Music Notes for Sunday Masses, 4 October 2020
Organ prelude: Toccata & Adagio (from BWV 564) – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach, the most famous composer of organ music, and perhaps the most highly regarded composer of all time, has left us with an almost infinite variety of moods, messages and sentiments in his oeuvre for organ. The Toccata in C Major, in which we hear Bach at his sunniest, almost gives the listener an impression that he is trying out a new organ, something which he was often called to do, with scales and arpeggios from the top to the bottom of the keyboard. Then a pedal solo near the beginning leads us to wonder the same thing: is he testing the pedalboard and its stops? If so, he is certainly having a good time doing it. While the piece as a whole gives the impression of freedom and improvisation, its form is masterfully tight and architectonic. The Adagio is one of Bach’s most famous melodies, ravishingly beautiful, given to the right hand on a solo stop and accompanied by simple chords in the left hand and a very orchestral pizzicato bass line. What would we do without Bach?
Offertory motet: Salve Regina – Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611)
Victoria, a Spaniard who spent most of his life in Rome, is one of the three most celebrated composers of the “Classical School” of choral music, also called the 16th Century Polyphonic School, the other two being Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (named for the town of his birth, Palestrina) and Orlando di Lasso, Flemish by birth and also working in Italy, France and England. This Classical School of polyphonic composition is the only school of composition, beside Gregorian Chant, mentioned – and often – in Papal documents. Holy Family is blessed to be able to use a great deal of music from this period. Victoria’s beautiful and very expressive setting of the Salve Regina is for five voices, which is handy because in our Covid time, we only have five voices! October being the month of the Rosary, we feel it important to hear (and one day sing again!) Marian music.
Communion motet: O sacrum convivium – Wilko Brouwers (b. 1957)
As far as I know, today will be only the second time this piece has been sung in the U.S., the first time being the national Sacred Music Colloquim in 2017. Wilko, a friend and colleague, is a very well-known European composer and conductor who divides his time between Amsterdam and Budapest, composing, teaching and conducting. This piece is a very sensitive setting of the beautifully hopeful text from the Graduale Romanum, via Corinthians and Romans: O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memorial of his passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us, alleluia.
Organ postlude: Communion – Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)
Guilmant was a famous French organist during a time when there were – believe it or not – a lot of famous French organists. He was a virtuoso, a tremendous character and a tireless teacher and recitalist, travelling the world playing organ works of all periods, and especially, his own pieces. A prolific composer for both concert hall and church, today’s meditation after Mass is but a sliver of his output. Only my parents’ generation would recall that he opened a school of organ playing on West 12th Street in New York, now closed. Here is one of my favorite of his pieces, played by the incomparable John Scott on 5th Avenue in New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3b0LRVaZY