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

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.

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.

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.