Music Notes – Sunday, July 19th:
This week’s musician is Laura Silverman.
About our guest musician:
Laura Silverman received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano from The Cleveland Institute of Music and was a prize winner in both The Casadesus International Piano Competition (now The Cleveland International Piano Competition), and the J.S. Bach International Piano Competition. Ms. Silverman has served on the faculties of both The University of Akron School of Music (Director of Collaborative Piano Studies) and The College of Wooster.
Prelude: Andante from Sonata No. 16 in C Major – Mozart
Renowned Classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) composed his Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major (K. 545) in 1788, although the work was not published until several years after his death. This pensive Andante is the second of three movements in that sonata, which is still widely performed and recorded today.
Song: #1000 Morning Has Come – Shelton
Jason Shelton is an award-winning composer, arranger, conductor, song and worship leader, workshop presenter, and coach. He served as the Associate Minister for Music at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, Tennessee from 1998-2017, and is now engaged in a music ministry at-large, focused on serving the musical resource needs of UU (and other liberal) congregations around the country (from jasonsheltonmusic.com). “Morning Has Come” (#1000) is one of many contributions Rev. Shelton made to our Singing the Journey hymnbook. In the words of the composer, “This song was composed for and debuted at a morning worship service during a 2001 UU musicians’ conference at the Mountain in Highlands, NC. As the story goes, it had been rainy and gray all week long, but when the time came to debut this song, the sun came out and shone gloriously through the chapel windows. Ah, the power of music!”
Joys and Concerns: Selections from Nocturnes – Alexander
American composer, pianist, and music educator Dennis Alexander (b. 1947) is best-known for his significant contributions to pedagogical repertoire for the piano. He has well over 400 published works and spent more than 20 years teaching piano pedagogy at the University of Montana. First published in 2018, Alexander’s Nocturnes have already become widely used as teaching pieces and recital repertoire.
Offertory Music: Air (V) from Suite No. 3 in D Minor (Handel, arr. Zill)
Without question, German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was one of the most important and influential figures of the Baroque Era. Although he is most famously known today for his dramatic large vocal-instrumental works such as Messiah, Handel also wrote a wide variety of smaller-scale vocal and instrumental compositions throughout his long career. The Keyboard Suite No. 3 in D Minor (HWV 428), first published in 1720 as part of a larger collection, is one of the best-known of Handel’s many pieces for solo keyboard. It was almost certainly written with the harpsichord in mind, although it is more frequently performed today on piano. This Sunday, you’ll hear the fifth part of this six-movement suite, titled “Air”. In this movement, Handel presents a charming theme followed by five increasingly complex and energetic variations.
Song: When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place – Poley
#1008 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook, “When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place” was written in 1996 by UU musician and composer Joyce Poley (b. 1941). This song “invites us to see ourselves in others. As we come to understand that all people have wisdom to share and stories to tell—regardless of culture, race, social status, or faith—we begin to realize how important our commonalities are, and how interwoven our lives. When we open ourselves to this sacred idea, then ‘our heart is in a holy place’.” (from uua.org)
Postlude: Invention No. 10 in G Major – Bach
Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was one of the true titans in the history of European music. Bach’s output as a composer was wide-ranging, but his Two- and Three-part Inventions (BWV 772-801) have probably been performed more often than anything else Bach wrote, simply because they are excellent pedagogical exercises that are still played by thousands of students all over the world, even 300 years after their first publication. The two (or three) parts referred to in the title are lines of imitative counterpoint, one melody ‘chasing’ after the other in an often-complex dance of melody, countermelody, and harmony. Bach originally wrote his Two-Part Inventions to be used as training exercises for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and then later reworked the pieces for some of his other pupils. Bach’s Invention No. 10 in G Major, BWV 781 is the 10th piece from a larger collection of 15 Two-Part Inventions. This video shows how Bach weaves the two independent melodies together to create a sum which is far greater than its parts.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director