Music at All Saints Parish Sunday, March 4, 2007
Second Sunday in Lent
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
This Sunday morning Keith Glavash's All Saints Schola will provide the choral music. The adults will be busy with final preparations for the Concert of Remembrance, which will begin at 3:00 p.m. today, NOT at 4:00, as in the past. See below for more details about the concert.
The hymns for the morning service of Holy Eucharist are all not only familiar but well loved:
411 - Bless the Lord, my soul!
707 - Take my life, and let it be
470 - There's a wideness in God's mercy
About the Concert of Remembrance
I hope all of you will want to support the work of our fine choir by attending this extraordinarily interesting and beautiful event. The concert is free to all, having been generously funded by many members and friends in the All Saints community. It has become an annual outreach event, offered up by the musicians here, intended to attract some who may have heard about the fine music at All Saints but perhaps have never before had the opportunity to sample it. Surveys show that music has historically been an important evangelizing tool for the parish. It is our hope that musical events such as this concert will affirm and continue that tradition!
The program:
Mozart's early Missa Brevis in F, k. 192, is a youthful masterpiece by this very prolific composer. Full of charm and wit, it still finds a way to support a devout belief in the life-affirming aspects of the eucharistic experience. From the disarmingly lively Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy), right on through to the final Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace), Mozart gives joyful voice to ancient texts. Listen to how he finds uplift rather than introspection in the line "give us your peace."
We have an unusually strong quartet of soloists who will join in lively dialogue with the choir throughout the Mass: Jessica Cooper, Marylène Altieri, Thomas Gregg, and Robert Honeysucker. The choir and soloists will be supported by a first rank group of professional instrumentalists from the Boston area.
Benjamin Britten's Cantata "Rejoice in the Lamb" is a 20th century masterpiece by the brilliant and much admired British composer. The text, by Christopher Smart, is a dazzlingly virtuosic adventure in word wizardry by an 18th century poet who was thought to be mad. Some of us think he would have felt right at home in times like ours. The piece is scored for four soloists, mixed choir and organ. It is full of good humor and deep feeling and requires bravura performances from singers and organist alike. We have all of those components lined up for this performance.
Matthew Arnold's poem, "Dover Beach," is a wistful contemplation of loss and remembrance - and ultimately despair, but a despair that is cushioned by the reassuring solace of love. Through his window on the English coast, the narrator sees, in the movement of the tide and the glimmering distant lights of the French coast, a beautiful world in disharmony with itself. The great American composer Samuel Barber set this remarkable poem as a song for baritone and string quartet in 1936. Our Robert Honeysucker will perform it here accompanied in a somewhat more sumptuous scoring for string orchestra.
Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto in G Minor stands out as one of the rare works for organ and orchestra that has captured a large and devoted audience of admirers. Poulenc took as a reference point Bach's sublime organ masterpiece, the Fantasy and Fugue in the same key of g minor. The splendid organist Barbara Bruns will be soloist and the string orchestra, augmented by timpani, will provide encouragement and support. This work is by turns thrilling and introspective, extremely listenable and energizing.
DO COME.
And come to the reception afterwards.