The Music This Week: May 4th, 2014

This Sunday Mary Clifford is going to be playing the violin for us, so in choosing the music for the prelude, offertory, and postlude I thought I should take my cue from her. She's playing a lovely little piece by J.S. Bach, which was written in the Baroque Era but shares some characteristics with the Classical Era, particularly the structural symmetry, slow harmonic movement (meaning the underlying chords do not change very often), and a predictable, but satisfying melody. Because we've done quite a lot of Baroque music recently, I thought we would do some classical this week instead. So we will have lots of sonatas and sonatinas from the era Mozart wrote in!

The Music This Week: April 27th, 2014

I'm formatting this blog post a little differently this week because while there are very clear reasons for each of my choices (I promise!), there is no overarching theme to discuss.

Anthem:
This week's sermon is about justice and aboriginal issues so I wanted to chose a piece that came from or was influenced by aboriginal music. I went down a couple roads to try and find something. I contacted a friend who was an aboriginal studies major in university, but she hadn't studied music there and didn't have and connections for that here. I looked for choral pieces at Music Plus, but most of it wouldn't be appropriate for our choir. I wasn't sure what we were going to be able to do, but at the last music focused Manna Day at Crieff Hills, I learned about a piece in our hymnal which uses a Dakota melody! So the choir will be singing "Many and great, O God, are your works," hymn #301, as the anthem this Sunday.

Prelude & Postlude:
One of our hymns this Sunday, "We cannot own the sunlit sky," hymn #717, uses the same melody as the folk song "How Can I Keep from Singing," which is one of my favourite sacred pieces. So even though I played them earlier this year (don't tell anyone!) I am going to play two different arrangements of that song for the prelude and postlude.

Offertory:
I will be playing an arrangement of "Deep River." To me the longing in this piece (see the text printed below) is reflective of the longing for peace and reconciliation in regards to aboriginal issues that I think many of us feel.

Deep River
Deep river, my home is over Jordan
Oh deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground

The Music Last Week: Holy Week!

Last week I chose not to write a blog post for two reasons:

1. Holy Week is a really busy time for musicians
2. I felt the music could speak for itself

I do want to take this opportunity to say thank-you though. I am so pleased with all the hard work the adult choir did and so grateful for the guests from the congregation and outside who joined us. I hope that you enjoyed the music as much as I did!

The Music This Week: April 13th, 2014

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday and the Adult Choir is singing "Jesus, the King" by Lloyd Larson. It's upbeat and celebrates "Hosanna the King of all Kings."

For the prelude and postlude I've chosen a couple marches because they are celebratory and the bass line represents feet marching which reminded me of the donkey walking into Jerusalem or a procession. 

Alexis Smith will be playing a lovely piece by Debussy called Page d'album for the offertory. 

The Music This Week: April 6th, 2014

Tomorrow is our last lenten service and the adult choir is going to sing Behold the Shepherd on the Hill by Natalie Sleeth. Sleeth is an American composer who lived in the 20th century, she primarily wrote church music and wrote the hymn In the Bulb There is a Flower in our hymnal. This song works well for lent because of its simple, repetitive melody which is ornamented by descants and singing in canons.

One of my favourite aspects of the organ is the diversity of emotion it provides because of all the different stops available. Because of this, I wanted to spend the last Sunday in Lent focusing on the organ. So I have chosen three organ pieces for the prelude, offertory, and postlude. All of the music is subdued and appropriate for lent, but you will hear more major key signatures (frequently associated with neutrality and happiness as opposed to sadness, as a minor key often is) looking forward to Palm Sunday. The three pieces I chose are unified by featuring octave leaps in the left hand.