Music Notes – Sunday, October 4th:
This Sunday’s musician is UUCC Pianist Karin Tooley.
Centering Music: Tapestry of the Ages – Hermann
“Tapestry of the Ages” is a solo piano piece written by Florida-based composer and performer Suzanne Herman and released on her 2019 piano album Cascades of Time. Herman’s website describes her creative inspiration for the music of that album: “While hiking Cascade Canyon in the spectacular Grand Teton National Park, the passage of time was extremely evident in the numerous layers of rock and the jagged appearance of the massive mountains. These original piano compositions reflect changes that we all encounter as time quickly passes and never stands still.”
Song: Open My Heart – Flurry
#1013 in Singing the Journey, “Open My Heart” is a simple round written by Henry Flurry (b. 1964), an award-winning UU composer, educator, and pianist based in Prescott, Arizona. Flurry has composed in response to commissions from the Atlanta Wind Symphony, University City Symphony, Camarata Singers, and others. He has also collaborated with various artists to create multimedia children’s software for many different publishers, including Disney, Scholastic, IBM, and Harper Collins. Flurry and his wife Maria regularly perform together as the duo Sticks and Tones. (includes material from henryflurry.com)
Song: Morning Hymn – McCarty
Rev. Dennis McCarty (b. 1950, he/they) is a UU minister, author, and songwriter. His play, Servetus: The Radical Reformed Musical, tells the story of proto-Unitarian martyr Michael Servetus, who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1553. McCarty wrote “Morning Hymn” while serving the UU Congregation of Columbus, Indiana, and the song is now part of the UUA’s new virtual hymnal Sing Out Love. (includes material from singoutlove.org)
Joys and Concerns Music: Mystery of Love – Stevens, arr. Layton
Michigan native Sufjan Stevens (b. 1975) is a musician and songwriter who has written and performed in multiple styles, including electronica, new age, folk rock, and symphonic rock. Stevens wrote and performed “Mystery of Love” for the 2017 film Call Me by Your Name. “Mystery of Love” earned a great deal of critical praise, and was nominated both for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and for the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Offertory: Mystic Walls – Mainguy
“Mystic Walls” is a contemplative 2020 piano piece by Marie-Eve Mainguy, a French-Canadian composer who writes primarily for the piano and for pitched percussion instruments such as the xylophone and marimba.
Song: We Would Be One – Sibelius/Wright
This Sunday’s opening hymn will be #318 “We Would Be One”, one of two hymns in Singing the Living Tradition built around the Finlandia melody, borrowed from a 1900 tone poem of the same name by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The words you’ll be singing this Sunday were written by Unitarian minister Samuel Anthony Wright (1919-2016) for Unitarian and Universalist youth at their Continental Convention of 1953-54. Matching the sentiment of the hymn, that event resulted in the youth of our two parent faiths merging to become the Liberal Religious Youth of the United States and Canada, nearly 10 years before the official creation of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961.
Postlude: The Sound of Silence – Simon
“The Sound of Silence” was written by Paul Simon (b. 1941) when he was only 21 years old, before Simon and Garfunkel would become household names. The song was first released as “Sounds of Silence”, an acoustic track on Simon and Garfunkel’s 1964 debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Neither the song nor the album met with much commercial success at first, but “Sounds of Silence” began to get airplay on east coast college radio stations the following year. Without the knowledge or consent of Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel, the song’s original producer Tom Wilson remixed the track, adding drums, electric guitar, and electric bass. Columbia Records released the remixed version, now titled “The Sound of Silence”, in September of 1965. The remix rose to #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and became the lead track on Simon and Garfunkel’s second studio album Sounds of Silence. Today, “The Sound of Silence” is one of the best known and most beloved anthems of the 1960s folk rock era. Paul Simon still regularly closes live performances with an acoustic version of this iconic song.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director