Resurrection Sunday: I know that my Redeemer liveth from Messiah

I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth!

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Palm Sunday: Chorus, "Lift up your heads" from Messiah

On Palm Sunday, in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as many Anglican and Lutheran churches, palm fronds (or in colder climates some kind of substitutes) are blessed with an aspergilium outside the church building (or in cold climates in the narthex when Easter falls early in the year). A procession also takes place. It may include the normal liturgical procession of clergy and acolytes, the parish choir, the children of the parish or indeed the entire congregation as in the churches of the East. In Oriental Orthodox churches palm fronds are distributed at the front of the church at the sanctuary steps, in India the sanctuary itself having been strewn with marigolds, and the congregation processes through and outside the church. In many Protestant churches, children are given palms, and then walk in procession around the inside of the church while the adults remain seated.

The palms are saved in many churches to be burned the following year as the source of ashes used in Ash Wednesday services. The Roman Catholic Church considers the palms to be sacramentals. The vestments for the day are deep scarlet red, the color of blood, indicating the supreme redemptive sacrifice Christ was entering the city who welcomed him to fulfill- his Passion and Resurrection in Jerusalem.

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Music for the Lenten Season: Pergolesi's Stabat Mater Dolorosa

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (4 January 1710 – 16 or 17 March 1736) was an Italian composer, violinist and organist. It is his Stabat Mater (1736), however, for male soprano, male alto, and orchestra, which is his best known sacred work. It was commissioned by the Confraternità dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo (the monks of the brotherhood of San Luigi di Palazzo) as a replacement for the rather old-fashioned one by Alessandro Scarlatti for identical forces which had been performed each Good Friday in Naples. Whilst classical in scope, the opening section of the setting demonstrates Pergolesi's mastery of the Italian baroque 'durezze e ligature' style, characterized by numerous suspensions over a faster, conjunct bassline. The work remained popular, becoming the most frequently printed work of the 18th century, and being arranged by a number of other composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who used it as the basis for his psalm Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083.  Information: Wikipedia

1. Manuscrit d'Ostuni (Plain chant).

Stabat mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lacrimosa,
Dum pendebat Filius.

2. Stabat Mater dolorosa.

Stabat mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lacrimosa,
Dum pendebat Filius.

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.

Patrizia Bovi (Soprano).
Pino de Vittorio (Tenor).
Bernard Arrieta (Basse).

Dir. Olivier Schneebeli.

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Happy 325th Birthday to J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite, BVW 1067

Johann Sebastian Bach (German pronunciation: [joˈhan] or [ˈjoːhan zeˈbastjan ˈbax]) (31 March 1685 [O.S. 21 March] – 28 July 1750) (often referred to simply as Bach) was a German composer, organist, violist, and violinist whose ecclesiastical and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he did not introduce new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.

Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now regarded as the supreme composer of the Baroque, and as one of the greatest of all time.

Information: Wikipedia

As my dear partner, Steph, so eloquently stated it, "When one hears such sounds, what can one say but...coffee?" 

Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra play three movements from the Orchestral Suite, BVW 1067.

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Music for the Lenten Season: He was despised from "Messiah"

This is one of my favorite airs from Messiah. I must confess, however, that it didn't come to my mind to use for my Lenten series of posts until I saw this video of an angry group of tea-baggers mocking and scorning a man who claimed he had Parkinson's Disease, and who sat on the ground in counter-protest, supporting health care reform. It is not my wish to get into the political aspects or debate of that scene, for that is not my purpose in this forum. However I was struck by the cruelty of the scene--an innocent man accosted and scorned by a crowd of angry men and women who mocked and ridiculed him--and I was deeply touched. I was reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew when he said, "In so much as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have also done it unto me".

Anne Sophie von Otter gives one of the most touching performances of the air, He was despised, I have ever heard.

part one

part two

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Ten reasons why I love Brahms: Reason #1: Opus 18, Intermezzos 1&2

Next to Mozart, Brahms is my favorite of the German composers, and most certainly my favorite of the Romantic Era German composers.

Johannes Brahms (pronounced [joːˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]) (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897), was a German composer and pianist, one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.

Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he gave the first performance of many of his own works; he also worked with the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.

Brahms was at once a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honor the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as the progressive Arnold Schoenberg and the conservative Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.



The Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118, are some of the most beloved items that the composer Johannes Brahms wrote for the solo instrument. Completed in 1893 and dedicated to Clara Schumann, the collection was the second to last composition to be published during Brahms' lifetime.

The six pieces are:

* No. 1. Intermezzo in A minor. Allegro non assai, ma molto appassionato
* No. 2. Intermezzo in A major. Andante teneramente
* No. 3. Ballade in G minor. Allegro energico
* No. 4. Intermezzo in F minor. Allegretto un poco agitato
* No. 5. Romance in F major. Andante
* No. 6. Intermezzo in E flat minor. Andante, largo e mesto

Evgeny Kissin plays Brahms intermezzos op.118 1,2. In Verbier festival 2007.

Information: Wikipedia

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