Music for the Fourth Sunday of Easter — April 30, 2023

Missa in A major (Op. 126) – Josef Rheinberger (1839 – 1901)

Kyrie:
Click to view video

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Sanctus & Benedictus:
Click to view video

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,
heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
Glory be to thee, O Lord most high.
+Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:
Hosanna in the highest.

Agnus Dei:
Click to view video

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world: grant us thy peace.

Although Josef Rheinberger is not one of the 19th century’s “big names”, he should be. He was almost exactly contemporaneous with Johannes Brahms. Rheinberger had an unusually successful career spanning more than 45 years and encompassing nearly 200 published compositions. In the early part of his career, he also built an illustrious reputation as a virtuoso pianist and organist. Later in life he became a sought-after teacher of composition as well as the organ.

Though he was born in the principality of Lichtenstein, Rheinberger spent nearly his entire life in Munich — first as a student, then as a virtuoso and promoter of opera, and finally 33 years as professor of counterpoint and organ at the Royal School of Music. His writing contains elements of the chromaticism characteristic of Bruckner’s motets and the gently contoured melodic features and tightly-knit harmonic style of Stanford. This Sunday’s setting of the Ordinary of the Mass in church (his Opus 126) for sopranos and altos exhibits Rheinberger’s own straightforward yet extremely effective treatment of texts, highlighted by his masterful use of harmony and rhythmic inflection to colour and inform the phrases.

Gerald Harder

/by

Music for Easter 3 — April 23, 2023

Alleluia. Cognoverunt discipuli – William Byrd (1539/40 – 1623)

Click to view video

William Byrd’s greatest achievement in music publishing was his ambitious two-volume collection of the Gradualia, which contain settings of Mass Propers for the church year. This Sunday’s communion motet in church is Byrd’s setting of the Proper Alleluia for a votive Mass (a Mass offered for a special intention) during Paschal time. It is not known whether Byrd’s settings were intended to be performed in a liturgical framework, or indeed along with any of Byrd’s own Mass settings. In the political climate of the time it is unlikely that they would have been performed by the Queen’s Chapel Royal, of which Byrd was a member from 1570; this leads to the supposition that they were designed for use in the chapel of a recusant household. Such households may well have been able to maintain a choir capable of meeting the extreme technical demands of the Gradualia, but it is likely that Latin music of the time was performed by small forces—even as few as one to a part—with a female voice singing the top line. However, this does not preclude the possibility that the sound Byrd himself imagined was that of his own choir of the men and boys of the Chapel Royal, had political circumstances permitted.

Alleluia. The disciples knew the Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread.
Alleluia. My flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him. Alleluia.

Gerald Harder

/by