Tag Archives: church music

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Handel’s Messiah: Rejoice Greatly!

As anyone who has looked at the front page of this blog recently will know, I’m singing the soprano solos for a Sing Your Own Messiah production in a couple of weeks.  This is the first time I’ve sung a ‘set’ of solos for an oratorio or opera or anything really.  It’s also the first time I will have sung in a production of the Messiah, so I’m pretty excited about it on a lot of levels.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGkn91ywbsU&w=420&h=315] 

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Music for Remembrance Day

I’ve been chatting about politics on and off all week with an online friend in England.  Our conversation has been extremely polite and very careful, because we have almost no political opinions in common.

But we do both observe our minute’s silence on Remembrance Day.

Here’s some music for after the silence.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4RUeKzddg&w=420&h=315]

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Monday Music: My Beloved Spake (Henry Purcell)

It’s highly likely that Mondays are going to be church music days around here, quite simply because I spend most of my Sundays singing in church choirs, so that’s the sort of music that is in my head.  And of course, every day is Purcell day… and really, why wouldn’t it be?  He is a beautiful composer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwLZFEKWJto&w=560&h=315] Continue reading →

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Monday Music: Byrd Venite

I know, I know, it’s all church music all the time around here, but what can I say?  I spent most of yesterday singing in services to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer (and I now know much more Anglican church history than I used to – ask me hiw.  You’re just lucky I’m not inflicting Stanford’s Te Deum (and all its manifold top Fs) on you.  My ear-worm-prone brain is still inflicting it on me…

Instead, here, have some equally British Byrd.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fubfWcilbE&w=420&h=315]  Continue reading →

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Meine Seele Erhebet Den Herrn, from Telemann’s Magnificat (Ensemble Planeta)

I was going to do something light and funny for Friday, but it’s been a very long week and I’m tired and headachey and in the mood for something soothing.

Hence, we have this rather unusual interpretation by the Ensemble Planeta of an aria from Telemann’s German Magnificat.  They’ve slowed it right down, given the tenor solo to a soprano, and transformed the bouncy string accompaniment into a trippy, drifting vocal one – it’s the Magnificat, Telemann, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it…  And just to make it more gorgeous, someone has added a collection of medieval illuminations to the music.  It’s possibly the prettiest thing you will see on YouTube this year.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbjixX93pcw&w=560&h=315] Continue reading →