Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 2:10 pm
by northland10
So, after highjacking the Religious topic (well, not completely since this is still religious), I have gone ahead with Chancery's suggestion and started a sacred music thread. I made sure it is not limited to just Christian sacred or liturgical music but can include other areas as well since there is a wonderful wealth of other traditions' (or no traditions) music out there.
The idea was to post and discuss various aspects of basically what I do for a partial living (and many others do as volunteer, or appreciate from the pews or YouTube).
Since we are in Lent with Holy Week and the passion approaching, here are some ways composers have set the passion to music. I won't go into the history of how these came about as non-liturgical music, for now.
So, you have to start with one of Bach's so here is the St. John one. I have not listened to this version so I am no sure how good it is or is not.
They are still being written today. I mentioned Bob Chilcott on another thread and he does a St. John one I rather like. The link is to the first one in a play list.
I have a fondness for Arvo Pärt so here is his Passio
ETA: I changed the thread name to Sacred Music.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:28 pm
by Rolodex
Thanks! Nicely decorated lil cozy spot you set up!
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:48 pm
by MN-Skeptic
I'll add this for the piano players here.
I love playing piano, but I'm just an average pianist. I play every once in a while, but I don't spend hours practicing, so I really enjoy piano books with songs that sound great without a lot of practicing.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:11 pm
by Rolodex
Nice books. but I don't need to buy any more piano music!
I finally retuned my harp. I took lessons years ago and I want to get back to it. I planned to do that a year ago so maybe I'd be able to play by Christmas, but that didn't happen. I need to get a teacher to get me back on track. I've played piano since I started lessons at age 5, but harp is hard! I guess it's hard starting a new instrument when you're already pretty good on another - you want to be that good on your new thing! My trouble is that the harp strings are so much closer together than piano keys - which my fingers automatically know!
We have a respite program - where caregivers of dementia patients can drop off their loved one for a few hours. I play for them sometimes. They know old hymns very well and we do a sing along!
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:20 pm
by northland10
MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:48 pm
I'll add this for the piano players here.
Thanks, I may look closer at some of them. I have a sometime need for quick and simpler stuff from the piano so I sometimes collect ones like these. It beats having to improv everything.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:27 pm
by MN-Skeptic
By the way, one reason I like her books is because a number of the songs will be fairly basic for two pages, then get fuller and richer with maybe a key change for the third page.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:33 pm
by Flatpoint High
I kinda sorta play Mandolin, so I'm learning Jewish (sephardic) secualr/liturgical music.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2024 7:26 pm
by northland10
Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 4:33 pm
I kinda sorta play Mandolin, so I'm learning Jewish (sephardic) secualr/liturgical music.
Cool. One of our parishioners plays mandolin, but I have not figured out a place to use him yet.
Speaking of Jewish music, here is a choral work (with organ) I have been very fond of. The text is from a liturgical poem that begins the Ne'ilah service at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. They use 3 verses of the text:
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2024 9:29 pm
by chancery
Northland10, thank you for starting this thread, and thanks also to the other contributors.
The tiny Episcopal church in our very small town has an experienced professional organist and a good volunteer choir, 12 voices, most of whom have been singing together for decades. My partner joined a few months ago; she's an alto who can sing soprano in a pinch.
Last Sunday they gave us Palestrina's lovely Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum (Like as the hart desireth the water brooks) and then, in a whiplash-inducing jump through the centuries, Heavenly Display, a Shaker song arranged in the 21st century by Kevin Siegfried.
These video clips are from the Sistine Chapel Choir
and a student choir from Georgia State University, directed by Deanna Joseph
Sigfried's wonderful arrangements of Shaker songs are new to me and a revelation. It's hard to avoid singing along (O le ul lum ul la, O le ul lum ul la!).
Somehow I don't think that the choirs of small Episcopal churches in the nineteenth century were performing either Palestrina motets or Shaker songs. I wonder how it happened that a repertoire covering half a millennium became standard.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2024 11:12 pm
by Rolodex
Thanks for that. I've never thought about a Shaker music tradition. I like that one! I'll bet our excellent music director is familiar.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 7:56 am
by northland10
Rolodex wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 11:12 pm
Thanks for that. I've never thought about a Shaker music tradition. I like that one! I'll bet our excellent music director is familiar.
Shaker music is a gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
I still remember the Garfield Cadets show at the DCI Finals in 1987 where their show used Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring which includes the Simple Gifts melody. The ending was amazing.
They won that year.
The Video should start around 8:30 so you can get to the big finish (and the soft finish, for that matter).
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2024 5:08 pm
by northland10
"And so, it begins" (bonus points for picking what TV show I pulled that from).
Tomorrow begins the busiest week of the year for me.
After processing with palms through the park across the street (weather permitting), we proceed into the church/nave, singing the well known "do it or be fired hymn."
Later, at my place, we do a favorite of mine.
The service, at least in the Episcopal tradition, takes an abrupt 180 from the triumphal entry to the passion. As it says in the hymn above:
Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, thy power and reign.
As we have fully entered Holy Week and the passion, my choir will be singing the following, which illustrates the agony in the garden.
For those wonder why we pivot from Triumph Entry to Crucifixion in one service, I am not entirely sure myself (and we discuss this in seminary). While being jarring during Holy Week is not unexpected, and there is a great contrast to be illustrated, we also have the Passion played out during the Triduum, starting with Maundy Thursday until we go from darkness to light in the Easter Vigil on Saturday night. One guess might be that prior to the liturgical movement of the 50s-70s, many parishes and churches went from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday with few other liturgies and those who did a Good Friday one often did the 3 hours preaching on the 7th last words service, not the Crucifixion related service.
Having both on Palm/Passion Sunday made sure people did not skip a rather important part of the Resurrection.
Now I have to stop procrastinating and run off to practice the piano part of "Thy Will Be Done" along with being tortured by a Frenchman named Widor.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2024 8:19 pm
by chancery
For those wonder why we pivot from Triumph Entry to Crucifixion in one service
Interesting take on something I've wondered about.
Our congregation will also, of course, begin by carrying palms and singing "All Glory Laud & Honor."*
The choir will perform the spiritual "Ride on King Jesus," arranged by the legendary Robert Shaw and the (as I have come to realize) even more revered Alice Parker,** here performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale.
and (new to me) All Flesh is Grass, a Chris Massa setting of the poem by Christina Rossetti, here performed by Basilica of Saint Mary Schola Cantorum (Minneapolis)
The lovely simple settings of the Sanctus and Agnus Dei that we have been singing for the last month or two are from the service music section of the hymnal; I've only belatedly realized that they were composed by Franz Shubert.
Throughout Lent the weekly psalm has been set to a wonderfully dark anglican chant written by our organist. It's printed in the program, and fun to sing, except there's a bit that should be dead simple, since all the basses have to do is carry on singing an easy C, but I get knocked off my perch when SAT move to different notes and the sopranos (F#) and altos (D) go all chromatic dissonant. My partner, one of the dissonant altos and a very accomplished musician, offers limited sympathy.
__________
* Query: "Play it or be fired"? I guess I understand; while the hymn is surely a familiar favorite for the congregation to belt out, I can imagine the musical staff becoming sick to death of doing the same thing each year, but having no luck whatsoever in selling an innovation to the rector or the vestry.
That's a showy brass & organ arrangement by Tom Trenney at the First Plymouth Church. I guess that's one way of doing something a little different.
** Gift Link: Alice Parker, Composer Who Heard Music in Poetry, Dies at 98 A master of American choral music, she wrote arrangements of hymns, folk songs and spirituals used in concert halls and churches countrywide. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/arts ... =url-share
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2024 10:31 pm
by northland10
chancery wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 8:19 pm
The lovely simple settings of the Sanctus and Agnus Dei that we have been singing for the last month or two are from the service music section of the hymnal; I've only belatedly realized that they were composed by Franz Shubert.
We do the Schubert setting in Advent.
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Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2024 10:46 pm
by northland10
chancery wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 8:19 pm
* Query: "Play it or be fired"? I guess I understand; while the hymn is surely a familiar favorite for the congregation to belt out, I can imagine the musical staff becoming sick to death of doing the same thing each year, but having no luck whatsoever in selling an innovation to the rector or the vestry.
It is a joke I learned in seminary. It is such a well-known, popular hymn for Palm Sunday, the joke is if you didn't do it, you'd be looking for a new job. The same applies to hymns like O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night on Christmas, and Jesus Christ is Risen Today for Easter. Luckily, I like these hymns also and I like a singing congregation so I have no issue with them.
You usually don't want to mix it up too much with hymns for major services. I can rotate anthems and motets around each year. We did manage to put Hail Thee Festival Day to rest on Easter. The new rector stated that was her preference and while she does not want to micromanage the music, I put up no argument (the hymn that never ends). There were no complaints about going away, at least none that I heard.
If somebody told me I could no longer program Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending during Advent, I might be looking for a new job.
Sacred Music (Church along with Synagogue and Other Religious/Liturgical arts)
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:02 pm
by northland10
chancery wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 8:19 pm
That's a showy brass & organ arrangement by Tom Trenney at the First Plymouth Church. I guess that's one way of doing something a little different.
First Plymouth Church (a United Church of Christ congregation in Lincoln, Nebraska) does some wonderful stuff. The arrangement for All Glory, Laud, and Honor, which is a bit different, is by Richard Webster who was the OCM (Organist/Choirmaster, i.e. music director) for St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Evanston, IL for 31 years, and after that, at Trinity Church, Boston (Episcopal) for another 17 years until retiring in 2022.