Music Box
August 13, 2023
Jubal Joslyn, tenor
Cathryn Wilkinson, organ
The Music Box
Sunday, August 13, 2023
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Musicians
Cathryn Wilkinson, Organ
Jubal Joslyn, Tenor
Prelude
Art Songs from Italy
Mattinata (The Dawn) Ruggero Leoncavallo
Torna a Surriento (Come back to Sorrento) Ernesto De Curtis
Ideale (Ideal) Francesco Paulo Tosti
‘O sole mio (Oh, my beautiful sun) Eduardo di Capua
Offertory
“Ingemisco” from Requiem Guiseppi Verdi
Organ Postlude
Allegro from Concerto in D Minor Antonio Vivaldi, arr. J. S. Bach
Today’s Music
These songs for the prelude are a selection of the most popular and well known Neapolitan and Italian art songs ever written. Selected based on Ken’s focus on choosing happiness, they have themes like celebrating the sunshine, focusing on an ideal, and celebrating the joy of the beautiful land you call home.
The Offertory selection is from Verdi’s Requiem. This large work for chorus and orchestra was composed in memory of the Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, who was profoundly admired by Verdi, and it was first performed on May 22, 1874, on the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death. The “Ingemisco” for tenor solo is a plea to God to be spared at the last day of judgment, to have his sins forgiven. It ends with a triumphant swell in the music and the following supplication:
“Rescue me from fires undying.
With Thy favoured sheep o place me,
Not among the goats abase me,
But to Thy right hand upraise me.”
–Jubal Joslyn
