Wednesday 21 May 2014

The Music This Week: May 25th, 2014

Two themes determined the music I chose for this week: women and testimony. It is the Women's Missionary Society's anniversary, which we will be celebrating in church, and our service will centre around the practice of testimony.

In honour of the Women's Missionary Society's anniversary the women from the adult choir will be singing "Woman in the night" by Brian Wren and Alfred Fedak as our anthem. We did it earlier this year as a hymn (657) and they thought it would be a good choice for this Sunday and I agreed. Beyond that, I chose to only use female composers for the prelude, postlude, and offertory selections.

I have to say that finding songs about testimony seems to be a tricky thing! At least when pulling from my collection and especially when you are restricting yourself to female composers. The music industry is unfortunately still quite dominated by men, especially conductors and composers. I ended up with three pieces that I would say are related to testimony as opposed to about testimony. I've listed them below.

Prelude: You Pulled Me Through - by Diane Warren, arr. Carol Tornquist
Offertory: I've Got Peace Like a River - Trad., arr. Carol Tornquist
Postlude: Every Time I Feel the Spirit - Trad., arr. Carol Tornquist

Saturday 17 May 2014

The Music This Week: May 18th, 2014

Reflection

The Adult Choir is singing a piece by Linda Stassen called Sing Alleluia. I learned it a long time ago at camp of all places and to me it is very meditative and reflective because of it's simple repetitive, melody. We used to sing it ten or more times in a row, but don't worry, the adult choir is only going to sing it twice.

The prelude is Sérénade sur l'eau (Serenade on the Water) by Jacques Ibert and the postlude is Auf dem See (On the Lake) by Heinrich Hofmann. I chose two pieces about water because I think many people find rivers, lakes, oceans, and other bodies of water very good places to reflect.

The offertory is Im Traum (In the dream) by Franz Liszt. Unlike Liszt's famous virtuosic works, this piece is leading towards the French impressionism of the late 19th century (think of Debussy and Ravel). It is much more subdued and the piece contains two great phrases with an almost no-existent melody and no accompaniment, almost silence.

As a side note, I would like to mention that the organ is in need of repair and I will not be playing it at all this week.


Saturday 10 May 2014

The Music This Week: May 11th, 2014

Hello all! Just a short post this week. I am delighted that the Junior and Senior Youth Choirs will be singing for us tomorrow. It's a nice little, upbeat contemporary worship piece and I've chosen pieces in the same style by Mark Hayes for the rest of our worship service.