Music Notes – Sunday, July 20th:
This Sunday’s musician is UUCC Music Director Emerita Fern Jennings
Prelude: Morning Has Broken – arr. Southbridge
“Morning Has Broken” is a setting of the traditional Scottish Gaelic tune “Bunessan”, with lyrics by English author Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). For decades, the song has appeared in dozens of hymnals (including as #38 in our own Singing the Living Tradition), but it reached a larger audience in 1972 when a recording by Cat Stevens became a top ten hit on the U.S. Billboard charts. This Sunday’s prelude will be an organ arrangement of “Morning Has Broken” written by James Southbridge.
Song: There’s a River Flowin’ in my Soul – Sanders
“There’s a River Flowin’ in My Soul” is #1007 in our Singing the Journey hymnal. It was composed by Rose Sanders (b. 1945), who is a civil rights attorney, activist and creative artist living in Selma, Alabama. Ms. Sanders was Alabama’s first African American female judge, and she has co-founded and works to support many organizations which protect children.
Centering Music: Adagio (II) from Organ Sonata No. 1 – Mendelssohn
Postlude: Allegro Maestoso (III) from Organ Sonata No. 2 (Mendelssohn)
German composer, organist/pianist, and conductor Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), more commonly known simply as Felix Mendelssohn, was one of the most important musicians of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn’s most famous works include the concert overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the oratorio Elijah, the melody for the Christmas carol “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”, and Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte) for piano. Mendelssohn was celebrated as an organist and wrote six organ sonatas (op. 65), which were published in 1845. This Sunday, Fern will play the 2nd movement (Adagio) from Mendelssohn’s Organ Sonata No. 1 in F Minor as our Centering Music, and the 3rd movement (Allegro Maestoso) from Organ Sonata No. 2 in C Minor will serve as this Sunday’s Postlude.
Offertory Music: Revirado – Piazzolla
“Revirado” (Unsettled) is a 1963 piece by Argentine-American composer and musician Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992), who is best-known today as the primary innovator of nuevo tango, wherein jazz and classical elements are incorporated into traditional tango music. Although it has since been arranged for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles, “Revirado” was originally written for the bandoneon, which was Piazzola’s primary instrument. The bandoneon is a type of concertina primarily used in Argentine and Uruguayan music.
Song: #1051 We Are… (Barnwell)
#1051 in Singing the Journey, “We Are…” was composed by Ysaye Barnwell (b. 1946) for Sweet Honey in the Rock. “We Are…” was originally the last song in a suite that began with the lyric, “Lawd, it’s midnight. A dark and fear filled midnight. Lawd, it’s a midnight without stars.” Dr. Barnwell wanted to create a complete circle of experience, and so she wrote “for each child that’s born, a morning star rises…” This phrase is meant to establish hope, and it defines the uniqueness of each one of us. No matter what our race, culture or ethnicity, each one of us has been called into being and are the sum total of all who came before. In the composer’s words, “Each and every one of us stands atop a lineage that has had at its core, mothers and fathers and teachers and dreamers and shamans and healers and builders and warriors and thinkers and, and, and…so in spite of our uniqueness, we come from and share every experience that human kind has ever had. In this way, we are one. (from uua.org)
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director