Music Notes – Sunday, October 31st:
“The Poet Sings” – online concert with Good Company and composer James Mulholland
Please join me on Sunday, November 14th at 4:00 p.m. (EST) on Zoom for “The Poet Sings”: an online choral concert and master class featuring acclaimed composer and conductor Dr. James Mulholland along with Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble. Many of you know that I direct Good Company, and several UUCC members and friends sing with the group as well, including Barbara Bradley, Amy Collins, Leon Michaud, Anne and Steve Sanford, Pam Schenk, and Holly Walker.
This concert and webinar will explore the significant connection between poetry and choral music, and will feature music of James Mulholland, Eric Whitacre, Joan Szymko, and Morten Lauridsen, including settings of Emily Dickinson, James Agee, Octavio Paz, W.B. Yeats, and others. Attendees will have an opportunity to be part of a Q&A session with Dr. Mulholland and our other panelists.
This event is part of Good Company’s Contemporary Composers Series and is made possible in part by funding from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and the Ohio Arts Council.
Event link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82088327959
Be sharp! A few notes about singing…
I’m sure you know by now that UUCC has returned to in-person, indoor services. This is definitely reason to celebrate, but there are still precautions that are necessary in this time of pandemic, and with an airborne virus, singing can be a risky activity. I recently met with a special task force from UUCC’s Board of Trustees to discuss the best options surrounding singing during our upcoming indoor services. That task force and I agreed that singing is an important part of the worship experience, and we want to still include hymns and choir anthems within indoor services. The big question is what can we do to make singing as safe as possible? The research on this question is somewhat limited as of now, but one significant and wide-ranging study has provided some useful guidance on best practices when it comes to music-making. Here are a few things to keep in mind before opening your hymnbook this Sunday:
- Mask up. Singing with a mask on might feel a bit strange at first, but all of the available research agrees that proper mask wearing is a simple step that greatly reduces the potential for airborne transmission, especially in an indoor environment where people are singing less than 20 feet from one another.
- Keep your distance. Another major factor in making singing a safer activity is to remain 6 or more feet distant from others who are not part of your own household.
- Keep it moving (the air). You’ll notice fans and air purifiers in the sanctuary the next time you’re in church. These measures are to increase the rate of air exchange within the room, which is yet another factor proven to reduce the risk of viral spread.
- Skip the repeats. In many of our upcoming services, we’ll sing selected verses of certain hymns. The research has shown that reducing the amount of time we spend singing together will also reduce our chance of spreading infection.
- Sing gently. Even if we’re singing your #1 favorite hymn the next time you’re in church, please save your ‘diva voice’ for the post-pandemic world. The volume and pitch of your voice are both factors in the risk of spreading unwanted particles to others.
Music Notes for October 31st, 2021
This Sunday’s musicians are UUCC Music Director Mike Carney and members of the UUCC Chancel Choir.
Opening Hymn: #336 All My Memories of Love
#336 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnbook, “All My Memories of Love” is a setting of “Adoro te devote” (Humbly I Adore Thee), a 13th Century plainsong melody that is often (but probably incorrectly) attributed to St. Thomas of Aquinas. The lyrics in our hymnal were written by Rev. Mark Belletini, who served for many years as senior minister at the First Unitarian Church of Columbus, Ohio.
Centering Music: Autumn Leaves – Kosma/Prévert
“Autumn Leaves” (Les Feuilles Mortes) is the most famous jazz standard to have originated outside the United States. The distinctive melody and unconventional supporting harmony were originally written by French-Hungarian composer Joseph Kosma (1905-1969) as a pas de deux (choreographed duo) within his 1945 ballet Le Rendez-vous, whose storyline was written by French poet and author Jacques Prévert (1900-1977). The original French lyrics were added by Prévert shortly thereafter and the completed song reached a much larger audience when it was featured a year later in the film Les Portes de la Nuit (Gates of the Night). Since then, “Autumn Leaves” has been recorded over 1000 times by a veritable who’s who of performers from every corner of the globe.
Hymn: #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)
Offertory music: Breaths – Barnwell and Diop
“Breaths” (#1001 in Singing the Journey) is adapted from the poem of the same title by Senegalese poet Birago Diop. The music was written by Ysaye Barnwell (b. 1946), a UU songwriter, activist and former member of the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. In Barnwell’s own words: “Hearing this poem…affirmed my world view which includes and reveres my ancestors. When I heard the poem a second time years later, it began to sing itself to me, and I am glad that I have been able to share what I heard with you.
Closing Song: Will the Circle Be Unbroken – Hutchinson & Habershon
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” was written in 1907 by American folk and gospel songwriter Charles Hutchinson (1856-1932) with British lyricist Ada Habershon (1861-1918). The song became popular as a folk hymn in worship and funeral services throughout the American south and Appalachia, and then reached a mainstream audience after a famous 1935 recording by The Carter Family. Since that time, the song has been recorded many times over by a plethora of artists and is sung every year at the conclusion of the ceremony for inducting new members into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.
Postlude: The Great Pumpkin Waltz – Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose big break came in 1963 when television producer Lee Mendelson heard “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the radio and decided Guaraldi’s music would provide the perfect backdrop for an upcoming TV documentary about Charles Schulz and his comic strip Peanuts. Guaraldi would go on to score seventeen animated Peanuts TV specials, including It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in 1966, for which Guaraldi wrote “The Great Pumpkin Waltz”.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director
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