Save the date: Linking Legacies concert on May 14th
Be sure to join us in the UUCC Sanctuary at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 14th for Linking Legacies, a free concert celebrating the music of Black composers and performers with a connection to Northeast Ohio. Click here for more information about this very special musical event!
Music Notes – Sunday, April 30th:
This week’s musicians are UUCC Pianist Karin Tooley and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney
Opening Hymn: #389 Gathered Here – Porter
#389 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, “Gathered Here” was written in 1990 by Phil Porter (b. 1953), an artist, dancer and arts educator and United Church of Christ lay minister who is known for his work as an LGBTQ+ activist. The simple, overlapping melody and haunting harmonies have made “Gathered Here” a longtime favorite in both UU and UCC worship services.
Centering Music: In a Landscape – Cage
John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, music theorist, and music educator. Considered by historians to be one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Cage was at the forefront of the musical avant-garde, being among the first composers to experiment with electronic sounds and with non-traditional uses for instruments, such as prepared piano. Cage also composed numerous works of aleatoric music (where an element of chance determines some or all of the notes and/or rhythms that will be performed), and his 4 Minutes, 33 Seconds challenged the central notion of what constitutes music in the first place. During the middle and late 1940s, Cage embraced the notion that the purpose of music was to “to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences”. This spirit is at the heart of “In a Landscape”, a 1948 composition for solo piano or harp that was written to accompany a choreographed dance. “In a Landscape” was influenced both by the work of French pianist and composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), as well as the music from various cultures within eastern and southern Asia, which Cage immersed himself into during the 1930s and 40s. In the score for “In a Landscape”, Cage instructs the pianist or harpist to “Play without sounding, release pedals (thus obtaining harmonics”), thus blurring the harmonic and melodic lines of the piece.
Offertory Music: “Méditation” from Thaïs – Massenet
Jules Massenet (1842-1912) was a French composer of the Romantic Period who wrote in a variety of forms, but is best remembered today for his operas, the most famous of which were Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). However, Massenet’s most famous melody by far is the music we’ll be hearing on Sunday morning, an instrumental composition titled “Méditation”, which was first performed as an entr’acte between scenes of Massenet’s 1894 opera Thaïs. Originally scored for solo violin with orchestra, “Méditation” has since been adapted for dozens of different solo instruments and ensembles, including piano, organ, harp, cello, voices, and more.
Closing Hymn: #352 Find a Stillness – Seaburg
#352 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, “Find a Stillness” is based on a traditional Transylvanian hymn tune, with words by Carl G. Seaburg (1922-1998), a UU Minister and historian who spent several years as president of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society and is responsible for seven of the hymns in Singing the Living Tradition, including #124 “Be That Guide” and #338 “I Seek the Spirit of a Child”.
Postlude: La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) – Debussy
French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is considered to be the father of musical Impressionism, although Debussy himself disliked the idea of being categorized as a composer. Throughout his career, Debussy wrote music for a wide variety of performing forces, and his nontraditional use of harmony played a vital role in ushering in a new era of music at the turn of the 20th century. Debussy wrote “La fille aux cheveux de lin” in January of 1910 as part of his first book of Préludes for solo piano. “La fille aux cheveux de lin” is one of Debussy’s best-known pieces and has been arranged for various performing forces and recorded by hundreds of artists.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director