9:00am Eucharist, II

      Canterbury Choir

      John Linker, Organist/Choirmaster

            Sweelinck / Fantasia

            Forster / O taste and see

            Stanford / Allegro non troppo e pesante, Op. 101

            Hymns

            435*                   At the Name of Jesus                                   King's Weston

            538* (st. 1)         God of mercy, God of grace                Lucerna Laudoniae

            LEVAS 152*     Let us break bread together          Spiritual, Arr. Haywood

            551*                   Rise up, ye saints of God                                 Festal Song

11:15am Eucharist, II                      

      Treble Choir / Parish Choir

      John Linker, Organist/Choirmaster

            Sweelinck / Fantasia

            Ives / Gloria in excelsis

            Darlington / Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

            Forster / O taste and see

            Stanford / Allegro non troppo e pesante, Op. 101

            Hymns

            435*                   At the Name of Jesus                                   King's Weston

            538*                   God of mercy, God of grace                Lucerna Laudoniae

            559*                   Lead us, heavenly Father                             Dulce carmen

            551*                   Rise up, ye saints of God                                 Festal Song

4:15pm Choir Concert

      Universitatis Schola Cantorum, J. Young, Director

            Rossi / Al hanarot Babel

            Rossi / Shir Hamalot

            Battan / O praise the Lord

            Allegri / Veni Sancti Spiritus

            Gabrieli / Beatus Vir a6

5:00pm Choral Evensong

      Universitatis Schola Cantorum

      J. Young, Director

      John Linker, Organist

            Sweelinck / Fantasia

            Smith / Preces & Responses

            Wesley / Psalm 19

            Stanford / Evening Service in B-flat

            Stanford / Te Deum in B-flat

            Stanford / Allegro non troppo e pesante, Op. 101

            Hymn

            24*                     The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended                  St. Clement

[* = Hymns chosen from the 2009 Hymn Survey]

This Sunday we welcome local Lexington Choir Unversitatis Schola Cantorum to sing both the 4:15pm Concert and 5:00pm Evensong.  The choir is led by J. Young.

Universitatis Schola Cantorum, affectionately called USC by the members, is a professional music ensemble exploring early music written before 1900. Focused on choral music by long forgot and lost composers, you'll never hear any Bach or Boulanger.  There are specific gaps in the genres performed so that other groups in the area can focus on that particular music.  Made up of 12 singers, the choir researches and performs numerous concerts yearly. Now in it's third season, the choir has a full schedule of events and services planned through the next year.  Upcoming events include the November 21 concert featuring the music of William Byrd, and a joint concert of nothing but the best Italian music in which USC will join forces with local area choir Ecco in April.

Since our "Miller and Wrigley" organ has been built, we have been enriched with a wide variety of organ literature in our services. This Sunday we return to some of the earliest organ music of the corpus of literature with music by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621). Sweelinck was a pivotal composer and teacher in the Netherlands during the early 17^th century. Known both as the "Orpheus of Amsterdam" and the "maker of German organists," Sweelinck directly taught Gottfried and Samuel Scheidt, Heinrich Scheidemann, and Jacob Praetorius to name a few. Sweelinck's Fantasia features echo effects and scalar passages that require a solid technique of great dexterity. During Sweelinck's time organs were not allowed to be used during services in Calvinist churches, but were permitted to play before and after services and for public recitals, though Sweelinck did write variations on chorale tunes, perhaps at the instigation of his German students.

At the 11:15am Eucharist, the Choir offers up the Gloria in excelsis with an exciting setting by contemporary English composer Grayston Ives (b. 1948) from his Missa Brevis (1987). Ives' choral music is characterized by fluid part writing while using fresh harmonies such as an abundance of major sevenths and other added chord tones. Ives grew up as a chorister at Ely Cathedral and from 1991-2009 was Informator Choristarum (Director of Music) at Magdalen College in Oxford.

The Anthem is a setting of Psalm 34:8, O taste and see, by American composer Stuart Forster. Scored for SATB voices, each voice is in fairly constant motion, often with moments of imitation between the voices. Forster is organist & choirmaster of Christ Church in Cambridge, MA, and is one of the great celebrated church musicians and composers of our time.

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), is an icon of early 20^th century church music. Though born in Ireland, Stanford made England his home for most of his life. His organ music is chromatic yet tuneful. The sturdy Allegro non troppo e pesante is a short movement set in G Minor. Hearkening back to the stylus phantasticus of the Baroque era, two flourishes of sixteenth notes occur (one towards the beginning and one at the end) creating an atmosphere of spontaneous improvisation. 

Solomon Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.  The music that will open the concert features some of his writing in the earlier style, sung in Hebrew.  Al Naharot uses the text of Psalm 137, and Shir Hamaalot, Psalm 126.  Translations of the Psalm texts may be found on page 782, and 792 in The Book of Common Prayer. Solomon Rossi has gained some momentum in scholarly studies of recent time, however his works remain seldom performed anywhere. We are very likely the first group to ever present his work in Kentucky.

Adrian Batten (1590-1637) of Westminster Abbey, and Richard Farrant (1525-1580) of the Chapel Royal and St. George Windsor were two English church musicians and composers who did much to secure the art of choral music through the civil war and to uphold traditional values of musical composition while other more famous composers (such as Byrd) were expanding the breadth and depth of choral music in general.  Two well-known pieces, O Praise the Lord, and Lord for thy tender mercy's sake, give prime example of the difference and beauty the English compositional style could have in the late Renaissance.

Veni Sancte Spiritus is usually attributed to either the thirteenth-century Pope Innocent III or to the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. The setting we have chosen to present is by Gregorio Allegri (1582 - 1652) who composed many works while working for the Roman Catholic Church. His most famous composition is his Miserere Mei.

Beatus Vir, is a setting by another Italian composer Andrea Gabrieli (1533-1585) the uncle of the somewhat more famous Giovanni Gabrieli.  He was the first internationally renowned member of the Venetian School of composers, and was extremely influential in spreading the Venetian style in Italy as well as in Germany. Beatus Vir is the first line of Psalm 112 in Latin, the English translation of which can be found on page 755 of The Book of Common Prayer.