Sunday, September 27th
4:30 pm Mass Music
Submitted by CC@S Music Scholar, Uwa Akhere:
Veni, Creator Spiritus, our Communion music for Sunday, is one of the Church’s most ancient and most beloved hymns. Written in the 8th century by Rabanus Maurus, a Benedictine monk born in what is now western Germany, the Veni, Creator expresses a beautiful invocation of the Holy Spirit (“Come, Holy Spirit, visit the minds which belong to you, fill with heavenly grace the hearts which you have made”), and is used during Pentecost, Confirmation, Holy Orders, and other moments in the Church that require a renewal of the life, inspiration, wisdom, and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Like many of the mass parts (Agnus Dei, Gloria, Sanctus), the piece is a Gregorian chant, a form of monophonic sacred music developed in the 8th-10th centuries in western and central Europe. Some other well-known chants include Ubi Caritas, Pange Lingua Gloriosi, and Salve Regina.
The Veni, Creator weaves through a wandering, cyclical melody, generating a path of ascent and descent that mimics the mysterious workings of the Third Person of the Trinity. As a chant to the Holy Spirit, the piece is also seamlessly connected to our 2nd Communion and Postlude pieces, Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude, Adagio et Choral varié sur le thème du “Veni Creator,” a 1930 organ masterpiece based on the Veni, Creator Spiritus. Duruflé carries the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, weaving impressionistic harmonies and brilliant virtuosity around the ancient chant melody, culminating in a powerful and thrilling final movement.
Submitted by CC@S Music Scholar, Avishai Yuvaraj:
For 1st Communion piece, the Liturgical Choir will sing “He, Watching Over Israel” from the sacred oratorio, Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn. A sacred oratorio is a large-scale musical work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra that presents a religious story or scriptural narrative without theatrical staging.
The oratorio is composed in 2 parts; “He, Watching Over Israel” is in Part II, at a point when Elijah is emotionally and physically exhausted. The angels then care for and comfort him. “He, Watching Over Israel” is part of this larger message of reassurance. The angels remind Elijah, and symbolically the people of Israel, that although God may sometimes seem absent, He has not abandoned them. The music supporting the choir singing “He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps” exemplifies this reassurance with it being played in a major key, in an uplifting yet introverted manner. The only other words in the piece the choir sings is the line “shoulds’t thou, walking in grief, languish, he will quicken thee.” Through the section of this piece where this idea gets developed, the choir is supported by much more aggressive and driving orchestration, which supports the words grief, as the music is being played in a minor key, quicken thee. Finally, the piece ends with the choir singing the opening line and the fluttery accompaniment coming to a resolution on a quiet D major chord.