THE CECILIA PAGE
The Weblog of Ascension Music
We hope you enjoy this virtual playlist and readings for Evensong on September 1, 2021.
Would you like to know more about what Evensong is all about? Check out our introduction in this post!
Would you like to just rest and listen to the music, without reading the whole service? Here’s a playlist for that!
“Still Waters” is a recital of music by 19th- and 20th-century women. The title is inspired by a work on the program, By the Still Waters by Amy Beach. Beach took her title from the 23rd Psalm. The title also made me think of the still waters running deep in the minds of many of the women featured on the program: from Fanny Mendelssohn, whose own family first trained her to compose, then discouraged her from pursuing the art form; to Lili Boulanger, who struggled with debilitating illness for all of her twenty-four years of life; to Florence Price, an African-American composer who wrote profound works of music in a society that didn’t value her contributions.
We hope you enjoy this virtual playlist and readings for Evensong on Ascension Day, May 13, 2021. We hope to soon worship and sing together in person in praise to our Savior for His glorious resurrection and ascension, and gratitude for His care of Ascension Parish.
Would you like to know more about what Evensong is all about? Check out our introduction in this post!
Would you like to just rest and listen to the music, without reading the whole service? Here’s a playlist for that!
Saturday, April 3, 2021
2:00 PM 3:00 PM
Join us on Holy Saturday for a quiet, meditative livestream recital of music for Holy Week on our small tracker organ. Minister of Music Emma Riggle will play music by Bach, Sweelinck, Telemann, and more.
This recital is for people who miss their traditional Holy Week services; or for people who enjoy hearing Bach on a small baroque-style organ; or for people who just want a moment of quiet for the background of their afternoon. Tune in to pray, listen, or rest.
In 1841, the composer Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) presented her husband Wilhelm with a remarkable Christmas present: a cycle of thirteen short pieces for piano, entitled Das Jahr (The Year). The cycle contains one piece for each month of the year, and closes with a postlude.
In 1841, Fanny Hensel had written to an artist friend about her project:
“I’m engaged on another small work that’s giving me much fun, namely a series of 12 piano pieces meant to depict the months; I’ve already progressed more than half way. When I finish, I’ll make clean copies of the pieces, and they will be provided with vignettes. And so we try to ornament and prettify our lives–that is the advantage of artists, that they can strew such beautifications about, for those nearby to take an interest in.”
Quoted and translated in R. Larry Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 275.
