Music Notes for November 15, 2015

Our offertory anthem this Sunday is a treasure of 19th c. Anglican choral repertoire, Samuel Sebastian Wesley’s, The Lord hath been mindful of His own. When things were going badly in the quality of English Cathedral choral music, in his own particular way S.S. Wesley composed music that continued the greatness of his English predecessors like Henry Purcell and William Byrd.

At the communion I play one of the preludes and fugues that I composed this summer, this in Ab major. In the process of writing them I noticed that the key affected by choices of harmony, melody and rhythm. A flat major sounds mellow to me, hence a warm and broadly phrased series of harmonies in the prelude. The fugue, I think, is my self-conscious response to such warmth. The fugue begins in the preludes comfort zone but incrementally becomes argumentative and bold.

- Douglas Starr, Director of Music and Arts