned quite early, but some examples are very danceable. In the 1680s and 1690s Louis-Claude Daquin wrote 12 noels for organ. Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote a few instrumental versions of noels, plus one major choral work "Messe de minuit pour Noël" (carols with orchestral links written by Charpentier). Ça, Bergers, assemblons nous is from the 16th century, and was sung aboard Jacques Cartier's ship on Christmas Day 1535. Perhaps the best known traditional French carol is Il est né, le divin Enfant!, which comes from Provencal. In 1554 "La Grande Bible des Noels" was printed, in several versions in Orleans. It was a collection of French carols. "Chants de Noels anciens et nouveau" (1703) was printed by Christophe Ballard (1641 - 1715) in Paris.

Dec. 26

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Peace Services & Other music for the future

• Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis by Maurice Ravel
  Click here to hear a recording of this selection
• Vesi Vasyy Lumen Alle (Water under Snow is Weary) by Eha Lattemae and Harri Wessman (1949-)
• Call to Remembrance by Richard Farrant
  Free online score: http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/farr-ca1.pdf
• I thank you God for this most amazing day by Eric Whitacre
  I thank You God for most this amazing
  day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
  and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
  which is natural which is infinite which is yes
  (I who have died am alive again today,
  and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
  day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
  great happening illimitably earth)
  how should tasting touching hearing seeing
  breathing any—lifted from the no
  of all nothing—human merely being
  double unimaginable You?
  (now the ears of my ears awake and
  now the eyes of my eyes are opened) by e. e. cummings
  Note by Richard Kennedy: On a visit to Tucson, Arizona, e.e. cummings had a mystical experience while walking in the desert where he encountered a strange cactus-like plant: he touched one spine and jumped “spiritually 40 miles.” His journals are full of references to “le bon Dieu” and frequent prayers for help in his creative life (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”). he also prayed for strength to be his essential self (“may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong”), and for relief of spirit in times of depression (“almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; & may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness”). His basic religious feelings were in tune with his Unitarian upbringing. His concept of God was that of a comprehensive Oneness together with a sense of the presence of this Oneness in nature. In Xaipe he expressed this belief most clearly in this sonnet that combined both prayer and an awareness of Divinity in the natural world (I thank you God).
• Greatly Beloved, Fear Not from Dona nobis pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams
• Ethnic Combo Music: Argentina, Brazil (Samba), Django Rheinhardt Jazz Guitar, Gypsy, Israeli, Jazz Band, Jazz Combo, Klezmer, Mariachi, New Orleans, Parisian Café Music
• One Voice by Barry Manilow
• Motets by Juan del Encina (1468 - 1529)
  The most interesting Spanish composer, playwright and courtier at the turn of the 16th century was Juan del Encina. He entered the Duke of Alba's service in 1492 as master of ceremonies, writing both text and music for plays that were performed at the court. When in 1498 he failed to get a musical post at Salamanca cathedral he went to Rome to seek the aid of the Spanish Pope Alexander VI, who gave him a benefice there; he became a priest in 1519 and held various ecclesiastical posts in Málaga and Laón. As well as being a composer, Encina was also a poet of great delicacy, and translated the Bucolics of Virgil. He was a pioneer in the Spanish secular theatre and several of his compositions, presented in the courtly Cancionero de Palacio, are based on Virgil's Eclogues, and were villancicos written for stage presentation. By uniting popular and artistic elements, he broke new ground in the field of Spanish secular drama.
  Practice files - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Juan_del_Encina
• Motets by Juan Navarro (c.1560 - after 1604)
  Navarro was Spanish composer and Franciscan monk who went to Mexico, and his 1604 volume of Passion and Lamentation settings was one of the first music publications to appear in the New World. He was a notable early composer of the Andalusian school and predecessor of Guerrero and his great teacher, Morales. During the long reigns of Charles V (1517-56) and Philip II (1556-96) Spanish music, especially church music, reached its highest level of perfection and there was no lack of expert musicians of international calibre. Instrumental music, especially for organ and vihuela, attained an excellence equal to anything being produced in Europe while Spanish religious polyphony, which had distinctive individual qualities, was in the very first rank not only in its spiritual intensity but also in its musical achievement. Three great schools contributed to the astonishing wealth of Spanish religious music in this period: Castile, Catalonia-Aragon, and Andalusia.
• Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi by Sir Arthur Bliss
  Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
  where there is hatred, let me sow love;
  where there is injury, pardon;
  where there is doubt, faith;
  where there is despair, hope;
  where there is darkness, light;
  and where there is sadness, joy.
  O Divine One, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
  to be understood, as to understand;
  to be loved, as to love;
  for it is in giving that we receive,
  it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
  and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. Notes - Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO (1891-1975) was a British composer of American descent, his father having left New England to come and settle in London. Bliss’s mother, Agnes Kennard, was an accomplished pianist and his brothers all had musical abilities. He was educated at Rugby School and gained a considerable reputation at the school as a pianist. He received his BA from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and entered the Royal College of Music in 1913: here he studied composition with Charles V. Stanford and befriended Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. His musical studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in which he was wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916) and gassed at Cambrai (1918). The tragic death in battle of his brother, Kennard, together with his own war experiences, had a profound and lasting impact on his life and in his music, and found expression most particularly in his choral symphony, Morning Heroes (1930). Vaughan Williams credited this work as the primary inspiration for his 1937 Dona nobis pacem, which in turn served as the main model for Britten's 1962 War Requiem.
  Bliss's early music shows the influence of Stravinsky and Debussy: a Concerto for [wordless] Tenor, piano and strings; and his Colour Symphony of 1922 which explores the idea of the musical associations of different colors. After the war, Bliss was offered a professorship at the Royal College of Music (even though he had never finished his graduate studies), but instead he accompaned his American father (who had retired in Santa Barbara, California) to the U.S. In California he met Gertude Hoffmann, whom he married and brought back to London in 1925. His music from the 1920s-30s focused on ballet commissions and six film scores. His Introduction and Allegro which was premiered in Philadelphia under Leopold Stokowski, and his Music for Strings debuted at the Salzburg Festival in 1935 under Sir Adrian Boult.
  During the first years of the Second World War, Bliss taught at the University of California - Berkeley. From 1941-44 he was Director of Music at the BBC; he spearheaded the division of British music broadcasting into categories after the war, such as the present day Radios 1 and 3. In 1950 he was knighted and in 1953 he was appointed to succeed Arnold Bax as Master of the Queen's Musick. In this capacity he composed numerous works and fanfares for royal occasions including the Investiture of the Prince of Wales (1969). Throughout the 1950s-60s, Sir Arthur Bliss recorded fine interpretations of several of his major works, but was often overshadowed by coincidentally similar large-scale works by Benjamin Britten and Witold Lutoslawski. 1970 brought the publication of Bliss’s autobiography, As I remember. The last of the composer’s masterpieces – the Cello Concerto written for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the haunting Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi - date from his final years.
• The Sailor and Young Nancy by E. J. Moeran
• Music of Hildegard von Bingen, and Hymn #27
• Birds: Fly, Singing Bird and When Swallows Fly by Edward Elgar; excerpts from Dalglish's music
• Drömmarna by Jean Sibelius
• Deep in My Soul, op. 53, no. 2 (1908 ) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)Text by George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron (1788-1824) from The Corsair, Canto I: xiv, 1-2:
  Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
  Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
  Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
  Then trembles into silence as before.
  
  There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
  Burns the slow flame, eternal - but unseen;
  Which not the darkness of Despair can damp,
  Though vain its ray as it had never been.
• Circles by Dave Brubeck
  Within the circles of our lives we dance the circles of the years,
  the circles of the seasons within the circles of the years,
  the cycles of the moon within the circles of the seasons,
  the circles of our reasons within the cycles of the moon.
  Again, again we come and go, changed, changing.
  Hands join, unjoin in love and fear, grief and joy.
  The circles turn, each giving into each, into all.
  Only music keeps us here, each by all the others held.
  In the hold of hands and eyes we turn in pairs, that joining joining each to all again.
  And then we turn aside, alone, out of the sunlight gone into the darker circles of return.
  -Wendell Berry
  Notes on the composer - David Warren Brubeck (1920- ) is a U.S. jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a genius in his field, he has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way." Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. Much of his music employs unusual time signatures. His new choral piece Circles sets a text by Wendell Berry.
  After graduating from the University of the Pacific in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the army and served overseas in George Patton's Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge. He played in a band, quickly integrating it, and gaining both popularity and deference. After finishing his compositional studies at Mills College (Oakland, CA) under Darius Milhaud, Brubeck founded The Dave Brubeck Quartet (1951-67) with Paul Desmond on saxophone. The group maintained a long residency at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub, and in 1954 Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, the first jazz musician to be so honored. Brubeck converted to Catholicism in 1980, shortly after completing the Mass To Hope. Today, Brubeck continues to write new works, including orchestrations and ballet scores, and tours about eighty cities each year. Since his 85th birthday his area of focus is the US, where he still premieres new works, like the 2006 Cannery Row Suite.
  Notes on the text - Poet and conservationist Wendell Berry was born in Newcastle, Kentucky in 1934. Berry's father and Robert Rodale contributed to the founding of the organic farming movement: following their examples, Wendell uses only farm animals to work his fields and organic methods of fertilization and pest control. In 1958, Berry received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and attended Stanford University's creative writing program, where he studied with Stegner in a seminar that included Larry McMurtry, Edward Abbey and Ken Kesey. His writing is grounded in the notion that one's work ought to be responsive to one's natural environment. In 1964, he and his wife Tanya purchased the Kentucky farm close to his parents' birth places, and in 1965 moved onto the land to become organic farmers (of tobacco, corn and small grains) on what would eventually become a 125-acre homestead.
  Berry was granted a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, which took him and his family to Italy and France in 1961. From 1962 to 1964, he taught English at New York University’s University College in the Bronx. From 1964-77, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky. In the 1970s and early 1980s he served as an editor of, and wrote many articles for, Rodale Press publications including Organic Gardening and Farming and The New Farm. In 1987, he returned to the University of Kentucky, teaching literature and education. Today he still lives, writes, and farms at Lane's Landing near Port Royal, Kentucky, alongside the Kentucky River, not far from where it flows into the Ohio. He is a prolific author, with at least twenty-five books (or chapbooks) of poems (A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997), sixteen volumes of essays (The Failure of War, 1999), and eleven novels and short story collections to his name. His poetic voice is direct and resonant, indebted to Whitman and William Carlos Williams.
  
• Mata del Anima Sola (Tree of the Lonely Soul) by Antonio Estévez (1916-1988, Venezuela)
  Notes on the poetry: The dramatic poetry of educator and politician Alberto Torrealba (1918-1971) focused on solitary, heroic figures. His greatest poem is the epic Florentino y el diablo, a Faustian tale set on the Venezuelan plains.
  Translation: Tree of the lonely soul, wide opening of the riverside, now you will be able to say, "Here slept the clear-voiced one." With the whistle and sting of the twisting wind, the dappled and violet dusk entered the corral. The night, a tired mare, shakes her mane and black tail above the river; and, in its silence, your ghostly heart is filled with awe.
  Notes on the composer: Antonio Estévez (1916-1998) was the musical founder/composer of the Central University of Venezuela Chorale and the Phonology Music Institute at the Simon Bolivar Center (Venezuela). In the 1930s, he played oboe with the Caracas Military Band and the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra and was awarded the National Music Prize (like our Pulitzer) in 1949. In the 1960s he was an influential contributor at the Research Center for French Broadcasting in Paris.
• Dixit Maria (Renaissance motet) by Hans Leo Hassler (c1564-1612)
  Notes: The feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which dates from the seventh century, acknowledges the preparation by God of his people to receive their Saviour and Lord, putting 'heaven in ordinary' and showing that mortal flesh can indeed bring hope to the world. This festival is in both the eastern and the western Church.
  Dixit Maria ad angelum: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.
  Mary said to the angel [Gabriel], "Behold I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her. Luke I: 26-3
  
• Austria & Bavaria - Star Singers Carol
  In Austria and Bavaria, children dress up as "The Three Kings" and carry an imitation star on a pole. They go from house to house from New Year's day to January 6th, and sing religious songs. The children are called "Star singers." If they are rewarded with sweets, they may eat them. If they are rewarded with money, it is given to a Catholic church or to a charity. They put a chalk mark "C.M.B" on houses they have visited. Although this is sometimes taken as a reference to the three kings - Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar - it may originally have represented the words "Christus mansionem benedicat" (Christ bless this house).
• O Tannebaum (German Traditional Carol)
• O Christmas Tree (1965) by Vince Guaraldi
  An instrumental version of "O Tannenbaum" was composed by former pianist Vince Guaraldi for the Peanuts special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," a very popular holiday TV show that was created and first aired in 1965.
• Quotation: Winter is a cold thing,
  But faith and hope are warm,
  And charity's a bold thing,
  That can outlast the storm.
  For love has its defense
  Where winter cannot blow,
  And he is safe who senses
  That spring beneath the snow.
  Poem (1954) by Barrows Dunham
• A Winter Prayer by Fenno Follensbea Heath, Jr.
  The Lord Came down on a snowy day.
  White, O, white He lay.
  In spring, the Lord walked all around.
  Stirred seed, spread sod o'er leaf and ground.
  Fell with the rain and rose again.
  Green root, green shoot, oh green he strode.
  So kneel I by thy branches in the snow.
  Let all my branches down and pray to know
  That from each bough so barren now
  A shoot of grace, a sprig of faith will grow.
  by Alexander Winston
• Bell Carol: Hark, How the Bells adapted in 1936 by Peter Wilhousky (1902-1978) from a 1916 Ukrainian song by Mykola Leontovich (1877-1921)
  Click here to hear a recording of this selection by the Cal Tech combined Glee Clubs
  Click here to hear a keyboard play all the parts (SATB)
  

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