Music Notes – Sunday, January 14^th: 

This Sunday’s musician is UUCC Music Director Mike Carney. We’ll also hear recordings from 1960s services featuring Robert Shaw and other past musicians from the history of our congregation.

 

Be sure to arrive early this week for special prelude music beginning around 10:05!

 

Prelude: Sonata VI in G major for violin and continuo – Bach

Sonata No. 6 in G major for violin and continuo (BWV 1019) is the final movement from a set of six sonatas for violin and harpsichord written by Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Despite the fact that these sonatas were written for just two players, Bach composed them in trio sonata form, with the two upper parts played by the violin and the right-hand harpsichord part, and the bass line played by the left hand of the harpsichordist, sometimes doubled by a cello or viola da gamba. These sonatas were probably composed in the early 1720s, during Bach’s final years in Cöthen before he moved to Leipzig.

 

Opening Hymn: #96 I Cannot Think of Them as Dead – Hosmer/Wooden 

“I Cannot Think of Them as Dead” is just one of the eight hymns in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal which is authored by Unitarian Minister and hymnwriter Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840-1929), who served as our congregation’s minister from 1878-1892. In our current hymn #96, Hosmer’s words are set to “Distant Beloved”, a tune written by another American Unitarian (and later UU) minister, W. Frederick Wooden (b. 1953), who served for many years as senior minister of the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Centering Music: In the Presence of the Past – Page

A native of Boston, Nick Page (b. 1952) is a UU song leader, composer, conductor and author. His choral works have premiered everywhere from Lincoln Center to humble school cafetoriums. NIck is the author of three books and has nearly 100 published choral pieces. (from nickmusic.com) Inspired by the 1851 public storming of a Syracuse jail to free a runaway slave who had been captured and held for extradition to the south, “In the Presence of the Past” blends original material with two familiar southern American tunes: “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”.

 

Offertory Music: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God – Luther

“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, originally titled “Ein Feste Berg ist Unser Gott”, is the most famously known of the hundreds of hymns authored by German priest, author, reformer, and musician Martin Luther (1483-1546), considered by most historians to be the central figure of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. One of the lesser-known facts about Luther is that he was a prolific composer of hymns, and was also known during his lifetime as a singer and lutenist. Luther composed hundreds of hymns during his lifetime, but none is as widely known as “Ein Feste Burg”, which appears in nearly every Christian hymnal today, and is also found in our own Singing the Living Tradition (#200).

Closing Hymn: From Age to Age – Hosmer/Benjamin   

#105 in Singing the Living Tradition. “From Age to Age” is another hymn by our congregation’s former minister Frederick W. Hosmer (1840-1929). Hosmer wrote these words for the annual festival of the Free Religious Association in 1899, and the hymn was first published that same year in Souvenir Festival Hymns. Our current hymnal sets Hosmer’s text to a tune by one of the best-known living UU composers, Thomas Benjamin (b. 1940). Dr, Benjamin remains an active performer, educator, and composer, and many of his works can be found in our Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey hymnals.