The Episcopal Church of Saint Mary the Virgin 

             43 Foreside Road ~ Falmouth, Maine ~ 04105 ~  207-781-3366

                               email:  smary@smary.org    website:  smary.org

                  Bruce S. Fithian

         Organist and Choirmaster

Announcement of Bruce's joining S. Mary's staff

!!!   Schola concert at Saint Mary’s at 3 pm on Sunday, April 20^{th  !!!}

April Music Notes

Musical Reflections on Holy Week and Easter

           Lent, Holy Week, and Easter at St. Mary’s have been incredibly special. The Palm Sunday liturgy was so very moving, with such stirring and evocative music. Hymn 158, ‘Ah holy Jesus, how hast thou offended’, represents the power of the fusion of music and text; it concluded our liturgy, with each verse becoming softer and more restrained until the final verse which was sung unaccompanied.  The choir sang powerful setting of ‘Ride on’ by Grayston Ives, reinforcing the schizophrenic nature of Palm Sunday:  Ride on!  Ride on in majesty; in lowly pomp, ride on to die.  On Maundy Thursday, following the family setting of our agapé meal, we entered into the spirit of the Triduum with the haunting anthem ‘Crown of Roses’ by the great symphonic composer Tchaikovsky. On Good Friday, the organ was silenced, making the music all the more profound and powerful.  Saint John’s Passion was sung to an ancient chant tune—used only for the Passion narratives—and having  often sung the role of the evangelist in Bach’s St. John and  St. Matthew passions many times, I finally got to sing the original! Special thanks to Red Sullivan and Nick MacDonald for singing the two other parts of the Passion.

          The Easter Vigil was filled with drama and great music.  The For the first time, the entire choir was present, along with several members of the newly-formed Saint Mary Schola (Andrea Graichen, Abra Mueller, Nicholas MacDonald).  From the rear of the darkened church, we enjoyed singing Renaissance settings of the appropriate psalm texts appointed for the vigil readings.  The Song of Moses was accompanied by hand bells,  and following the recounting of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the choir sang John Stainer’s anthem God So loved the World.  When the lights finally came on, the “alleluias” were long and loud, and the organ thundered with the Gloria in Excelsis, which had been unheard since Ash Wednesday.  Easter was truly here!

          Just when it seemed that it couldn’t get any better, Sunday morning dawned, cold, but bright!  We welcomed a marvelous brass quartet composed of music majors from the USM School of Music. Saint Mary’s was the perfect venue for the blending of choir, brass and organ – a foretaste of heaven!

The Saint Mary’s Schola:  concert début

          I’d like to draw your attention to a special concert at Saint Mary’s at three o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, April 20^th, when  the Saint Mary Schola, under my direction and consisting of some of southern Maine’s best singers will perform a program of sacred music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. This is a long-held dream I have long had that is finally coming to fruition. Having sung a great deal of early music with the Boston Camerata and in France with various groups, I had long hoped to reproduce some of these wonderful memories in Maine. I have a vivid memory of a time in France rehearsing the magnificent medieval organum ‘Viderunt’ of Pérotin late at night in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. We were the only four singers in that magnificent church--all by ourselves! My other memories from my time in France include  singing in the exquisite Sainte Chapelle, and chanting in the monastery church atMont St. Michel church on a grey February day.
         

I share these memories with you because when I first entered St. Mary’s, I immediately thought, ‘Wow!  What a perfect space for early music!’ Now, it’s finally happening. The Schola consists of fourteen singers, many of whom have advanced degrees in vocal performance, and who are passionate about singing early music. Our April 20^th offering is entitled ‘concert spirituel’, which refers to the very first public concerts given in Paris in the eighteenth century. We will begin with a very mystical chant by Hildegard of Bingen, that visionary composer and poet of the twelfth century whose music is unique in that the vocal range varies from the lowest to the very highest notes. The concert will be interspersed with solos and duets, including the beautiful ‘pulcra es’ from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, a solo motet by Schütz with two violins, organ and cello, and a work by another exceptional woman composer of the early baroque era, Barbara Strozzi.

          Most of the afternoon will be devoted to great polyphonic masterworks of the Renaissance and Baroque. The famous Gregorian chant ‘Alma redemptoris mater’(one of the great antiphons dedicated to the Virgin Mary—how very appropriate!) will be sung in its original form, followed by settings of the same text by Dufay, Ockeghem, and a double-chorus version by the great Spanish master, Tomás Luís de Victoria.

Since Passover begins the preceding evening, the second half of the program will honor the great Jewish festival of freedom with a marvelous Hebrew liturgical work by Salomone Rossi, a pre-eminent composer of Jewish liturgical music in the late Renaissance-early Baroque eras. We then return to the Christian liturgy with an Easter motet by Josquin DesPrez, the composer so praised by Martin Luther.

Moving from Easter back to Christmas, the text encapsulating the mystery of the Incarnation—And the Word became flesh and lived among us—will be sung first in its chant setting, followed by a motet on the same text by Heinrich Schütz.  Considered by many as the greatest composer before Bach, Schütz’s exuberant setting of “The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God” will conclude the program .

Artists for this concert include sopranos Erin Niland, Lisa Barter, Christine Letcher, and Laura Jumper; altos Andrea Graichen and Abra Mueller; counter-tenor Michael Albert; tenors Bruce Fithian, Richard Sullivan, and Martin Lescault; basses Nicholas MacDonald, Lawrence Jackson, and Asa Bradford; violins Valerie Green and Michael Albert; and cellist, Eliott Cherry.

 For more information, please call the Parish Office of Saint Mary’s Church at 781-3366.  There is a suggested donation of $10 at the door.

The Episcopal Church of Saint Mary the Virgin • 43 Foreside Road • Falmouth, Maine  04105                  
(207) 781-3366 • fax (207) 781-3369 • email smary@smary.org

Last modified: 04/07/08