The Holy Eucharist: Rite II on Easter 6, May 5, 2024, at Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, PA

The Holy Eucharist: Rite II on The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024 at 5 p.m. at Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Reverend Jonathon W. Jensen, Rector, was the preacher. Assisting: The Reverend Cameron J. Soulis, Associate Rector, The Reverend Geoffrey S. Royce, Deacon, Alan Lewis, Director of Music, Jon Tyillian, Assistant Organist.
Musical Notes: The Belgian composer Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) composed for various performing forces, but is best remembered today for his organ works (perhaps most especially the 1926 Symphonie Concertante, for organ and orchestra, commissioned for the 1928 rededication of the famed Wanamaker Department Store organ in Philadelphia (though ultimately not performed there until 2008). The Chant de Mai is a brief character piece for organ alone, evoking the pleasures of springtime.
The Parisian composers Jean Langlais (1907-91) and Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) were among the foremost organ-composers of their generation in France, both of them also active as church musicians and as concert-performers. Messiaen established himself more effectively on the broader stage of avant-garde composition in the 1950s, through his adoption and extension of the concepts of serialism pioneered by the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg; his interest in and adoption of elements from traditional Indian music also drew much attention. He ultimately achieved a place in the standard repertoire of symphony orchestras, as well as with organists. O sacrum convivium, for four-part choir, is his only non-symphonic choral work, a lovely, hazy expression of the medieval Eucharistic text.
Langlais, though he also composed for forces beyond the organ, is known almost exclusively for his organ and choral music; unlike Messiaen, whose prominence has only grown since his death, the popularity of Langlais’ music appears to have waned rather noticeably in the last quarter-century. Hommage à Frescobaldi (1951) is cast in the outward form of an Organ Mass-a genre employed three times by the seventeenth-century Italian master Girolamo Frescobaldi, and used elsewhere by Langlais, as well. Épilogue is the final movement, composed almost entirely for the pedals alone (which seems fitting for the day of a city-wide footrace!).
Visit our website at www.calvarypgh.org
Download the bulletin for this service at www.calvarypgh.org/bulletins-...
Visit our CZcams page where you will find an archive of our services, sermons, and classes at
/ @calvaryepiscopalchurc...