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 : 12:15-1pm 2 Sundays per month and 6:45-7:30pm occasional Thursdays - NEW MEMBERS WELCOME

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July 11 "Beauty and Evil: Listening to the Book of Job"
John Burt
Drew Pereli, piano

July 18 "Singing Together: Spirituality in Folk Music"
Anne Goodwin & friends (also providing music)

July 25 "Reconciliation and Rwanda"
Eric Segal
Flute Chamber Trio with Mies Boet-Whitaker, Robert Olson, and Barbara Tilson, piano

August 1 "Stumbling Towards Spirituality"
Ginny LaCrow and Annette Sawyer
Kenneth Seitz, piano

August 8 "'The Work' and Parenting"
Anna Watson
Drew Pereli, piano

August 15 "Our History in Hymns"
Lori Kenshaft and Kenneth Seitz, piano

August 22 "Meditation"
Tom Hogan, Elizabeth Zabel, and the First Parish Meditation Group
First Parish Woodwind Quintet

August 29 "Don't Be Nice, Be Vulnerable: Communication that Connects"
Linda Malik with the Compassionate Communication Group
Kenneth Seitz, piano

Sept. 5 "Spiritual Evolution"
John Hodges
Kenneth Seitz, piano

Sept. 12 Ingathering (Teshuvah/Turning)

• Prelude: Organ
• Congregational Song: Turn, Turn, Turn (1959) by Pete Seeger
  Ecclesiastes 3:1
• Intergenerational Story: Jonah
• Water Communion Music: Litany for the Whale (19800 by John Cage (1912-1992)
  Vocal duet
• Offertory: Ecco moromorar l'onde by Claudio Monteverdi
  Online score (pp. 68-74) - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/2/25/IMSLP52944-PMLP82323-Monteverdi__Claudio_-_Madrigali._Libro_II.pdf
  Online piano practice tracks: http://users.skynet.be/fa976167/practice_files_archive.htm
  Ecco mormorar l’onde is an early madrigal from Monteverdi's his Second Book of Madrigals (of 9) (1590). Although not yet as dramatic as the later continuo madrigals, the soprano parts are rather florid, showing knowledge of the Ferrara school of composition and the ensemble of virtuoso women singers who influenced them. The musical description of dawn is quite programmatic; beginning low and soft and gradually building, as well as including a lot of text-painting, such as the melismas on “cantar” (sing). The text by Tasso makes a play on words between dawn “l’aura” and the beloved “Laura.”
  
  Hark! Low murmurs the water
  The bushes are a-flutter,
  In morning’s breeze the groves are gently stirring
  O’er leafy branches amorous birds are winging
  And singing, sweetly singing;
  The east is bright with laughter
  And lo, the dawn is waking
  The sea her mirror making
  And calming all the heavens
  Light frost the meadows pearling
  And lofty mountains gilding
  Lovely and gay Aurora!
  Soft winds do herald thee, and thou my Laura
  Each seared heart reviving.
• Anthem: Cherubini [250th birthday is 9/12]
• Postlude: Radhalaila (Horah campfire dance song) arr. by Max Frey

Yom Kippur is Sept. 17/18

Sept. 19 [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Thou Knowest, Lord, the Secrets of our Hearts (1695) by Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
  Online score - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/purc-001.pdf
  Online piano practice file (correct pitches, incorrect articulation) - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/purc-001.mid
  Purcell’s second setting of this text was written for Queen Mary’s funeral on March 5, 1695, when it was accompanied by “flat Mournfull Trumpets” (“flat” because slide trumpets were used instead of the brighter D trumpets, and “mournful” indicating a very slow tempo). Nineteen manuscript sources in a catalog of Purcell’s complete works indicate its popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This anthem takes its powerful effect from its extreme simplicity, moving in solemn block harmonies all the way until a brief touch of imitation in the final phrase. The piece was one of Purcell's favorites, and was also performed at his own funeral, nine months after the premiere.
  Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;
  shut not Thy merciful ears unto our prayer;
  but spare us, Lord most holy,
  O God most mighty,
  O holy and most merciful Saviour,
  Thou most worthy Judge eternal,
  suffer us not, at our last hour,
  for any pains of death, to fall from thee. Amen.
• Offertory: 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.
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Autumn begins on Sept. 22

Sept. 26 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Priidite, poklonimsia (Come Let Us Worship), op. 37, no. 1 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
  Online score in Russian only - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/1/11/IMSLP31110-PMLP28683-Op37-01.pdf
  Online midi practice files for all of the Rachmaninoff Vespers - http://cyberbass.org/
  No.1 — The All-Night Vigil begins with the opening call to prayer, “Priidite, poklonimsia” (Come, let us worship), which brings the faithful in from the realm of the secular and worldly chaos to the peace and order of the spiritual domain. Rachmaninoff succeeds in writing a hymn that masterfully expresses the transition from the earthly to the heavenly: nominally in the key of C major, the music spends most of the time in the realm of the supertonic
  (D minor) and its dominant (A major), resulting in an unsettled quality until the last measures on the pedal tone G finally define the key. The parallel musical structure with which each phrase begins reflects the structure of the text, based on Psalm 94:6. The multi-layered melody is of Rachmaninoff’s invention, but its undulating, step-wise movement and asymmetric, text-related structure at once establish a kinship with the ancient znamenny chant. The bowing motion of the faithful is musically depicted through the shape of the opening phrase.
  Text: Priidite, poklonimsia Tsarevi nashemu Bogu. (Come, let us worship God, our leader.)
  Priidite, poklonimsia i pripadem (Come, let us worship and fall down)
  Hristu Tsarevi nashemu Bogu. (before the anointed one, our leader and our God.)
  Priidite, poklonimsia u pripadem (Come, let us worship and fall down)
  samomu Hristu Tsarevi i Bogu nashemu. (before the most annointed one, our leader and our God.)
  Priidite, poklonimsia i pripadem Yemu. (Come, let us worship and fall down before Him.)
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem: 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 Arvelo 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. This piece has two distinct sections: one slow and meditative, and the other very quick and rhythmic based on a combined 3/4 and 6/8 meter which is characteristic of a dance called joropo. The music depicts the solitude and mystery of the llanos, the high plains of Venezuela, while the tenor solo represents the llanero, or “man of the plains” whose songs are improvised. In the joropo section, the choir imitates the instruments that are traditionally used to play the dance. The altos and tenors have the rhythm of the cuatro (a small guitar with only four strings), the sopranos imitate the diatonic harp, and the basses sing the guitar bordones, all of which combine to provide the “instrumental” accompaniment to the tenor soloist.
• Postlude:
• Notes for the Rachmaninoff Vespers: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s emergence as a composer coincided with a renaissance of Russian sacred choral music in the late nineteenth century. One of the prime factors that contributed was the creative environment fostered by the Moscow Synodal Choir and Synodal School of Church Singing. Rachmaninoff dedicated the All-Night Vigil to Stephan Smolensky, director of the school from 1886-1901 who encouraged composers to use traditional chants in their compositions. Rachmaninoff’s fellow student at the Moscow Philharmonic Society, Nikolai Danilin, became principal conductor of the Synodal Choir in 1910, and led to its greatest triumphs including the premieres in 1910 and 1915, respectively, of the Liturgy and the All-Night Vigil.
  The unchanging hymns of the All-Night Vigil which were sung Saturday evenings before feast days were familiar to even a secular composer like Rachmaninoff. His lack of intimacy with arcane constructions of Church Slavonic and liturgical minutiae of the services actually had a positive effect; as a sensitive artist, he gave thoughtful consideration to every text, using a subjective, personal, approach, eliciting debates as to whether his sacred choral works are intended for performance in actual church services, or in public concerts of sacred choral music (common in the nineteenth century.) The years separating the Liturgy and the Al1-Night Vigil (1910-1915) have been described as a watershed in Rachmaninoff’s creative output, a time of turning away from the elegiac lyricism that characterized his earlier works toward bolder, more modernist tendencies.
  Alexander Petrovich Smirnov, who in 1915 was a boy alto in the Moscow Synodal Choir, describes in his memoirs the singers’ first encounter with Rachmaninoff’s score: In February 1915, at one of the regular rehearsals of the Synodal Choir, there appeared on the music stands a new score in a blue cover. Opening the music, we saw the inscription: “S. Rachmaninoff.All-Night Vigil.To the memory of Stepan Vasil’yevich Smolensky.”The score, like all the Synodal Choir’s music, had been reproduced lithographically and had not yet gone through any publishing house.We were to be the first to perform the work on the concert stage... The task before us evoked a sense of joy both among the singers, and on the part of our conductor, Nikolai Mikhailovich Danilin, as could be perceived from his uplifted mood.This was due, in no small measure, to the dedication: for the Synodal Choir and School, the name of S.V. Smolensky was sacred.We began to rehearse with a sense of emotion...The work, which was completed by the composer in early February, was premiered on 10 March [1915] and received high acclaim from both music critics and listeners: equally admired were the music and the quality of the performance. Despite the rule that prohibited applause at performances of sacred music, following the final chord of the Vigil the audience burst into tumultuous applause [but] only Rachmaninoff went out onto the empty stage, returning backstage with a twig of while lilac. A reviewer, V. Derzhanovsky, noted that in the All-Night Vigil, Rachmaninoff’s style exhibited not only positive growth, but also a new universality — a quality sought after by many creative artists of that period: Perhaps never before has Rachmaninoff approached so close to the people, to their style, to their soul, as in this work. And, perhaps, this work in particular bespeaks a broadening of his creative flight, a conquest of new dimensions of the spirit, and, hence, a genuine evolution of his powerful talent.z
  The All-Night Vigil service, as celebrated in a typical Russian cathedral or parish setting at the turn of the twentieth century, had two variants: the Resurrectional Vigil served on Saturday night (at the start of the liturgical cycle for Sunday), and the Festal Vigil served on the eves of major feast days. Both variants shared a certain number of fixed, unchanging hymns, which constituted the ordinary of the Vigil; hymns which where “proper” to each type of Vigil, and hymns which change according to the liturgical calendar. In choosing which hymns from the Vigil service to set, Rachmaninoff’s foremost concern was the large-scale artistic unity and balance of the overall cycle, rather than the more narrow scope of liturgical requirements. Earlier composers had set various combinations of these hymns and responses with varying degrees of chant-based and freely composed melodies including Ippolitov-Ivanov, Nikolsky, Gretchaninoff, Chesnokov, and Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff’s ultimate artistic goals determined the manner in which he borrowed and used chant melodies. From the time Tchaikovsky brought the melodic treasury of chant to the attention of serious musicians, Russian composers sought various ways of harmonizing or contrapuntally treating the chants.While critics noted his “‘loving and careful attitude with respect to the ancient church chants,” Rachmaninoff’s choice and treatment of the melodies was devoid of dogmatic strictness. He used both melodies that were widely sung in church and had seen numerous prior arrangements, such as the Russian “Greek” Chant for No. 2, and the Kievan Chants for No. 4, and No. 5, as well as znamenny chant melodies that were hardly ever heard in church. He approached the melodies with a considerable degree of freedom, in some instances altering them slightly, in other instances transposing them and distributing them among various voices, as he displayed them in varied harmonic or contrapuntal surroundings. Rachmaninoff’s free composed “counterfeits” are so skillfully created that a person not intimately familiar with the actual chant repertoire would have a difficult time distinguishing them from the genuine melodies.

Oct. 3 [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Child Dedication Music: We Are by Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
  Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell is a native New Yorker and UU now living in Washington, DC where, since 1979, she has performed with Sweet Honey in the Rock. Dr. Barnwell spends much of her time off stage working as a master teacher and choral clinician in cultural performance theory. We Are... is a hopeful celebration of new life equating the birth of each child with the dawning of a new day. It was written for Redwood Cultural Work’s House Choir, the Boys Choir of Harlem, and MUSE: Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir.
  For each child that’s born,
  a morning star rises
  and sings to the universe
  who we are.
  We are our grandmothers’ prayers,
  and we are our grandfathers’ dreamings,
  we are the breath of our ancestors,
  we are the spirit of God.
  We are mothers of courage and fathers of time,
  we are daughters of dust and the sons of great visions,
  we’re sisters of mercy and brothers of love,
  we are lovers of life and the builders of nations,
  we’re seekers of truth and keepers of faith,
  we are makers of peace and the wisdom of ages.
• Candle Music:
• Offertory: The Shower, op. 71, no. 1 (1914) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
  Musical score online: http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/The_Shower%2C_Op._71%2C_No._1_%28Edward_Elgar%29
  Online midi sound file: http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/3/3b/Elgar_the_shower.mid
  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)
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 9-11 HS Student Musician Trip to New York City
Group Leaders: Laura & Michael Prichard

• 3-day trip for students in grades 9-12 ($175 COST)
• This trip has four purposes:
  1) to explore the music and culture of New York City, and,
  2) to meet New Yorkers, musicians, and NYC college students, and,
  3) to learn more about culture re. the Feb 2011 Youth Group Service trip, and,
  4) to explore contrasting ways of celebrating the October 11 holiday            [Columbus Day/Día de la Raza/Indigenous People’s Day]

Oct. 10 Coumbus Day Weekend [guest preaching]

• Service Music: Instrumental Chamber Music

Oct. 17 Ferry Beach Weekend [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem: This We Know by Ron Jeffers (1943-)
  This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.
  This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
  Whate’er befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.
  This we know. We did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.
  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. This we know.
• Postlude:

Oct. 24 [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Zoriu byut (Reveille) by Georgy Vasil’evich Sviridov (1915-1998)
  Sviridov, born in the Kursk region of Russia, studied with Dmitri Shostakovich at Leningrad Conservatory. He is the strongest contemporary link to Russia’s monumental musical past, and such composers as Glinka, Musorgsky, and Rachmaninoff. The key forces in Sviridov’s works are religion and narodnost’: a nineteenth century literary concept that refers to a nation’s spirit through the ages. Sviridov’s works are permeated with prominent characteristics of narodnost’: ritual as an act of relinking with the past, an inimitably Russian ‘sociability’ as an expression of sincerity and depth of emotion; the epic style as a means for philosophical overview; musical symbolism (in particular, ‘bell’ effects); the lyrical style as the voice of nature; and the chorus as the symbol and voice of the people. His style is programmatic and incorporates rich vocal expressive devices and frequent dissonance within an overridingly tonal framework.
  A Pushkin Wreath is a musical ‘book of poems’ (10) by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799- 1837), Russia’s greatest poet. No. 7, Zoriu byut exhibits typical Sviridov traits: long note values, a solo line over a hummed choral texture, intricate divisi lines, elaborate dynamic effects, and static harmony. The composer imposes his own peculiar pacing and acoustical effects: time appears to be “frozen,” and movement is accomplished through space and color. (Condensed from Musica Russica notes by Peter Jermihov, c. 1995)
  Zoriu byut... iz ruk moih They’re sounding reveille... from my hands
  Vethiy Dante vipadayet, The ancient Dante falls,
  Na ustah nachatiy stih On my lips a nascent verse,
  Nedochitanniy zatih - Half-read, falls silent,
  Duh dalioko uletayet. The spirit soars into the distance.
  Zvuk privichniy, zvuk zhivoy, Ah, familiar sound, lively sound!
  Kak ti chasto razdavalsia How often you sounded
  Tam, gde tiho razvivalsia There, where I quietly grew up
  Ya davnishneyu poroy. In days long past.
  Zoriu byut... They’re sounding reveille...
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Oct. 29-31 TBA Hallowe'en Musicale/Talent Show with costumes

Oct. 31 Samhain/All Soul's [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Organ
• Candle Music: The Peace of Wild Things by Joan Szymko
  This work is based on a beautiful poem by Kentuckian Wendell Berry. Joan Szymko is a composer and choral conductor who has led choirs in the Pacific Northwest for over 25 years, and has a significant body of choral work, especially prolific in literature for women’s voices. This work was written in 2006 and is “dedicated to the welfare of all beings.”
  When despair for the world grows in me
  and I wake in the night at the least sound
  in fear of what my life and children's lives may be,
  I go lie down where the wood drake
  rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
  I come into the peace of wild things
  who do not tax their lives with forethought
  of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
  And I feel above me the day-blind stars
  waiting with their light. For a time
  I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
• Offertory: 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.
  
• Anthem: Breaths by Dr. Ysaye Barnwell (UU composer and Sweet Honey in the Rock member)
  Listen more often to things than to beings
  Listen more often to things than to beings
  Its the ancestors’ breath when the fire’s voice is heard
  Its the ancestor’s breath in the voice of the water.
  
  Those who have died have never never left
  The dead are not under the earth
  They are in the rustling trees, they are in the groaning woods
  They are in the crying grass, they are in the moaning rocks
  The dead are not under the earth, so
  
  Listen more often to things than to beings...etc.
  Those who have died have never never left
  The dead are not under the earth
  They are in the woman’s breast, they are in the wailing child.
  They are with us in the home, they are with us in the crowd.
  The dead are not under the earth
  Listen more often to things than to beings...etc.
• Postlude:

Nov. 7 [MF preaching]
Daylight Savings Time Ends

• Prelude: movement from Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna
  Online midi practice files for all of the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Candle Music: Ninye Otpushchayeshchi, op. 37, no. 5 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
  Score in Russian only - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/5b/IMSLP31114-PMLP28683-Op37-05.pdf
  Online midi practice files for all of the Rachmaninoff Vespers - http://cyberbass.org/
  No.5 — The Canticle of St. Symeon, “Lord, now lettest Thou” (Luke 2:29-32), describes the fulfillment of the final promise, as in the Old Testament Temple the elder Symeon recognizes the Messiah in the infant Jesus, brought there by His parents, according to the Law. The slow rocking motion of the accompanying voices on two-note descending figures, akin to a lullaby, imparts to the piece a static and peaceful quality.With a prayer in the “first person,” Rachmaninoff again chooses a single voice (tenor soloist) as the medium of the message. This was reputedly Rachmaninoff’s favorite movement in the Vigil, which the composer requested be performed at his funeral, a wish that was not to be carried out.
  Nine otpushchayeshi raba Tvoyego, Vladiko, (Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant)
  po glagolu Tvoyemu s mirom, (depart in peace, according to Thy word,)
  yako videsta ochi moi spaseniye Tvoye, (for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,)
  yezhe yesi ugotoval pred litsem vseh liudey, (which Thou prepared before the face of all people)
  svet vo otkroveniye yazikov, (a light to enlighten the Gentiles,)
  i slavu liudey Tvoih Izrailia. (and the glory of Thy people Israel.)
• Offertory: movement from Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna
  Online midi practice files for all of the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Anthem: movement from Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna
  Online midi practice files for all of the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Postlude:

Nov. 14
[Possible Shinn service]

• Prelude: movement from Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna
  Online midi practice files for all of the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Candle Music: Libera me by Anton Bruckner
  Three trombones, cello, bass and organ with choir (ADL)
• Offertory:
• Anthem: movement from Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna
  Online midi practice files for all of the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Postlude:

Nov. 20 Harvest Moon Fair
Café Music in the Vestry

Nov. 21 Thanksgiving Intergenerational Service [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Featured musicians from the Harvest Moon Café
• Cornbread Communion Music: Mi’kmaq Honor Song (Nova Scotia) arr. by Lydia Adams
  The Mi'kmaq language, Míkmawísimk, is an Algonquian language spoken by 8,000 Indians in the Canadian Maritimes and a few US communities. The Mi’kmaq Honor Song is a chant to honor the Creator. This arrangement by Lydia Adams uses humming to “move the air” and create a wilderness atmosphere into which nature sounds and the human call are suspended. Lydia Adams is conductor of the Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto, Canada and recipient of many awards. She took over as Conductor and Artistic Director of the Elmer Iseler Singers in 1998.
• Offertory: Featured musicians from the Harvest Moon Café
• Anthem: Featured musicians from the Harvest Moon Café
• Postlude: Featured musicians from the Harvest Moon Café

Nov. 28 Advent I [MF preaching]
Hannukah is Dec. 1-9

• Service Music: Chamber Music

Dec. 5 Advent II [MF preaching]

• Prelude: 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 people, 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 musician. 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
• Candle Music: O Wild West Wind, op. 53, no. 3 (1908 ) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
  Online score - http://www.doveton-music.de/PDFfree/ElgarOWildWestWind.pdf
  Online midi practice files - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/5/57/BYRD-SUR.mid
  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. 6 Tentative Date for Alliance Holiday Party

• 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).
• 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
• O Tannenbaum (German Traditional Carol)
• Costumed Play - A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) by Charles Schultz with music by Vince Guaraldi and lyrics by Lee Mendelson
• Songs for the Costumed Play
  Christmas Time is Here
  Linus and Lucy
  Schroeder plays: Beethoven's Für Elise, Classical Jingle Bells
  O Little Town of Bethlehem
  Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
  O Christmas Tree (An instrumental version of "O Tannenbaum")
  
• 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

Dec. 12 Winter Music Service

• Prelude: Lux Aurumque by Eric Whitacre
  Lux, (Light,)
  calida gravisque pura velut aurum (warm and heavy as pure gold)
  et canunt angeli molliter (and the angels sing softly)
  modo natum. (to the newborn baby.)
  
• Musical Offering: For Him She Sings by Daniel Pinkham
  Octet
  I. Come Learn of Mary
  II. Easy Enough for Strangers
  III. Even So She Sings
  Daniel Pinkham was a prolific composer and enjoyed a long career as organist, harpsichordist, teacher (New England Conservatory), and choral conductor at Boston’s King’s Chapel. He is known for his “meticulous setting of language to render it as comprehensible as possible in performance” (DeBoer & Ahouse, 1988). This is certainly true of For Him She Sings (2000, subtitled Three Domestic Carols) on texts by Boston-based poet, actress, and children’s author Norma Farber (1910-1984).
  1. Come Learn of Mary
  Who can’t rejoice,
  come learn of me
  that hold a baby
  on my knee,
  and keep him safe
  for what’s to be.
  Come, Joseph, share
  a mother’s pride.
  Play with our boy
  at seek, at hide.
  Kneel, be a camel,
  let him ride.
  Let him recall,
  in years to be,
  should day grow dark,
  too dark to see,
  how once in light
  we lived, we three.
  2. Easy Enough for Strangers
  Easy enough for strangers—
  far-come and famous kings—
  to lavish a child
  with wealthy offerings.
  How shall I help his mother
  Mary, my sweet wife,
  raise him up to a long,
  abundant life?
  How teach him true reward,
  how tell him cost?
  How be father
  to a boy star-crossed?
  3. Even So She Sings
  Now is the intimate hour.
  The roof leaks, but the hay’s
  dry within the stall
  where a newborn infant lies.
  The stable reeks of a score
  of animal breaths and all
  their damp coats and the farm
  or forest whence they’ve come.
  Even so she sings.
  A rude place, she feels,
  for this family affair:
  her personal event.
  The kings disquiet her
  as each, approaching, kneels,
  his gift an embarrassment.
  A murmur takes her throat,
  thrumming to be let out.
  And so she sings.
  What rough clamor, this noise
  of creature wing and hoof!
  They can’t with the best will
  in the world, keep quiet enough
  to hear her lulling voice.
  They do try to be still.
  A child has heard her song
  separate among the throng.
  For him she sings.
  Poems © Norma Farber, reprinted with permission.
  
• Musical Offering: Magnificat by John Rutter (1945-)
  Online midi practice files: http://home.earthlink.net/~mahaneyc/magnificat.html
  Online midi practice files for all of the Rutter Magnificat - http://cyberbass.org/
  
• Offertory: Velichit dusha Moya Ghosphoda (My Soul Magnifies the Lord), op. 37, no. 11 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
  Online score in Russian only - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/6/6a/IMSLP31120-PMLP28683-Op37-11.pdf
  Online midi practice files for all of the Rachmaninoff Vespers - http://cyberbass.org/
  No.11 — Rachmaninoff now sets the Canticle of the Virgin Mary, “Velichit dusha moya Ghospoda” (My soul magnifies the Lord) (Luke 1:46-55), the only New Testament canticle used in the canon and the only canticle still commonly sung in practice during the Resurrectional Vigil. Traditionally, each verse of the canticle is followed by a refrain, in this case, the refrain “Chestneyshuyu heruvim” (More honorable than the cherubim). Rachmaninoff does not treat Mary’s words in a dramatic fashion, but, rather, as an epic, prophetic utterance.The verses are set to a heavy chant-like melody, again of the composer’s invention, which resides primarily in the basses. Contrasted with this is the light and luminous “angelic” refrain, in which Mary’s high rank in the heavenly hierarchy is exalted.
  11.
  Velichit dusha Moya Ghospoda, (My soul magnifies the Lord,)
  i vozradovasia duh Moy o Boze Spase Moyem. (and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.)
  Pripev:
  Chestneyshuyu Heruvim
  i slavneyshuyu bez sravneniya Serafim,
  bez istleniya
  Boga Slova rozhdshuyu,
  sushchuyu Bogoroditsu
  Tia velichayem.
  Yako prizfre na smireniye rabi Svoyeya,
  se bo otnine ublazhat Mia fsi rodi.
  Pripev:
  Yako sotvori Mne velichiye Silniy,
  i Sviato imia Yego,
  i milost Yego v rodi rodov boyashchimsia Yego
  Pripev:
  Nizlozhi silniya so prestol,
  i voznese smirenniya,
  alchushchiya ispolni blag,
  i bogatiyashchiyasia otpusti tshchi.
  Pripev:
  Vospriyat Izrailia, otroka Svoyego,
  pomianuti milosti,
  yakozhe glagola ko ottsem nashim,
  Avraamu i semeni yego dazhe do veka.
  Refrain:
  More honorable than the Cherubim
  and more glorious beyond compare
  than the Seraphim,
  without defilement Thou gavest birth
  to God the Word,
  true Theotokos, we magnify Thee.
  For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden.
  For behold, henceforth all generations
  will call me blessed.
  Refrain:
  For He who is mighty has done great things for me,
  and holy is His name, and His mercy is on those
  who fear Him from generation to generation…
  Refrain:
  He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
  and has exalted those of low degree;
  He has filled the hungry with good things,
  and the rich He has sent empty away.
  Refrain:
  He has helped His servant Israel,
  in remembrance of His mercy,
  as He spoke to our fathers,
  to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

Dec. 19 Intergenerational Service - stories of Mary
Winter begins on Dec. 21

• Preludes: Prophetiae Sibyllarum by Orlando di Lasso
  Online score - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/a/a9/IMSLP52276-PMLP108352-Das_Chorwerk_048_-_Lassus__Orlando_-_Prophetiae_Sybillarum.pdf
  I. Sibylla Persica & Online midi practice file - http://www.cpdl.org/brianrussell/539.mid
  VII. Sibylla Hellespontiaca & Midi file - http://www.cpdl.org/brianrussell/545.mid
  IX. Sibylla Europaea & Midi file - http://www.cpdl.org/brianrussell/547.mid
  Dixit Maria (Renaissance motet) by Hans Leo Hassler (c1564-1612)
  Octet
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-dix.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/lass-dix.mid
  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
  
• Candle Music: Bogoroditsye Devo (Hail Mary), op. 37, no. 6 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
  Online score - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/5/5e/Rachmaninov_Bogorodyitse_Dyevo_PML.pdf
  Online practice midi organ file (faster than we will sing) - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/c/c2/Rachmaninov_Bogorodyitse_Dyevo_PML.mid
  Online midi practice files for all of the Rachmaninoff Vespers - http://cyberbass.org/
  No.6 — After giving due praise to God, the Orthodox Church always pays homage to the Virgin Mary — the Theotokos (lit., “the one who gave birth to God”). The vesperal portion of the All-Night Vigil concludes with “Bogoroditse Devo” (Rejoice, O Virgin), the scriptural angelic greeting. Although the hymn is written in a freely harmonic style, the narrow compass of the melody, which gently rises and falls in inflection along with the words, once again shows that Rachmaninoff never strayed far from the “chant style” anywhere in the Vigil.
  Bogoroditse Devo, raduysia, (Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos,)
  Blagodatnaya Mariye, Ghospod s Toboyu. (Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.)
  Blagoslovenna Ti v zhenah, (Blessed art Thou among women,)
  i blagosloven Plod chreva Tvoyego, (and blessed is the Fruit of Thy womb,)
  yako Spasa rodila yesi dush nashih. (for Thou hast borne the Savior of our souls.)
• Offertory: Ave Maria by Franz Biebl
  Online piano practice files: http://users.skynet.be/fa976167/Practice%20Midi%20Files/Ave%20Maria%20(Biebl)%20-%20All.mid
  
• Anthem: Hymn to the Virgin by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
• Postlude: The Last Month of the Year (When Was Jesus Born) traditional Gospel

Dec. 24 Evening Services

• The Lamb by Fenno Follensbea Heath, Jr.
• 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.
• The Oxen (1967) by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
  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.
• Tota pulchra es Maria by Maurice Duruflé
  Treble Double Quintet
  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

Dec. 26 Poetry Service [Lay-led]

Jan. 2 [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: 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
• Offertory:
• Anthem: Thou visitest the earth (1743) by Maurice Greene
  Online score - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/2/2d/Tvte.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/1/1b/Tvte.mid
• Postlude:

Jan. 9 MLK topic [MF preaching]
Possible date for Social Justice Fair

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

Jan. 16 MLK Sunday [guest preaching]

• Service music: First Parish Jazz Band

Jan. 23 [MF preaching]

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

Jan. 30 Stewardship Sunday [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Os Justi by Anton Bruckner (1824-1894)
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/bruckner/bruc-005.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/bruckner/bruc-005.mid
  Notes: Anton Bruckner's motets are short masterpieces by the devout Catholic Austrian church musician and orchestral composer. Os Justi, with its long expansive lines, clear counterpoint, and expressive suspensions is one of his best.
  The just man shall expound to us wise and worthy things,
  His speech shall tell us of righteousness.
  The statutes of God shall be ever in his heart.
• Offertory:
• Anthem: Surge Illuminare from the second volume of Gradualia (1607) by William Byrd (c1540-1623)
  Chamber Choir
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/9a/BYRD-SUR.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/5/57/BYRD-SUR.mid
  Translation: "Arise, shine, O people, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Alleluia." (Isaiah 60:1)
  Notes: The greatest English composer of his generation, Byrd was a versatile musician. 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 Gunpowder 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
• Postlude:

Feb. 6 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Sweet Day by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
  The prolific Ralph Vaughan Williams is considered the quintessential English composer. Choral and vocal works form a deeply important part of his repertoire, from large scale choral orchestral works like the Sea Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem, to miniature motets and madrigals like this setting of a George Herbert poem. The poem tells of the passing of all things (the day, the spring) but the virtuous soul endures. The music has a pastoral/folksong quality, reminiscent of Debussy and Delius.
  Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
  The bridal of the earth and sky,
  The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
  For thou must die.
  Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses,
  A box where sweets compacted lie;
  My music shows ye have your closes,
  And all must die.
  Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
  Like seasoned timber, never gives;
  But though the whole world turn to coal,
  Then chiefly lives.
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

Feb. 13 Valentine's Day & the Arts [Tina & Laura lead service]

• Prelude: She's Like the Swallow (Newfoundland folk song) arr. by Edward Chapman
  She’s Like the Swallow is a lovely arrangement of a Newfoundland Folksong, arranged by Edward T. Chapman. The beloved is compared to the swallow that flies so high, the river that never runs dry, the sunshine on the lee shore, for in her heartbreak she’s lain down to die on a bed of roses (in death she returns to nature).
• Candle Music: 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
• Offertory: The Sailor and Young Nancy (England) by E. J. Moeran
• Anthem: 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/
• Quote from The Tempest
  Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
  Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
  Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
  Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
  That, if I then had waked after long sleep
  Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
  The clouds methought would open and show riches
  Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
  I cried to dream again (III.ii.130–138).
• Postlude: She Moved Through the Fair (Ireland) arr. by Timothy Takach
  This song is an Irish ballad, a love song with a ghostly twist. This setting for men’s voices is by Timothy Takach, a graduate of St. Olaf College and a bass in the professional men’s ensemble, Cantus.
  My young love said to me “My mother won’t mind,
  And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind,”
  And she stepped away from me and this she did say,
  “It will not be long, love, ’til our wedding day.”
  She stepped away from me and she went through the fair.
  And fondly I watched her move here and move there.
  And then she went homeward with one star awake,
  As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.
  Last night she came to me, she came softly in.
  So softly she came that her feet made no din.
  And she laid her hand on me and this she did say,

Feb. 20 [MF preaching]
School vacation is Feb. 19-27

• Service Music: Chamber Music

Feb. 27 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Sweet Day by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
  The prolific Ralph Vaughan Williams is considered the quintessential English composer. Choral and vocal works form a deeply important part of his repertoire, from large scale choral orchestral works like the Sea Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem, to miniature motets and madrigals like this setting of a George Herbert poem. The poem tells of the passing of all things (the day, the spring) but the virtuous soul endures. The music has a pastoral/folksong quality, reminiscent of Debussy and Delius.
  Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
  The bridal of the earth and sky,
  The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
  For thou must die.
  Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses,
  A box where sweets compacted lie;
  My music shows ye have your closes,
  And all must die.
  Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
  Like seasoned timber, never gives;
  But though the whole world turn to coal,
  Then chiefly lives.
• Candle Music:
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

March 6 [MF preaching]
Mardi Gras is Mar. 8/Ash Wednesday is Mar. 9
Centenary of Arlington-born composer Alan Hovhaness is Mar. 8

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: The Rapid Stream (1922) by Edward Elgar for treble choir and piano
• Offertory: Vesi Vasyy Lumen Alle (Water under Snow is Weary) by Eha Lattemae and Harri Wessman (1949-)
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

March 13 Possible Youth service (or April 10)

• Service Music: High school musicians

March 20 [MF preaching]

• Prelude:
• Child Dedication/Candle Music: Manx Lullaby by Lori Ann Dolloff
  Manx Lullaby is sometimes known as the fiddle tune Rock the Cradle. It is a gentle lullaby in traditional Gaelic style with modal harmony. Lori Ann Dolloff is a Music Education Professor at the University of Toronto, well-known education pedagogue and children’s choir composer/arranger.
  Oh hush thee my dove, oh hush thee my rowan,
  Oh hush thee my lapwing, my little brown bird.
  Oh fold thy wings and seek thy nest now,
  Oh shine the berry on the bright tree,
  The bird is home from the mountain and valley.
  Oh horo hi ri ri Cadul gu lo.
• Offertory: The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre
  Eric Whitacre received his M.M. in composition from the Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano and David Diamond. He has become one of America’s youngest, widely commissioned, published and performed choral and symphonic composers, and an accomplished conductor and clinician. He is composer in residence of the Pacific Chorale in California. Eric Whitacre has received composition awards from ASCAP, the Barlow International Foundation, and the American Composers Forum. The Seal Lullaby came about after Whitacre had his show Paradise Lost presented at the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop, and got to know Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell), who recommended him to a “major film studio” planning an animated film based on Kipling’s The Seal Lullaby. Whitacre explains: “I was struck so deeply by those first beautiful words…the song just came gushing out of me. I didn’t hear anything for weeks and weeks and I began to despair. Finally I called them, begging to know the reason they had rejected my tender little song. ‘Oh,’ said the exec, ‘we decided to make Kung Fu Panda instead.’ So I didn’t do anything with it, just sang it to my baby son every night to make him go to sleep (Success rate: less than 50%). A few years later, the Towne Singers graciously commissioned this arrangement. I am especially grateful to Stephen Schwartz, to whom the piece is dedicated.”
  Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
  The moon, o’er the combers [waves], looks downward to find us,
  At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
  Where billow meets billow [waves], there soft be thy pillow;
  Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
  The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
  Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

March 27 [MF preaching]

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

Apr. 3 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: The Woodland Stream (1922) by Edward Elgar for treble choir and piano
• Intergenerational Sharing: New Member Ceremony
• Candle Music: Vezzosi Augelli by Giaches de Wert (1535-1596)
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/wert-vez.pdf
  Online midi practice files - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/wert-vez.mid
  De Wert was a late Renaissance madrigal composer, active in Ferrara, Italy. His music was influential on many other composers, including the English (such as Wilbye) and Monteverdi. Vezzosi Augelli describes a competition between the music of the birds and the music of the breeze, using lots of colorful text painting.
  Vezzosi augelli in fra le verde fronde Delightful birds among the green branches
  tempran’ a prova lascivette note. tune their lively notes.
  Mormora l’aura, The breeze murmurs,
  e fa le foglie e l’onde and russles the leaves and waves
  garir che variamente ella percote: as it strikes each in turn:
  quando taccion gl’augelli, when the birds are silent
  alto risponde, the sound replies from above,
  quando cantan gl’augei, when the birds sing
  piú lieve scote; the breeze shakes softer;
  sia caso od’ arte, either by chance or purpose
  or accompagn’ed hora Music in turn accompanies,
  alterna i versi lor la Musica hora. now alternates their verses.
  Italian original by Torquato Tasso
  English version by Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)
  The joyous birds hid under greenwood shade
  Sung merry notes on every branch and bough;
  The wind, that in the leaves and waters played,
  With murmurs sweet now sung, and whistled now.
  Ceased the birds, the winds loud answer made,
  And while they sang, it rumbled soft and low;
  Thus were it hap or cunning, chance or art
  The wind in this strange music bore its part.
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:
  

Apr. 10 Spring Music Service (or March 13)

• Preludes: Great Trees from Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish
  Finches from Hymnody of Earth by Malcolm Dalglish
  Sound file: http://prichard.net/fpuua/FPApracticefiles2004.html
  Chamber 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.
• Candle Music: April Rain Song from Spring Revels by Elizabeth Alexander (1962-)
  Let the rain kiss you.
  Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
  Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
  
  The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
  The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
  The rain plays a little sleepsong on our roof at night —
  And I love the rain.
  by Langston Hughes
• Offertory: when faces called flowers float out of the ground
  when faces called flowers float out of the ground and breathing is wishing and wishing is havingbut keeping is downward and doubting and never
  it’s April (yes,april;my darling)it’s spring! yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be (yes the mountains are dancing together)
  
  when every leaf opens without any sound and wishing is having and having is givingbut keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
  alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring! now the pretty birds hover so she and so he now the little fish quiver so you and so i (now the mountains are dancing,the mountains)
  
  when more than was lost has been found has been found and having is giving and giving is living
  but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
  it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o, it’s spring! all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea (all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)
  by e. e. cummings
• Anthem: Spring Grass
  Spring grass, there is a dance to be danced for you.
  Come up, spring grass, if only for young feet.
  Come up, spring grass, young feet ask you.
  
  Smell of the young spring grass,
  You’re a mascot riding on the wind horses.
  You came to my nose and spiffed me.
  This is your lucky year.
  
  Young spring grass just after the winter,
  Shoots of the big green whisper of the year,
  Come up, if only for young feet.
  Come up, young feet ask you.
  by Carl Sandburg
• Anthems: Selections from Hymnody of Earth
  Composer's Notes on Spring Revels: In the gentle April Rain Song the soprano solo has the sustained, lyrical quality of a remembered “sleepsong.” The chorus creates background textures from the word “lullaby,” at first suggesting a gentle rain, and later shifting waves of sleep. In the second song, I took my cue from cumming’s images of “floating” and “flying”, shaping melodies which seem sometimes to hang in midair, sometimes to soar. The whimsical repeating phrase, “the mountains are dancing” is sung first in unison, later as a duet, and finally as a four-part canon. When my 7-year-old Erica learned to play Camptown Races, she danced gleefully into my studio, singing, "doodah, doodah." So when I resumed work on Spring Grass the following day, I threw in some doodahs and fiddledeedees for her, along with a rhythm that can only suggest skipping. Unlike my 1982 setting of this same poem, which was sprightly throughout, this piece contains an earnest plea for the longawaited grass. Spring Revels was written for The Festival Choir of Madison, Wisconsin, with the generous support of the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Apr. 17 [MF preaching]
School vacation is Apr. 16-24/Passover is Apr. 18-26

• Service Music: Chamber Music and solo songs

Apr. 24 Intergenerational Easter Service [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Wiliams (1872-1958)
  Online parts and scores - http://imslp.org/wiki/Five_Mystical_Songs_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph)
  Choir & Family Orchestra
• Matzoh Communion Music: I Am Come into my Garden (1794) by William Billings (1746-1800)
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/billings/bill-iam.pdf
  Online midi practice files - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/billings/bill-iam.mid
  This is one of three Billings anthems based upon texts from the Biblical Song of Solomon (chapters 2, 5, and 8). The text develops three images: a sensual garden, an absent lover, and a gathering of friends to celebrate. The song begins with a direct address to the absent lover. Within this frame are two addresses to assembled friends (“Eat, O friends,” and “Stay me with flagons”). At the center of the song is a dream-vision recounting an unfulfilled meeting with the lover (“I sleep but my heart waketh”). This anthem appears to be unique to Billings’ last published collection, The Continental Harmony (Boston, 1794). One of his most sumptuous and evocative text settings, it contains most of the characteristics of his style--a penchant for melodic writing in each of the parts, sensitivity to the text, and an abundant sprinkling of unorthodox harmonies, including a direct cross relation (F# and F natural simultaneously), open fifth cadences , and frequent sets of parallel fifths and octaves.
• Offertory: Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Wiliams (1872-1958)
  Online parts and scores - http://imslp.org/wiki/Five_Mystical_Songs_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph)
  Choir & Family Orchestra
• Anthem: I Am the Rose of Sharon (1778) by William Billings (1746-1800)
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/billings/bill-ros.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/billings/bill-ros.mid
• Postlude: Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Wiliams (1872-1958)
  Online parts and scores - http://imslp.org/wiki/Five_Mystical_Songs_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph)
  Choir & Family Orchestra

May 1 May Day/Yom Hashoah [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Kumah Echa by Shlomo Postolsky, ar. by Alice Parker
  This work song celebrates the dawning of a new day. The Chermeish (scythe), represents the tool of a rural community. The Anach (plumb-bob), represents the tool of the city. Kumah, echa, sov va-sov, Rise up, brothers, spin round and round, Al tanuchah, shovah shov. Don’t stop to rest, return again.
  Ein kan rosh, v’ein kan sof, There’s no beginning and there’s no end,
  Yad el yad, al taazov! Hand in hand, don’t leave!
  Yom shakah v’yom yizrach, A day goes, a new day comes shining
  Anu neifen ach el ach, We turn, brother to brother,
  Min hak’far umin hak’rach From the village and from the city
  B’chermeish uvaanach. We come with scythe and plumb-line.
  Kuma, kadimah, kuma Rise up, let’s go, rise up
  Chevraya, shova! Comrades, return!
  Chevraya yachad Comrades together
  Tamid b’yachad Always together
  Ovdim b’yachad Working together
  Yad el yad ad ein sof! Hand in hand to eternity!
  Kumah, echa Rise up, brothers
  Sovah, echa. Spin, brothers.
• Candle Music: Kol Nidre: Adagio on Hebrew Melodies by Max Bruch (1838-1920)
  Click here to hear a recording by Alexander Skwortsow
  Online score and parts - http://imslp.org/wiki/Kol_Nidrei,_Op.47_(Bruch,_Max)
  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: 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.
• Postlude: Shalom Rav by Ben Steinberg (1930-)
  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.

May 8 Mother's Day [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Dieu! Qu’il la fait bon regarder! (1908) by Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
  Online score of all three chansons in French only - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/b/b2/IMSLP37901-PMLP81775-Debussy_-_3_Chansons_de_Charles_d_Orl__ans__SATB_.pdf
  Online midi practice files - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/debu-001.mid
  Claude Debussy wrote his only a cappella music for chorus, on the lyric poetry of Duke Charles d’Orleans (1391-1465). Dieu! Qu’il la fait bon regarder!, the first of these Trois Chansons was a 10-year-old arrangement of a piece he wrote for a friend’s choral society. It praises the beloved in modal tonalities and lilting rhythms. The subtle inflections of the French language strongly influence all of Debussy’s work.
  Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder (Lord! lovely hast thou made her;)
  La gracieuse bonne et belle; (Graceful, good, and beautiful;)
  Pour les grans biens que sont en elle (Perfect in mind, and form and feature:)
  Chacun est prest de la loüer. {Her praise is sounded everywhere.)
  Qui se pourroit d'elle lasser? (Could any tire of one so fair?)
  Tousjours sa beauté renouvelle. (So rich endowed by Nature.)
  Par de ça, ne de là, la mer (Overseas, far away, or near,)
  Ne scay dame ne damoiselle (Every other maiden excelling,)
  Qui soit en tous bien parfais telle. (She reigns a queen, homage compelling.)
  C’est ung songe que d'i penser: (Happy I, dreaming but of her.)
  Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder! (Lord! lovely hast thou made her!)
• Candle Music: Im kuhlen Maien by Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612)
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-imk.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/hassler/hass-imk.mid
  Hans Leo Hassler’s best work achieved a synthesis of German and Italian national styles. As a young man, he left Nuremburg and studied in Italy with Andrea Gabrieli, became friends with Giovanni, and developed a penchant for the Venetian polychoral style. He also straddled the Renaissance and the Baroque, with his rich counterpoint and madrigalian text-painting grounded in harmonic structures. The eight-voice madrigal Im kuhlen Maien shows the Venetian double choir texture. May is welcomed with a joyful dance-like shift to triple meter.
  Im kuhlen Maien tun sich all Ding erfreuen, In the cool month of May all things are joyful,
  die Blumlein auf dem Feld sich auch verneuen, the little flowers in the field appear again,
  und singen d’Maidlein in ihren Reihen: and the girls dance and sing:
  Willkommen Maien. (Welcome May.)
  Zwei liebe Herzen sind voller Freud und Scherzen, (Two loving hearts are full of joy and fun,)
  im Schatten kuhl, vergessen aller Schmerzen. (in the cool shade they forget all pain.)
  Cupido blind, das gar listige Kind, (Blind Cupid, the cunning child,)
  gesellt sich dazu mit seinem Pfeil geschwind. (is joining them and shooting his arrows.)
  Venus allwegen gibt dazu ihren Segen, (Venus gives her blessing)
  auf dass zwei herzen sich in Lieb bewegen. (so that the two hearts can unite in love.)
  Wem nun dies Leben tut wohlgefallen eben, (Everyone who likes this life)
  der soll sich ohn Verzug der Lieb ergeben, (should, without delay, surrender to love,)
  und mit der Magdelein sing’n im Reihen: (and dance and sing with the girls:)
  Willkommen Maien. (Welcome May.)
• Offertory: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]
• Postlude: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]

May 15 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: My Spirit Sang All Day by Gerald Finzi (1910-1956)
  Finzi, the youngest of five children in a Jewish family, abandoned his
  Sephardic upbringing for a persona of total Englishness. His parents disinherited
  him and opposed his choice of career, but the young Finzi relocated to London
  to study with Bairstow and Vaughan Williams. Eventually he moved to the countryside where he indulged his passions for composing, collecting books, and rare varieties of apple trees, as well as hosting many British composers and artists, including his friend Herbert Howells. Perhaps because of his frail health, and the early death of his father and three brothers, Finzi’s music seeks to capture the world’s beauty in a pastoral neo-romantic style. Much of his music is vocal, and sets the greatest English poets with careful attention to the poetry. My Spirit Sang All Day is deservedly one of his better-known gems, on a text by Robert Bridges.
  My spirit sang all day O my joy.
  Nothing my tongue could say, Only My joy!
  My heart an echo caught — O my joy.
  And spake, Tell me thy thought, Hide not thy joy.
  My eyes gan peer around, O my joy —
  What beauty hast thou found? Shew us thy joy.
  My jealous ears grew whist; O my joy.
  Music from heaven is’t, Sent for our joy?
  She also came and heard; O my joy.
  What, said she, is this word? What is thy joy?
  And I replied, O see, O my joy,
  ’Tis thee, I cried, ’tis thee: Thou art my joy.
• Candle Music: 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.
• Possible Sr. Recognition
• Offertory: Revecy venir du printans by Claude Le Jeune
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/e/ee/Revecy-venir-du-Printans-Claude-Le-Jeune-short.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/7/70/Revecy-venir-du-Printans-Claude-Le-Jeune-saatb.mid
  In 1570, Jean Antoine de Baif, a leader of the group of poets known as the Pleiade, established
  the Académie de poésie et musique to perform and teach the new art of musique mesurée, in
  which long and short syllables of vers mesurés (poetry) are strictly set to notes of long or short
  duration. Claude Le Jeune, court composer to Henry IV of France, became the most creative
  composer within this restrictive style. Rather than being stifled by the chordal texture which
  resulted from this type of composing, Le Jeune enlivened his chansons with melismas and
  varying textures. In Revecy venir du Printemps (Spring comes again) the bouncy refrain
  alternates with verses for duet, trio, quartet and quintet. The text explores the reaction of all
  nature to the return of spring.
  Revecy venir du Printemps Spring comes again
  L’amoureuse et belle saison. the season of love and beauty.
  Le courant des eaux recherchant The water’s current seeks again
  Le canal d’été s’éclaircit; its summer channel and is clear;
  Et la mer calme de ses flots and the calm sea with its waves
  Amolit le triste courroux; mollifies its unhappy turbulence.
  Le canard s’égai’ se plongeant, The duck delights in diving
  Et se lave “coint” dedans l’eau; and bathes and preens itself in the water.
  Et la grû’ qui fourche son vol And the crane with its broken flight,
  Retraverse l’air et s’en va. / Revecy ... Criss-crosses the sky and flies away.
  Le Soleil éclaire luisant The sun shines brightly
  D’une plus sereine clairté; with a most serene radiance.
  Du nuage l’ombre s’enfuit, It chases the shadows from the clouds
  Qui se jou’ et court et noircit. which play and run and darken.
  Et forêts et champs et coteaux, Forests and fields and slopes
  Le labeur humain reverdit, human labor makes green again,
  Et le pré découvre ses fleurs. / Revecy ... And the meadow unveils its flowers.
  De Venus le fils Cupidon Cupid, the son of Venus,
  L’univers semant de ses trais, seeding the universe with his arrows,
  De sa flamme va réchauffer, with his flame will rekindle
  Animaux, qui volet en l’air, animals that fly in the air,
  Animaux, qui rampent aux champs, animals that crawl in the fields,
  Animaux, qui nagent aux eaux. animals that swim in the seas.
  Ce qui mêmement ne sent pas, Even those that have no feeling
  Amoureux se fond de plaisir. / Revecy ... feel love and pleasure.
  Rion aussi nous: et cherchons Let us, too, laugh, and let us seek
  Les ébats et jeux du Printemps: the sports and games of spring:
  Toute chose rit de plaisir: everything laughs with pleasure;
  Célébrons la gaie saison. / Revecy ... let us celebrate the merry season.
• Postlude: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]

May 22 [MF preaching]

• Prelude: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]
• Candle Music: Hymne au Soleil (1912) by Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
  Click here for a biography of Lili Boulanger
  Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was born into a family of distinguished musical heritage. Her paternal grandmother Marie Julie Boulanger was an opera singer, her Russian mother Raissa was a singer who came to Paris to study with her father Ernest Boulanger (1815-1900), who was himself an opera composer, violinist and singing teacher at the Paris Conservatoire and had won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1835. Her older sister Nadia (1887-1979), a student of Louis Vierne and Gabriel Fauré and winner of the second prize in the 1908 Prix de Rome competition, was to become one of the foremost teachers of composition in the twentieth century. A visiting musician once described the two sisters: “Nadia [was] tall and dark with, large, penetrating eyes illuminated by a finely disciplined intelligence; Lili, slight, fair, and frail, looked like the lost princess of a Maeterlinck play next to Nadia's healthy vitality. It was evident even then that the flame of Lili’s talent was likely to overtax her meager physical resources.”
  
  Indeed, a bout with bronchial pneumonia had left Lili’s immune system permanently damaged and she was only able to compose sporadically the rest of her life due to recurring episodes of Crohn’s disease. In 1909, sensing the possibility of her early death, Lili decided to devote herself to becoming a composer, studied with Georges Caussade and Paul Vidal of the Paris Conservatoire, and entered the Prix de Rome competition in the spring of 1912. Illness forced her to withdraw from the rigorous competition, but she resolved to continue her preparation by composing several works for orchestra and chorus. Hymne au Soleil, completed in July of 1912, was the first of these pieces. It was first performed in February, 1913, by the Société Chorale d’Amateurs Paris and was later dedicated to the Count de San Martino e Valperga, a friend of the Boulangers in Paris whose salon in Rome was a gathering place for Lili and many other artists. The text is an extract from the play Le Pariah (1833) by Casimir Delavigne (17831849), a French playright who also wrote dramatic and lyric poems in a semi-Romantic style. The choice of this play, which is set in India and depicts a Hindu religious rite, is typical of the late nineteenth century French interest in exoticism, familiar to us in the works of Debussy and Ravel and less so in other works of Lili Boulanger. The “God” mentioned in stanza two is Helios, the God of the Sun (see the story of Phaeton from Ovid's Metamorphoses in Edith Hamilton's Mythology). Wordpainting also appears frequently, most notably in the dramatic resurgence of the sun rising into full splendor at il s’élance! and in the contrapuntal independence of the seven spirited steeds.
  
  Hymne au Soleil, an optimistic work with its powerful Debussylike parallel chords and assertive motion, is somewhat atypical of Lili Boulanger’s twenty-nine extant complete works which are usually more indirect and full of subtle nuances.
  Text by Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843):
  Du soleil qui renaît bénissons la puissance. (Let us bless the power of the resurging sun.)
  Avec tout l'univers célébrons son retour. (With all the universe, let us celebrate its return.)
  Couronné de splendeur, il se lève, il s'élance. (Crowned in splendor, it rises, it soars aloft.)
  Le réveil de la terre est un hymne d'amour. (The awakening of the earth is a hymn of love.)
  
  Sept coursiers qu'en partant le Dieu contient à peine, (Seven steeds, which the God can scarcely keep in check,)
  Enflamment l'horizon de leur brûlante haleine. (Set fire to the horizon with their burning breaqth.)
  O soleil fécond, tu parais! (O abundant sun, you appear!)
  
  Avec ses champs en fleurs, ses monts, ses bois épais, (With its field in flower, its mountains, its dense woods,)
  La vaste mer de tes feux embrasée, (The vast sea burning with your fire,)
  L'univers plus jeune et plus frais, (The universe younger and fresher,)
  Des vapeurs de matin sont brillants de rosée. (The mists of morning are sparkling with dew.)
• Offertory: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]
• Postlude: Mahler [Centenary on May 18]

May 29 Memorial Day Weekend [Lori Kenschaft preaching]

• Service Music: Chamber Music

June 5 [MF preaching]
Coming of Age Credos & RE Recognition Parade

• Prelude:
• Candle Music: Linden Lea by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
  Online score - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/3/3d/Williams_Linden_Lea.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/92/Williams_Linden_Lea.mid
• Offertory:
• Anthem:
• Postlude:

June 12 Intergenerational Flower Service [MF preaching]
AHS Graduation

• Prelude: Calme de nuits, op. 68, no. 1 by Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
  Online score - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/53/IMSLP44756-PMLP96128-Saint-Sa__ns_-_2_Choeurs__Op._68__SATB_.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/sain-cal.mid
  Saint-Saens, most prolific of the late French romantic composers, wrote in virtually every medium, foreshadowing the neoclassical revivalism of Fauré and Ravel. His best known choral work, the Christmas Oratorio, is beloved of large choruses, while chamber choruses have discovered the madrigalian op. 68. They celebrate nature as perceived by the artist and as comfort to the sorrowful. The two offer a nice contrast, between the slow, careful layering of harmonies in the first, and the frenetic motion of the second.
  Calm of nights, coolness of evenings,
  Vast shining of worlds,
  Great silence of black caves,
  You charm deep souls.
  
  The burst of sun, gaiety,
  These are pleasing to the most futile
  Only the poet is haunted
  By love of quiet things.
• Flower Communion Music: 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:
• Anthem:
• Postlude: Les Fleurs et les Arbres, op. 68, no. 2 by Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
  Online score - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/53/IMSLP44756-PMLP96128-Saint-Sa__ns_-_2_Choeurs__Op._68__SATB_.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/sain-682.mid
  Flowers and trees
  Bronzes and marbles,
  Golds and enamels,
  The sea, fountains,
  Mountains and plains,
  These console our pains.
  
  Eternal nature,
  You seem more beautiful
  In the bosom of sorrows!
  And art dominates us,
  Its flame illumines
  Laughter and tears.

Peace Services & Other music for the future

• Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis by Maurice Ravel
  Click here to hear a recording of this selection
  Online choral score of all 3 Chansons - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/c/ce/IMSLP01774-Ravel_-_Trois_chansons__Complete_score_.pdf
  Online solo vocal score of all 3 Chansons - http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/1/12/IMSLP01775-Ravel_-_Trois_chansons__Piano_and_Voice_arrangement_.pdf
  Online midi practice files for Trois beaux oiseaux - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/b/be/Ravel-Trois-beaux-oiseaux.mid
• Call to Remembrance by Richard Farrant
  Online score - http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/farr-ca1.pdf
  Online midi practice file - http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sound/farr-ca1.mid
• 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 DieuDieu! 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 (1872-1958)
• 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
• Mouth Music by Dolores Keane and John Faulkner
  Celtic mouth music, sometimes called lilting, diddling, or port-a-beul (“tunes form the mouth”), is music straight form the heart - and the mouth. Its tantalizing rhythms and its driving melodic lines reveal the unique partnership of song and dance in the folk music traditions of the Celts and the Gaels: neither exists without the other. Sung during weddings, dances, chore times, or just for sport, mouth music combines astonishing verbal acrobatics with direct, heartfelt harmonies to create an irresistible musical experience. From its inception, Celtic mouth music was meant to fill the gaps created by poverty, religious expression, and/or lack of good instrumentalists, but mostly the later. It’s vocal music meant for dancing in which the singers imitate the music of fiddles, bagpipes, and jews harps, delighting in lyrics that are often bawdy, and always bold and full of the word-wizardry that creates their complex rhythms.
  “Most couldn’t play (the violin) steadily enough for dancin’ so they diddl't.” Gordon Easton
  This particular tune hails from the Hebrides, a chain of islands off the west coast of Scotland. This rendering is a direct transcription of the version sung for many years by the famous Irish musicians Dolores Keane and John Faulkner.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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
• "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
• 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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Early History of Music at First Parish 1733-1964

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