Music Notes – Sunday, December 28^th:

This Sunday’s musicians are Hallie Horowitz, Ellen Putman, and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney

 

About Sunday’s guest musicians:

Hallie Horowitz is a graduate of the Philadelphia Musical Academy, with education from Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music.  She was with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra for 27 years, and a popular solo recitalist and violin instructor in and around San Diego County before retiring to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.  

Hallie’s sister Ellen Horowitz Putman, a current member of UUCC, holds degrees in piano from Juilliard and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins, has taught at Peabody Preparatory and privately, and has worked as a performer and accompanist in the many different towns that she and her late husband Bill’s pet rats said they wanted to live in.

 

Prelude: Improvisation on “O virtus sapientiae” (O Strength of Wisdom) – Hildegard von Bingen, arr. Carney

Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1098-1179), also known as St. Hildegard or Sybil of the Rhine, was a Medieval musician, abbess, mystic, writer, linguist, philosopher, and healer who was undisputedly one of history’s most remarkable women. Theologically, Hildegard managed to bridge the gap between Benedictine Catholicism and earth-centered mysticism, which is no easy feat in our modern world, let alone in the European society of nearly 1000 years ago when Hildegard was alive. Her music was far ahead of its time, employing large melodic leaps and complex melismatic passages, as well as dramatic mirroring of music to lyrics. Hildegard’s compositions are also remarkable in the fact that she wrote her own original texts rather than setting Psalms or other Biblical verses, and that she composed sacred music for women’s voices, both of which were highly unusual practices during the 12^th century. “O virtus sapientiae” comes from Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations), a collection of 77 original lyric poems, each set to music by Hildegard herself, believed to have been written between 1140-1160 C.E.

 

Song: 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”.  

 

Special Music: Shepherd’s Madrigal – Kreisler

Friedrich “Fritz” Kreisler (1875-1962) was an Austrian-American violinist and composer. Kreisler was a child prodigy, studying in Vienna and Paris with some of the most celebrated musicians in Europe, and winning the Paris Conservatory’s esteemed “Premier Prix” gold medal at the age of 12. As an adult, Kreisler settled in the United States and rose to prominence as one of the great violin masters of the 20^th century. As a composer, Kreisler was best-known for his works for the violin, although he also composed four operettas and several vocal and piano pieces. Composed in 1927, “Shepherd’s Madrigal” is a short piece for solo violin and piano which is based on a German folksong.

 

Offertory Music: Improvisation on “Ubi caritas” – Berthier, arr. Carney  

French composer and organist Jacques Berthier (1923-1994) served as organist for the Church of St. Ignatius in Paris for over 30 years and wrote a great deal of sacred music for organ and chorus. In 1975, the brothers of Taizé (a monastic community in the south of France) charged Berthier to “write simple chants to be sung by the young folk who come every summer to Taizé from every part of the world.” Berthier’s resulting collection of simple, heartfelt music makes its true effect through calm repetition, and is intended as an aid to meditation. “Ubi caritas” is one of four Taizé songs written by Berthier that are included in our Singing the Journey hymnbook.

 

Song: Woyaya – Amarfio, Amoa, Bailey, Bedeau, Osei, Richardson, & Tontoh

Primarily written by Ghanaian drummer Sol Amarifio (1938-2022), “Woyaya” (also known as “We Are Going” or “Heaven Knows”) is the title song of a 1971 album by Oisibisa, a group of Ghanaian and Caribbean musicians. The song was frequently heard in work camps throughout central West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The word “Woyaya” has no literal English translation but can have multiple meanings, as is the case with many scat syllables (a common feature of West African music). The arrangement of “Woyaya” used in our service (and appearing as #1020 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook) comes from Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock.  

 

Postlude: Nocturnal Tangier – Godowsky, arr. Kreisler

“Nocturnal Tangier” is the first piece of Triakontameron, a suite of 30 pieces in six volumes for piano composed from 1919 to 1920 by Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938), a Lithuanian-American pianist and composer, who was highly regarded both as a performer and music educator. As a composer, his best-known works were for the piano, and these included the Java Suite and Passacaglia, as well as the Triakontameron that will be excerpted in Sunday’s service.

                                                                -Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director

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