Friday, July 27 Evensong

Friday, 27 July 2007

Preces/Responses: Quinn
Psalm 22
Service: Sumsion in A Major
Anthem: Dvorak Blessed Jesu from Stabat Mater

Welsh organist Iain Quinn began his musical training as a chorister at Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff, Wales. The Preces and Responses (St. John's) were written for the Cathedral Church of St. John, Albuquerque, NM, where Quinn has served as Director of Cathedral Music since 2005.
Herbert Sumsion (1899-1995)was organist and choirmaster of Gloucester Cathedral from 1928 to 1967, during which time he was an influential director of the Three Choirs Festival. He is remembered as a composer for his service settings and anthems such as They that go down to the sea in ships; he also wrote music for the organ. He enjoyed personal friendships with many English composers of the inter-war period, especially Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Sir Edward Elgar. Great choral works such as Howells's Hymnus Paradisi and Finzi's Intimations of Immortality were first heard at Gloucester Festivals in Sumsion's period of direction.

Sumsion's own music has a very distinctive style that endears it to performers and listeners alike. Word setting is always felicitous and, as might be expected, his accompaniments are imaginative - and playable. There is also some fine chamber music which deserves wider recognition, and numerous works for the organists' repertoire.

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) was the first Bohemian composer to achieve worldwide recognition and to this day, he remains the most played Czech composer. In his music we find unusual styles such as the furiant, a bohemian dance rhythm that changes abruptly between 6/8 and 2/4, and the pentatonic scale, a scale consisting of five notes and generally being found in folk music.

The Stabat Mater is based on an ancient Roman Catholic poem, in Latin (click here to read the entire text), that tells of the Virgin Mary’s grief over the crucifixion of Jesus as she is standing under his cross. In 1875, Dvorak lost all three of his then living children, including his two-day-old daughter Josefa. The grieving father began work on his Stabat Mater, as a means of coping with his beloved child’s death.