Sacred and Secular: Week 1

On Sunday, June 14th, Scott and I will begin our first week of looking at where sacred and secular intersect. I, of course, am presiding over the music side of this. Music very much has a long history of sacred and secular overlapping and stealing from each other.

The winner from our voting this week was "You Raise Me Up." Of all the secular pieces that we voted on, this one is the "most sacred" in my opinion. It does not directly refer to God or other religious aspects and could certainly be interpreted as a love song (which I definitely did when the boy I had a crush on in high school sang it at the school assembly), but if anything, the words make more sense when they are referring to God rather than a sweetheart. What I find interesting is that the song becomes even more blatantly sacred (though not literally) when you add the second verse which is not included in the most popular version by Josh Groban (another high school crush, my goodness, maybe it was just the song). You can take a look at the lyrics here.

Our offertory this week will be "Agnus Dei" from Missa entre vous filles by Orlando di Lasso. This piece was written in in the 16th Century and is what we call a parody mass or an imitation mass. In the 16th century there were different approaches that composers would use to write a mass. One was to take a preexisting song and use that tune to compose the mass. Missa entre vous filles uses the tune from Jacob Clemens non Papa's Entre vous fille de quinze ans or "Oh you fifteen year old girls." And yes, the text of the piece goes where you think it is going and is incredibly obscene. Yet the mass using its tune, which everybody would have known, was sung in church. I love this piece because it is a great example of how ridiculously scandalous our "stuffy" classical music is! Text below:

Agnus Dei                                      Lamb of God
Qui tollis peccata mundi                You take away the sins of the world
Miserere nobis                               Have mercy on us

Children's Choir & Frozen

Yesterday, June 7th, was the Children's Choir last performance this year. The group is new to St. Andrew's and I have had some much fun working with them. They are great little singers and we had a good time singing music from Frozen. For me, it was a sort of unofficial start to Scott and I's upcoming series on the intersections of sacred and secular (which officially starts next week, look for blog posts!). Frozen isn't directly or obviously related to Christianity, but what a fun way to bring our children's world into worship. Frozen is by far the most popular children's movie from the past couple years, so I thought it would be perfect for our Academy Awards.

Side note: Children's Choir will begin again in late September. I can't wait to work with them again. Look forward to them singing more often with us during worship.