Rejoice! In-person music returns

Music to our ears: in-person music is back! Music programs for 2021-22

After a year of fasting from many forms of in-person music, we are thrilled to once again be able to offer a series of special programs in 2021-22 with music for choirs, organ, and orchestra. While these will certainly be celebrations of the return of inperson music, a celebration that began months ago, there is still need, as Sara Mackey powerfully stated in her reflection for the service of Celtic Evensong on June 27, to grieve our temporary and permanent losses from the difficult time of pandemic. As Sara said, now that the path forward is becoming clear for us, it is time to recognize our grief, and that it is not our enemy, but our friend; that it is not an orphan, but belongs with us and deserves a place alongside our joy and celebration. The music of two composers featured in the coming year’s programs, Herbert Howells and César Franck, exemplifies this holistic expression of emotion and contains some of the most sublime musical testimonies of human transformation through grief and an intimate relationship to God. Our hope is that our musical offerings will honor and dignify this year’s journey toward healing and express faith in the strength of a new vision for the future.

We will celebrate the 129th birthday of Herbert Howells

(1892-1983) this October by featuring his music in a special service as St. Stephen’s again hosts the Three Choirs Evensong on October 29, welcoming the choirs of St. Paul’s and St. James’s. The service will feature three of Howells’ most beloved pieces for choir and organ: the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, and Te Deum from his Collegium Regale service. The Collegium Regale service is dedicated to King’s College, Cambridge, and is a collection of settings of the morning canticles, choral Eucharist, and evening canticles, providing a full complement of service music for the chapel’s Sunday choral services. Howells was dared to write the service for

the price of one guinea by the dean of King’s College, Eric MilnerWhite, who had introduced to the chapel the Christmas service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The resulting music began a fruitful period of composition for the self-critical Howells, and marked the beginning of a new age for English church music, the resonances of which persist to the present day. Howells’ inspirations included Renaissance Tudor music By Brent te Velde and English folksong, interests shared by his contemporary, Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as the colorful harmony of contemporary French Impressionists, such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The greatest influences on Howells’ life, however, were the grief from the early loss of his son, Michael, and the world-weariness and introspection that was the result of living through two world wars. These emotions color nearly all of Howells’ music, yet they are indivisible from the accompanying emotions of spiritual transcendence and ecstasy. All of these refract as through the magnificent stained glass windows of a cathedral from the light of Howells’ fresh sensitivity to ancient texts. The Winter Solstice Concert returns December 17, once again offering a cappella choral music in the beautiful candlelit setting of our church. This year our musical meditation on the longest night of the year and the anticipation of the return of the light will feature music inspired by a monastic ritual that is one of the greatest treasures of the Advent season: the singing of the Great “O” Antiphons. According to the Roman tradition, these antiphons are sung before and after the Magnificat, or Song of Mary, each night leading up to Christmas Eve, beginning on December 17. The seven antiphons were collected in Rome in the eighth century or earlier, and each begins by addressing God in Christ by a different name from the prophetic texts of Isaiah: Wisdom, King of Israel, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Morning Star, King of the Gentiles, Emmanuel. The first letters of the Latin names for these, Sapientia, Adonai, Radix Jesse, Clavis David, Oriens, Rex Gentium, Emmanuel, form a reverse acrostic, ERO CRAS, meaning “Tomorrow, I come.” This reverse order, leading to Christmas Eve, symbolizes the unknowable flow of God’s time, the presence of Christ in our lives from the beginning of time, and the

...now that the path forward is becoming clear for us, it is time to recognize our grief, and that it is not our enemy, but our friend; that it is not an orphan, but belongs with us and deserves a place alongside our joy and celebration.

process, in microcosm, of preparing room for the infant Jesus in our hearts and lives. The concert will feature two musical settings of each antiphon by living composers, as well as chanting of the original Gregorian antiphons.

The 200th birthday of César Franck

(1822-1890) will be celebrated around the world in 2022, and St. Stephen’s will mark the occasion with three separate offerings. First, internationally acclaimed organist Dexter Kennedy, recently appointed director of music at Trinity-by-the-Cove Episcopal Church in Naples, Florida, will present the first installment of a presentation of Franck’s complete works for organ (January 21, 7:30 p.m.). The program will include the monumental Three Chorals, the composer’s final compositions. These have traditionally been heard as the composer’s musical final will and testament, and express his life’s triumph in the face of the adversity of a difficult early relationship with his family, living in a revolution and war-torn Paris, and the injury that would be credited with weakening him to his final illness. Franck’s music for organ represented a far higher level of craft and depth of expression for his time, and, like Howells’ music for choir and organ, inspired music for the instrument for the rest of the 19th and well into the 20th century.

Franck became a pedagogical and spiritual father to successive generations of French organists and composers, and this year’s Masterworks Concert will celebrate this legacy (February 18). The program will feature two large-scale works for choir and organ or orchestra by two of the most venerable composers of the generation succeeding Franck: the Messe solennelle of Louis Vierne and the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré. Vierne composed his “solemn mass” in 1899, shortly before gaining the post of titular organist at Notre Dame in Paris, a position he would hold until his death at the organ console in 1937. Fauré, in a departure from the Requiem’s musical tradition, sought to fill his Requiem with feelings of faith in the blessing of eternal rest rather than with depictions of God’s judgment and the fear of death. The concert will also include one of Franck’s most beloved organ works, the Prelude, Fugue, and Variation.

Our celebration of César Franck will conclude with a final installment of his complete works for organ, presented by Brent te Velde (May 20). The program will include the Grande piece symphonique, the first symphony composed for solo organ. The genre was taken up by many French organists and composers of the next generations, including Charles-Marie Widor, Jean Langlais, Charles Tournemire, Marcel Dupre, and, most notably, Louis Vierne.

All programs begin at 7:00 p.m. except the January 21 organ recital by Dexter Kennedy, which begins at 7:30 p.m.

The O Antiphons by Castorepollux. Ordre des prêcheurs – Gallica (Original text: Own work), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45447332

2021-22 Music Programs

Friday, October 29, 2021 at 7 p.m.: Three Choirs Evensong (freewill offering) The choirs of St. James’s, St. Paul’s and St. Stephen’s Episcopal churches

Friday, December 17, 2021 at 7 p.m.: Winter Solstice Concert (ticketed) Candlelit, a cappella concert featuring the Great O Antiphons

Friday, January 21, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.: Organ recital by Dexter Kennedy (freewill offering) Internationally acclaimed organist Dexter Kennedy presents the first installment of a presentation of Franck’s complete works for organ.

Friday, February 18, 2022 at 7 p.m.: Masterworks Concert (ticketed) St. Stephen’s choirs perform two large-scale works for choir and organ or orchestra, the Messe solennelle of Louis Vierne and the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré

Friday, May 20, 2022 at 7 p.m.: Organ recital by Brent te Velde (freewill offering) The final installment in our presentation of Franck’s complete works for organ, presented by our own director of music, Brent te Velde

The suggested donation for a ticketed event is $20, or $10 for students.