Can you believe it’s been almost two years since we celebrated Claudio Monteverdi’s 400th anniversary with two ground-breaking performances of his Vespers of 1610? Now we will celebrate the music of Giovanni Gabrieli (1554-1612), and this time it’s the 400th anniversary of his death. Over the past couple of weeks, Carl Crosier has been hard at… Read More Glorious Gabrieli
This Sunday, my organ voluntaries (prelude, communion and postlude) will feature works by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), one of Germany’s most important composers in the early part of the 20th century. Yet his output for the organ was minuscule compared to the total of his musical compositions. I’ll be playing one movement from each of his… Read More Three from Hindemith
During the Easter season at the 10:30 service, the choir has been singing Gospel Acclamations by Aaron David Miller, which have trumpet, organ and bells for accompaniment. Our resident trumpet player, Allen Bauchle, has been playing along on all the hymns and liturgy, and Peter Hallock’s This is the Feast, adding to the festivity to… Read More An embarrassment of riches
The Easter music has hardly been put away and it’s already time for our next “biggie,” the Bach Pilgrimage VIII concert on Saturday, April 21st, as part of the Abendmusiken series. The concert will focus on music from Leipzig, in the year 1726. This upcoming concert will herald the return of retired cantor, Carl Crosier,… Read More No rest for the weary
I didn’t get a chance last weekend to write about some of the other music we did for Transfiguration, because we have been so busy with a kitchen renovation. But I did want to say something about last Sunday’s opening hymn which was a concertato by Carl Crosier on “Oh wondrous type! o vision fair.”… Read More It’s Lent, but . . .
Tomorrow the offertory anthem will be the spiritual, “Elijah Rock,” a piece in a new genre for the LCH Choir. It was written by Moses Hogan (1957-2003), an African-American composer who published over seventy choral anthems and who tragically died at the age of 45 of a brain tumor. A website devoted to his music… Read More Elijah Rock
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eChEWK_4B3Q] I found this excellent performance of Cantata 191 from the J. S. Bach Foundation (http://www.bachstiftung.ch/) on YouTube. Each month, one of Bach’s over 200 cantatas is performed in the town of Trogen, Switzerland. On Christmas Eve at LCH, there will be two fifteen-minute cantatas presented with orchestra in the half-hour before the late… Read More Bach to the familiar
The 5:00 pm Family Candlelight Eucharist on Christmas Eve will showcase musical performances by our youth, called F.R.O.G.S. (Families Revering Our God in Song), or FROGS. Years ago when Pastor Fritz Fritschel was an Assisting Pastor on the LCH staff, he always used frog puppets to help tell the Children’s Sermon. And oh, all those… Read More FROGS on Christmas Eve
This afternoon was the second all-Mozart Konzert and I feel that after today’s program, the fortepiano redeemed itself by staying mostly in tune. For one thing, the air conditioning went off after the Sunday morning services, and we left the fortepiano’s cover on. Carl came to tune the piano about 2:45. We changed the order… Read More Finally, redemption
We have just finished the opening Mozart Konzert and it was a night of spectacular singing and playing, especially from Darel Stark (Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A major) and Georgine Stark (soprano in Exsultate jubilate) who with her extreme agility and vocal pyrotechnics, got the biggest applause of the night. But what we learned the… Read More Live and learn