Our anthem this week is Hymn 199 in the hymn book, If I have Been a Source of Pain. It is a very slow and sorrowful piece with an almost folk-like quality to the melody. I am using a couple of flute organ stops to maintain the folk-like quality in the accompaniment as well. I'm excited about our anthem tomorrow because the choir is doing a very good job expressing the text in this piece.
The prelude, offertory, and postlude are all contemporary piano arrangements both familiar and unfamiliar hymns.
Saturday 29 March 2014
Monday 24 March 2014
The Music Last Week: March 23rd, 2014
In the middle of our service yesterday I realized I hadn't posted anything about the music! So my apologies for forgetting.
Yesterday I chose to focus mainly on organ music, specifically, two out of the three pieces I chose used solo stops. That means you only use on stop or set of pipes for a melody line. You generally don't hear this in hymn playing, so it was fun to play with some of the different sounds that the organ at St. Andrew's has.
Roddie sang a lovely, very lenten, solo about Jesus walking through the valley.
Yesterday I chose to focus mainly on organ music, specifically, two out of the three pieces I chose used solo stops. That means you only use on stop or set of pipes for a melody line. You generally don't hear this in hymn playing, so it was fun to play with some of the different sounds that the organ at St. Andrew's has.
Roddie sang a lovely, very lenten, solo about Jesus walking through the valley.
Saturday 15 March 2014
The Music This Week: March 16th, 2014
The sermon this week will be dealing with lament and when I consider lament and music, the two composers that immediately jump to mind are Bach and Chopin. Because we got to enjoy Bach and his contemporaries last week, I chose to focus the music selections on Chopin and his contemporaries.
Chopin often very effectively captured a sense of melancholy within his music. He had a gift for writing melodies that seem to sing on the piano. I hope you will hear this in the postlude, Nocturne in E minor, Op. posth. 72, which is one of my favourite pieces for piano.
Our anthem, sung by the adult choir, will break from this theme a little bit. It is a piece that Scott learned in Ohio while away for continuing education and he recommended it because of the relevance of the text to his preaching during lent. It is a contemporary worship piece which moves between a more subdued verse and somewhat impassioned chorus. It's very pretty and we will be revisiting it as a hymn in the coming weeks.
Chopin often very effectively captured a sense of melancholy within his music. He had a gift for writing melodies that seem to sing on the piano. I hope you will hear this in the postlude, Nocturne in E minor, Op. posth. 72, which is one of my favourite pieces for piano.
Our anthem, sung by the adult choir, will break from this theme a little bit. It is a piece that Scott learned in Ohio while away for continuing education and he recommended it because of the relevance of the text to his preaching during lent. It is a contemporary worship piece which moves between a more subdued verse and somewhat impassioned chorus. It's very pretty and we will be revisiting it as a hymn in the coming weeks.
Friday 7 March 2014
Easter Choir
The Adult Choir would like to invite you to join them for Good Friday and Easter.
This is a great chance for those who can't make it to choir all the time but are interested in singing or those who aren't sure if they would like being in the choir to give it a try for a short time.
The Easter Choir will meet on Thursdays from March 27th to April 17th from 7:30 to 8:15.
This is a great chance for those who can't make it to choir all the time but are interested in singing or those who aren't sure if they would like being in the choir to give it a try for a short time.
The Easter Choir will meet on Thursdays from March 27th to April 17th from 7:30 to 8:15.
The Music This Week: March 9th, 2014
For the first Sunday in lent I asked Madison Lightfoot to sing a beautiful piece call Bist Du Bei Mir by Gottfried Heinrich Stötzel. The piece has often been attributed to J.S. Bach, but is stylistically significantly different from his work. Many of you will recognize the tune, it's sung with a number of different texts and is even found in some hymn books. She's going to be singing an English version.
Bist Du Bei Mir is a simple and melodic composition and I chose pieces from the same era, the Baroque era, with similar attributes for the prelude, offertory, and postlude. Somewhat ironically, the prelude, Prelude in G minor, has also been attributed to Bach (even the edition I just bought says that it's by Bach) but it was probably written by one of his pupils.
Bist Du Bei Mir is a simple and melodic composition and I chose pieces from the same era, the Baroque era, with similar attributes for the prelude, offertory, and postlude. Somewhat ironically, the prelude, Prelude in G minor, has also been attributed to Bach (even the edition I just bought says that it's by Bach) but it was probably written by one of his pupils.
Saturday 1 March 2014
The Music This Week: March 2nd, 2014
Even though it's not Black History Month anymore I decided we should do another Sunday of African-American music. There was a lot of positive response and excitement surrounding last week's music, so I thought we should spend some more time with upbeat music before delving into lent.
The Adult Choir is singing an African-American folk song found in our hymn book. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in the morning has a laid-back, simple melody with rich harmonies making it a lovely little piece.
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