Sunday, May 18, 2025
Today is a big day of singing!
For the introit, we welcome back our wonderful children’s choir to get things off to a rollicking start with a joyous Charles Wesley text setting.
The Anthem is a little longer than usual, but hopefully worth it. We’re thrilled to present a magical, mystical setting of the Beatitude text by the master Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
“Time has a deep meaning, but it is temporary, like our lives. Only eternity is timeless.”
-Arvo Pärt
Pärt’s early music inhabited the complex, twelve-tone world of twentieth-century modernism. Then, in the late 1960s, he suddenly fell silent, creating little more than musical fragments jotted in a notebook. When Pärt began to compose again in 1976, a radically new style emerged, rooted in the contemplative mysticism of chant and early polyphony. In a technique known as Tintinnabulation, the simplicity of the triad takes on spiritual significance. We’re confronted with pure sound, as in the overtones of a bell.
We hear all this in Pärt’s 1990 setting of The Beatitudes, based on the text from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew. This music is both simple in construction and deceptively complex—repeating, undulating intervals in the choral parts move from simple harmony to crunchy dissonance and back again. It’s a kind of “sacred minimalism,” where repetition is key, and such repetition lulls us into a contemplative, meditative state.
Mirroring the text, the music takes on the quality of a meditative recitation. We sense gradually rising tension as each clause moves a chromatic step higher, along with gloriously dramatic silences and an organ pedal tone that goes up and up. The choir climaxes on a glorious “Amen,” at which point the organ takes over for the rest of the piece in a stunning, whirling solo. Musically, it returns us to the original key, so we return to where we began.
Finally, a great favorite of the choir, a Hallelujah, Amen by Handel, in which the children’s choir joins us for a sweet, festive little descant at the end.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, April 20, 2025
The English composer John Rutter has become a veritable icon of contemporary choral music. His music is beautifully, solidly crafted and, importantly, is accessible and fun to sing. Gloria is one of Rutter’s most ambitious concert works, and its premiere was the occasion for his first visit to the US, in May 1974. The Voices of Mel Olson commissioned the work, and the composer conducted the performance by that chorale in its Omaha, NE, home. Rutter himself sees this work as analogous to a symphony, with three movements— allegro vivace, andante, vivace e ritmico–i.e., fast, slow, fast, in common with symphonic practice, and, says Rutter, ” exalted, devotional and jubilant by turns”. The Gloria represents the second section of the Ordinary, the fixed-form portion of the Latin Mass, i.e., the section following the Kyrie, and the introit, when the latter is used. It is the song of the angels praising God, and has been set by countless composers throughout the centuries.
Today, we present the solemn second movement – the “devotional” one, in Rutter’s words, as the Introit. It begins with a sinuous organ figuration that gives way to a Gregorian Chant-inspired figure in the choir. The whole work starts in ambiguity and darkness but crescendos to blazing triumph, perfect for Easter morning.
We also present the third movement (Rutter’s “jubilant” part) as the Anthem – this is a rollicking good time to sing and listen to, as syncopated figures transition into a spectacular fugue before ending in triumph.
– Justin Smith
Thursday, April 17 2025
Tonight’s music is an “arrangement” (deconstruction might be a better word) by Knut Nystedt, who spent most of his life in Oslo, Norway, where he was organist at Torshov Church and taught choral conducting at the University of Oslo. He also founded the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and conducted it for forty years. However, he is most recognized for his choral compositions, mainly based on texts from the Bible or sacred themes.
In today’s anthem, he instructs the choir to sing the first eight bars of J.S. Bach’s setting of the Passion chorale “Komm, süßer Tod;” then sing it again, with individual members of the choir holding each quarter note for a different number of beats – either two, four or six, waiting for the rest of the choir to catch up at each cadential point. Through the resultant harmonic overlapping of melody and harmony, he creates a soundscape reflecting the eternal value of Bach’s music – it is no surprise that he titled this “composition” Immortal Bach.
Nystedt no doubt meant it as a depiction of the agony of the Passion and the subsequent triumph of the Resurrection, and it is indeed a potent musical metaphor for both. The music pulls apart, deconstructing itself into excruciating, haunting dissonance, only to put itself back together into consonant harmonies at each of the chorale’s three phrases. Thus, clashing dissonance (the pain of loss) resolves itself into quiet harmony (the promise of everlasting peace after death). It’s a simple yet daring gambit to deconstruct – and then reconstruct – one of Christianity’s most beloved hymn melodies, yet to my ear, it works spectacularly well.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, April 13, 2025
As we prepare for Easter Sunday, music today of sacrifice, transition and hope. The music for Communion, Harry Burleigh’s much-loved arrangement of Deep River, is well known. The River Jordan is a persistent theme in the Bible, both as a geographic location and as a boundary beyond which deliverance was possible. In the nineteenth century, for enslaved Africans, the deliverance offered by the river could be freedom from bondage in both this life and the next. On a broader level, crossing the river stands for the transition between this life and everlasting heavenly existence, or even Christ’s transition from Crucifixion to Resurrection.
For the Introit and the Anthem, two stunning selections from Bach’s St John Passion, a telling of the suffering of Christ set to music and one of the great monuments of Western music. The Introit comes from the moment in the Passion that Christ dies on the cross and the temple veil is torn, symbolizing that Christ’s sacrifice was enough to atone for humanity’s sins. You can hear the tearing of the veil in the organ accompaniment, which features sharply violent descending lines and, later, quietly trembling single note patterns that sound like the earth rumbling. There’s nothing quite like it in all the sacred repertoire.
The Anthem is one of J.S. Bach’s most astonishing sacred creations, “Mein teurer heiland,” one of the final arias from his To call it an aria doesn’t do it justice, however. It does have a wonderfully intricate baritone solo part, but underneath, Bach adds a four-part Lutheran chorale melody, all of which is accompanied by the organ. Coming as it does in the Passion narrative immediately after the death of Christ, it’s two musical sermons at once. As the baritone soloist answers his own questions about the redemptive power of the Cross, the chorus prays for our eventual redemption from death. If these two messages were spoken simultaneously, it would be gibberish. But setting it to music means it all harmonizes together beautifully.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, March 30, 2025
In 1677, Purcell composed the Funeral Sentences, combining the music he wrote in 1694 for the Funeral of Queen Mary II with texts from the Book of Common Prayer of 1660 and Job 14: 1-2, originally intended for Purcell’s teacher Matthew Locke’s funeral. The texts discuss the transitory nature of earthly life, fear of divine judgment, and hope for divine mercy.
If you’ve been in service this Lent, you’ve been treated to the first two Sentences, which are powerful, angst-ridden ruminations on the terror of death, complete with all the appropriate harmonic language the seventeenth-century could muster to express it – grinding chromaticism, unprepared dissonances and suddenly plunging vocal lines. “Thou knowest, Lord,” today’s Anthem, is something rather different. It’s one of two settings of this text by Purcell. The first is complex and polyphonic, while the second, heard today, is simple, homophonic, and hushed.
It stands in stark contrast to the knotty, dissonant polyphony of the first two sentences, most likely due to the text, which is notably more optimistic in tone. This hopeful anthem for a departing spirit was fittingly repeated at Purcell’s own funeral service, held only a few months after the Queen’s, in November of 1695.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, March 23, 2025
This morning, we continue our survey of Henry Purcell’s magnificent Funeral Sentences with the second setting in the series, the magnificently angst-ridden In the midst of life. The text is not scripture but instead a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer – all the same, it is wonderfully evocative and moving. Purcell’s setting employs sinuous chromaticism and grating dissonance to paint the meaning of the text, which laments the everpresent shadow of death that must loom over all human existence. Note the rather large intervallic distance of a minor ninth between the words “life” and “death” in the opening soprano phrase. Note, too, the extraordinary word painting on “the bitter pains of eternal death,” where the four choral lines proceed upwards in tenuous, grinding half-step intervals – this passage is as difficult to sing as it is moving to listen to!
For the introit, something a bit more soothing – the Czech composer Dvorak’s famous setting of the even-more-famous Psalm 23, expertly sung by our choral scholar Zach Hugo. It’s one of ten settings for voice and keyboard the composer called Ten Biblical Songs, Dvořák decided not to use Latin – the traditional language of sacred works for the musical setting of his chosen Psalms – but instead the time-honored Czech translation from his own copy of the Kralice Bible. By using his mother tongue, he was able to achieve a more immediate and natural sense of expression.
– Justin Smith
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Before we turn to today’s Anthem, this is a reminder that TODAY at 3 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall, our Music at Trinity Concert Series continues with a Sensory-Friendly Concert facilitated by the music therapy students at Queens and featuring some of our wonderful student ensembles. And it’s free!
For the next three Lenten Sundays, the choir will present three movements from the so-called Funeral Sentences by the great English Baroque composer Henry Purcell. This is astonishingly beautiful, expressive music—in its anguish, uncertainty, and fear of death, it makes a perfect match for this season, before we commemorate Christ’s triumph over the grave.
The three Funeral Sentences bring together music composed in 1677, perhaps originally intended for the funeral of Purcell’s teacher Matthew Locke, and the music he wrote in 1694 for the funeral of Queen Mary II, his beloved patron. Of the four monarchs Purcell served, his relationship with Mary was the closest- she was the only monarch for whom he composed Birthday Odes, and his eloquent compositions for her funeral are some of his most powerful masterpieces. Purcell only outlived his Monarch by a few months, and some of the music he had written for Mary’s funeral was played at his own. The texts, having to do with the transitory nature of earthly life, fear of divine judgment, and hope for divine mercy, are taken from the Book of Common Prayer of 1660 and from Job 14: 1-2.
The first – and today’s Anthem – “Man that is born of a woman,” holds some of Purcell’s most deeply melancholy and expressive music. The composer brings particular tension to the phrase “hath but a short time to live,” and the melody rises and falls in imitation of the words “he cometh up and is cast down like a flower.” The music is an angular, chromatic and dissonant cry of anguish.
– Justin Smith
Sunday, March 2, 2025
This Sunday, we are giving the choir the morning off – we have a busy and demanding schedule of music ahead as we enter Lent. This allows me to celebrate our wonderful choral scholars Tanis, CC, and Zach, who will be ministering up in the loft today. For the Introit, we present a setting of the first verse of Psalm 139 by the composer John Blow, one of England’s finest seventeenth-century composers. The work starts with a duet for two basses and organ, describing the omnipotence of God, with plenty of word painting – descending lines on “thou knowest my down-sitting,” upward lines on “if I climb up into heaven,” and the like. The pairing of two basses in a sacred duet is fairly unusual, but the similar colors allow for some lovely intertwining of parts, as well as a nice low spot to start from, in order to portray the text’s climbing into heaven!
The Anthem is a short and evocative setting of text from Matthew, where God speaks after Christ’s Transfiguration, naming Him as His Son. The music is by the contemporary Scandinavian composer Knut Nystedt and starts with an eerie, fuzzy “halo” of sound in the organ created by the blurring of various pitches together, moving from high to low as God’s voice descends. This halo, so common in music of the Baroque and, not incidentally, Renaissance painting, serves as a sort of aural shorthand to let us know the words are coming from a holy presence on high, and not from us mere mortals. It’s a stunning musical depiction of the wonders of the Transfiguration as found in Matthew – it’s not difficult to hear the events of the story depicted musically in Nystedt’s setting.
– Justin Smith
Sunday, February 16, 2025
This morning, we dip into the vast well of sacred music by Henry Purcell, the English Baroque composer whose work is an inexhaustible treasure of imaginative, expressive sacred music. “Thy Word is a Lantern,” probably composed in 1687, takes its text from Psalm 119, lovely, lesser-known Psalm with wonderful textual imagery ripe for musical setting. Set for three solo voices, SATB choir, and continuo, it is full of elegance, chromaticism and harmonic text painting. The full choir is used sparsely; once to provide a re-iteration of the “Quicken me” refrain, and finally in the concluding “Hallelujah,” which we will reprise today for the Postlude.
It is interesting to note that at this point in his career, Purcell was embarking on a theatrical career of providing plays with songs, catches, or incidental music. These theatrical tendencies reveal themselves in the recitative-like sections where Purcell draws our ear to the personal and thorny nature of the text – as in the grinding, chromatically ascending lines on “I am troubled above measure.” But there are also other, less serious delights, as in the bouncing dotted figures on “Quicken me, O Lord,” and the sudden questioning interjection of “but why?” in the lower voices, both of which simply and beautifully paint the text. As always, Purcell’s music is a joy to sing because it understands the music of the English language so well and because it brings quasi-operatic drama, illuminating the ancient sacred texts it sets.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Choral composer, teacher, and organist William Billings is recognized by many as the first professional American composer, publishing today’s Anthem, “Creation,” six years before the Declaration of Independence. Since he entered an apprenticeship as a tanner after attending primary school and spent much of his life working in the leather industry, he was largely self-taught in composition, studying the tune books and choral works of English psalmists. In 1769, he began teaching in singing schools and, starting in 1778, held musical leadership roles in some of the larger churches in the Boston area. Billings wrote over three hundred compositions and published the majority in six collections of his own music: many follow the form of today’s anthem, with a homophonic opening followed by a contrapuntal “fuging tune.” This is decidedly unpretentious music: rough around the edges yet appealing in its naive sincerity; it is the music of a nation not yet come of age yet full of optimism and vigor.
Billings had a particular gift for writing compelling melodies which were popular during his lifetime. In the early nineteenth century in the United States, a movement towards a more European style of sacred music shifted attention away from the music of Billings and his American contemporaries. However, shape-note singers in the American South continued singing his music, and in the second half of the 21st century, a revival of his music occurred and is perpetuated by shape-note singing societies across the country.
-Justin Smith
Sunday, January 26, 2025
This morning, to compliment Psalm 19’s themes of a new creation, music from one of the greatest biblical oratorios of all – The Creation by the Viennese master Franz Joseph Haydn. Written as an homage to the great oratorios of Handel, The Creation is an utter delight, composed when Haydn was eighty-two years old! Despite his advanced age, his musical telling of the story of Genesis is eternally youthful and almost child-like in its delightful naivete, moving through the stages of Creation with a sincere wonderment and awe that’s endearing and moving.
The introit today, fittingly, is Haydn’s depiction of the opening creation of heavenly Light. The baritone, as one of the archangels, intones the famous first words of Genesis all alone, only sporadically punctuated by the organ. As “the spirit of God move(s) upon the water,” the chorus enters in a quiet, radiant E-flat major – before launching into one of the most famous passages in choral music, which I won’t spoil here except to say you will know the first triumphant blaze of God’s light when you hear it! The Anthem today is a flamboyant fantasia on one of hymnody’s sturdiest tunes, O God Our Help in Ages Past. John Rutter made the arrangement of William Croft’s old tune; it here finds the former composer in an unusually extroverted and bombastic mood.
-Justin Smith