Pre-service music starts at 10:10 this Sunday
Be sure to arrive early this Sunday, December 15th for very special pre-service music from our choirs and from our guest musicians The Amethyst String Trio. See you then!
Music Notes – Sunday, December 15th:
This week’s musicians are UUCC Music Director Mike Carney, UUCC Pianist Karin Tooley, The Chancel Choir, The Treble Ensemble, and the Amethyst String Trio (Mary Beth Ions, Violin I; Carol Ruzicka, Violin II; Kent Collier, Cello)
About our guest musicians:
For over twenty years, violinist Mary Beth Ions has been one of Cleveland’s most active musicians. She plays in the Opera Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Trinity Cathedral Chamber Orchestra, and for numerous Playhouse Square productions of touring Broadway shows. She regularly provides back-up music for touring musicians, including Mannheim Steamroller, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, Smokey Robinson, Sarah Brightman, and many others. During the summer she performs as Principal Second Violin with the Blossom Festival Orchestra.
Carol Ruzicka holds degrees in violin performance from Case Western Reserve University and The Cleveland Institute of Music. She is a concertmistress with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and teaches at CWRU. Dr. Ruzicka is in demand as a violinist and performs regularly in the Cleveland area and elsewhere, both as a soloist and as an ensemble player.
Kent Collier, principal cellist of Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music in New York. He is a native Clevelander and has been principal cellist for Cleveland Opera, Cleveland Ballet, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and Lyric Opera. Most recently he has served as principal cellist with Red an Orchestra, Blossom Festival Orchestra and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. He has taught cello at Allegheny College, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, and the Cleveland Music School Settlement.
About today’s choral arrangements:
Several of the carols sung by our choirs this Sunday are arrangements by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker. Alice Parker (1925-2023) was an internationally acclaimed composer, conductor, author and teacher, and in 1985 she founded Melodious Accord, an organization promoting choral performance and education. Parker remained an active leader of Melodious Accord well into her nineties. Robert Shaw (1916-1999) rose to fame as the founder and creative force behind the Robert Shaw Chorale, then went on to become assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and then music director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for over 20 years. Dr. Shaw served as director of music for our congregation from 1960-1967. Parker and Shaw shared a love for enduring folk melodies, from hymns to carols to spirituals, and began collaborating on arrangements in 1948. Their decades-long partnership resulted in over 200 published arrangements which have become staples of choral literature and are performed regularly by choral groups around the world to this day.
Many of the other music featured in this Sunday’s service is from Celebrating Christmas in Song, a 1987 collection of new and reimagined carols created by Unitarian Universalist musician Leo Collins (1925-2018), who was at that time serving as music director for First Church of Boston. Collins had a distinguished career as a composer, music educator, and conductor, and among his many career accomplishments, he was the founder and first president of the UU Musicians’ Network. Interestingly, Collins worked as a conducting assistant to Robert Shaw while a student at Juilliard.
Pre-service Music:
“O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is the English title of the traditional Latin Advent hymn “Veni, Emmanuel”. The exact origins of the piece are lost to history, but scholars agree that it is one of the oldest of the traditional holiday songs that are well known in the western world. The melody originates from at least the early 17th century and text is likely far older still, dating from the 8th century A.D. or earlier.
Hymn #244: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” was written in 1849 by Edmund Sears (1810-1876), who was the minister at that time for the First Parish Unitarian Church of Wayland, Massachusetts – a church that is still around today, and recently celebrated their 375th year. Sears’ original poem, which was soon set to music, carried a message that was not often found in other hymns and carols of its day; a message that the world needs to hear now as much as it did then: an end to war and strife and a striving for peace on earth and goodwill to all.
Offertory Music
Also known as “The Children’s Song of the Nativity”, How Far Is It to Bethlehem? is an English carol. The melody comes from an 18th century hymn tune called “Stowey” that itself may have been derived from an older English folk song. The lyrics were from a 1917 poem by British author and poet Frances Chesterton (1869-1938).
Special Music:
Although commonly thought of as a Christmas carol, Deck the Hall comes from a centuries-old Welsh New Year’s song called “Nos Galan”. Some scholars also believe the song has deeper roots in folk dance and Pagan Yule celebrations. No one knows for sure when the song originated, but we know its popularity had spread as far as Austria by the 18th century, as the tune was ‘sampled’ by both Mozart and Haydn.
Postlude: Noel Nouvelet
“Noel Nouvelet” is a traditional carol based on a French folk-dance melody that dates back 500 years or more. It was first published as a Christmas hymn in 1721 and remains popular today both in France and England (where the title is loosely translated to “Sing We Now of Christmas”). The same melody is also used for the Easter hymn “Now the Green Blade Riseth”. Both versions appear in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, as #254 and #266.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director