Music Notes for April 12, 2026

Music for Second Sunday of Easter

 

On Sunday’s postlude: the Organ Concerto in A minor BWV 593:

It is 1713, and seventeen-year-old Prince Johann Ernst is returning to his hometown Weimar in Germany after studying music in Utrecht for two years. During his stay in The Netherlands, the Prince regularly visited the New Church in Amsterdam to hear the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf, who had a reputation for his performances of the latest Italian concertos for organ solo. Amsterdam was a centre for music printing around the turn of the century, and the first edition Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico (Harmonic Inspiration) was published in 1711.

Prince Johann Ernst, a talented musician and composer, was known to be an avid music collector and upon his return to Weimar he introduced JS Bach to Vivaldi’s concerti. Bach transcribed six of the twelve concerti from L’Estro Armonico for different instruments, arranging Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor for solo organ. In doing so, Bach became intimately familiar with a new style of writing : contrasting a small group of instruments (the ‘concertino’) with the rest of the orchestra ( the ‘ripieno’ ). On the organ this is achieved by using the different manuals : the concertino on one of the manuals contrasts with the full organ.

PJ Janson

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.

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Music Notes for March 29, 2026

Music for Palm Sunday

This liturgy of Palm Sunday balances the simultaneity of two disparate atmospheres: one of rejoicing as Jesus the celebrated prophet enters into Jerusalem; and one of foreboding as the gospel’s narrative leads one to contemplate his sacrifice on the cross.

We begin with the spirit of celebration, as the Carnival Band accompanies our Procession of the Palms, as we sing the traditional processional hymns All glory, laud, and honour and Ride on, ride on in majesty. As we enter the church, the psalm and the tract foreshadow the imminent themes of Holy Week, imploring God’s help in times of deepest trouble.

The words of the communion motet invite reflection on the entire purpose for Christ’s Passion: that through his death on the cross, God exalted Jesus to be above any other who had lived and walked on earth. As it so happens, the artistic aesthetics popular in Felice Anerio’s lifetime were perfectly suited to highlight such contrasts, perhaps most popularly exemplified in the chiaro-oscuro style of Caravaggio and other tenebrists. In this period, a religious painting or piece of music was designed to transport the listener to a state of sympathetic emotion whereby they might experience the phenomena described by a text through affected musical depiction. Anerio breaks a chief rule of counterpoint on the first two notes of his motet, writing the dissonant interval of a major second, which pulls us into the realization of Christ’s suffering before resolving into a glorious sequence of fifths on the text “gave him the name above all names.”

The recessional hymn is one that I personally cherish, a tune which English scholar Erik Routley deemed “safe to call one of the greatest twentieth-century hymn tunes.” Richard Dirksen composed “Vineyard Haven” on the occasion of Bishop Allin’s induction at the American National Cathedral in 1974, after which time it quickly garnered popularity as a centrepiece of our North-American Anglican tradition.

 Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.

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