henningmusick: This morning’s sing [11.x.2009]

henningmusick: This morning’s sing

The composer was very pleased. We sang my Exaltabo Te, Deus (I served as a substitute tenor this morning) when the basket was being passed . . . but it is also a somewhat longer anthem than the choir normally sing for the First Church Boston service. The m.d. told me that the last two minutes of the piece, the congregation had settled nicely into the piece, and their attention was glued. “Magical,” quoth he.

Very well do I remember that morning.  It was the first proper performance of this Psalm setting, which I composed while visiting St Vincent’s Archabbey in Latrobe, Penn. It was one of my first efforts at “inhabiting” the soundworld of Russian Orthodox liturgical choral music. In this, I think it was likely a reasonable success.