[Magdalen] Music memories

[Grace Cangialosi]

This is beautiful; I don't think I've ever heard a Faure piece I didn't like! And hi Requiem, along with the Brahms, are my two favorite requiems.

The piece I can hardly bear to listen to, because of its associations, is Rutter's Gaelic Blessing. When I was music director at a church in Charlottesville 32 years ago (!), we sang it at a baptism. The baby's mother had been in the choir until shortly before I came and left to have the baby.
Two months later we sang it at the mother's funeral; she had committed suicide, leaving three small children. The choir got through the service, but we never did the piece again. I brought it out about two years later, and we started to rehearse it and had to stop. No one could go on.
The associations music can have for us are incredibly powerful...

> On Dec 23, 2014, at 11:25 PM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I should redeem myself for off-topicness by posting this. It redeems
> Gabriel Fauré in my mind, as his Requiem was ruined for me by the
> painful emotions that were going on the summer we did the Requiem at
> university (pain of a breakup and turbulence in a treasured
> friendship, all mixed up with a lot of confusion within me and not yet
> willing to recognize I was indeed gay). So the Requiem is hard to hear
> without replaying scenes from that summer.
> 
> But here is Fauré I can love, and it's not inappropriate for
> Christmas...I went to the text wondering if it's got anything to say
> at this season, and I got a bit choked up as I read it. It works.
> 
> http://youtu.be/wKwHiGg21KA
> Cantique de Jean Racine
> 
> Verbe égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espérance,
> Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux;
> De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence,
> Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux!
> 
> Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
> Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix;
> Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante,
> Qui la conduit à l'oubli de tes lois!
> 
> O Christ, sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle
> Pour te bénir maintenant rassemblé.
> Reçois les chants qu'il offre à ta gloire immortelle,
> Et de tes dons qu'il retourne comblé!
> 
> 
> Word, equal to the Most High, our only hope,
> Eternal day of the earth and the heavens,
> We break the silence of the peaceful night.
> Divine Savior, cast your eyes upon us!
> 
> Spread upon us the fire of your powerful grace,
> That all hell might flee at the sound of your voice;
> Dispel the languishing soul's torpor
> Which has caused it to forget your laws!
> 
> Oh Christ, show favour to this faithful people
> Now gathered to bless you.
> Receive the songs it offers to your immortal glory,
> And may it return filled with your gifts!
> 
>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 10:14 PM, Molly Wolf <lupa at kos.net> wrote:
>> Me too.  It astounds me, looking back, at the quality of choral singing I grew up with in Bennington.  Neither my high school choir nor my church choir would have thought "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" was out of the ordinary, nor "He Watching Over Israel."  We sang a lot of Benjamin Britten, as well as Messiah.  I still miss that long-ago quality.
>> 
>> I remember walking down the hall by the music room, when I was in Grade 7 and new to the junior high/senior high building, and hearing a ghostly girl's voice singing a plangent melody that made my heart stop in its tracks.  I worried for weeks that I would never find it again -- until our school girls' choir sang Britten's "Ceremony of Carols".  That piece still gets to me fifty years later.
>> 
>> Molly
>> 
>> The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain
>> 
>>> On Dec 23, 2014, at 10:48 AM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Fior me, that piece is "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" from the Brahms
>>> "German Requiem".....not in German, however. I had just turned 15 and was
>>> at the UW summer music clinic, which was a 3 week gathering of high school
>>> musicians from all over Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and a few other
>>> places. There were probably 250 of us in the chorus. It was my first
>>> experience of singing Brahms other than the cradle song. I was too
>>> dumb/naive to know it was difficult. It was absolutely amazing and made the
>>> hairs on the back of my  neck stand up, and when we sang it in concert  I
>>> was nearly in tears when it was over. It still has that effect on me.
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
>>> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> In a message dated 12/23/2014 10:25:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
>>>> gracecan at gmail.com writes:
>>>> 
>>>> It  always takes me surprise when a piece of music triggers an unexpected
>>>> memory.  I was just listening to "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" on NPR and
>>>> remembered  the first I ever sang it. I was absolutely there  again.>>>>
>>>> 
>>>> This was a favorite of the Extraordinary Form RC Rite (the Tridentine
>>>> Latin
>>>> Rite) people locally.  Because of the rules about the integrity of  this
>>>> Latin
>>>> Rite, they had to develop a Latin text for the piece.
>>>> 
>>>> Can you imagine singing "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" in Latin?   :-)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> David Strang.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Scott R. Knitter
> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA