February 13, 2012 - Ash Wednesday

Hide Not Thou Thy Face - Richard Farrant
Help Us, O Lord - Aaron Copland
Twelve Pieces: "Melodia" - Max Reger

Hymns: #144 Cornhill, #149 Old 124th

For the season of Lent I have decided to turn to the lush, rich tones of the Romantic period. Last year was a bit more austere; a lot of Renaissance music and mostly a cappella but this year I thought we could experience the extreme sadness and prayer-filled thoughtfulness through strongly emotional writing. Last year I turned to the music of J.S. Bach for inspiration. It’s intricate and clean counterpoint helped to focus my thoughts and served as devotional material for me personally. This year I have turned to another German composer of complicated counterpoint but of a very different variety. The music of Max Reger (1873-1916).

There is no prelude for the Ash Wednesday service but the postlude is taken from Reger’s Twelve Pieces Op. 59. This set of twelve character pieces, some of which were inspired by the Catholic Mass, was written during a particularly productive period in Weiden in 1901. Among this set is the oft performed Toccata in d minor and the Benedictus. For the postlude I am playing the Melodia. This piece is just that, a simple but chromatic melody in ABA form played over a twisting, turning accompaniment that at times over shadows the melody. In fact, most of my practice time has been spent learning the accompaniment. As with most of Reger’s writing the dynamics are in constant flux building and diminishing in big slow arc from beginning to end. I will give a full discussion of the composer’s life over the next several weeks.

Although Romantic music is the theme of the day, for the gradual anthem I have looked back to the writings of the Tudor composer Richard Farrant (d. 1581). Farrant was an organist, choirmaster, and he produced plays. In 1564 he was appointed to St. George’s Chapel. Despite his relatively small compositional output he occupies a place in the history of Tudor music primarily because of his anthems, Call to Remembrance and the anthem for the day Hide not thou thy face. In addition to this he started the Blackfriars theatre in a monastery that he converted into a theatre. This simple anthem is a setting of Psalm 27 in which the choir pleads for deliverance form sin, a fitting theme for this first Lenten service.

The communion anthem was written by the American composer, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) but you would probably not identify it as such. This first of his Four Motets was written under the tutelage of the French composer Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). Copland described his time with her as “the most important musical event of his life.” He also states that these pieces show the influence that Moussorgsky had on his writing. These pieces were written in 1921 but were not published until 1979 with some apprehension from Copland, “The style is not really mine.” The anthem Help Us, O Lord is a haunting piece which opens with the altos humming a descending modal line. The sopranos enter in measure three with a plea from help which is echoed in the tenor and bass voices in measure 6. The harmonic unrest of the piece adds to the desperation of the speaker who is being forced to learn patience.