With A Choral Feast this Sunday at 11 am, our Choristers rehearsing again, two organ recitals, and even a gala organ concert with full orchestra on the calendar (stay tuned!), these are exciting days for music at St. Bart’s.
Like Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms, many of today’s leading composers of the operatic stage and symphony hall are writing sacred music as well, expanding the canon and applying their creativity and innovation to the ways we “sing unto the Lord a new song” (Ps. 96).
All of the choral and organ music offered this Sunday at 11 am is by living composers.
Few contemporary composers have such universal appeal or have done more to further the cause of modern opera than Jonathan Dove. This Sunday’s Mass setting is from his brilliant Missa Brevis.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works (including six operas), and has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, and, indeed, twice from St. Bartholomew’s Church, for whom he composed September Sun (in response to the events of September 11), as well as a Missa Brevis. The choir will offer his O salutaris hostia.
Psalm 1 will be sung to a recently-composed chant by Janet Yieh (b. 1992), newly appointed Director of Music at Church of the Heavenly Rest, on 90th street. And the choral centerpiece of the service will be a setting of The Beatitudes by Arvo Pärt, who from 2011 to 2018 was the most performed living composer in the world. Pärt is 86 and lives in his native Estonia.
I hope you will join us in person!
Paolo
