MUSIC BOX
Katherine Edison, soprano
Melinda Coffey Armstead, piano & organ
Chapel Concertino for Advent II
Motet: Exsultate, jubilate K. 165. . . W. A. Mozart (1776-1791)
Exsultate jubilate – Allegro
Fulget amica dies – Recitative
Tu virginum corona – Andante
Alleluja – Molto allegro
Musical Interlude
Chorale Prelude on ‘Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen’. . . J. Brahms (1833-1897)
Offertory
Magnificat . . . Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
Postlude
Noël I sur les jeux d’anches . . . Louis Claude Daquin (1694-1772)
“Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span on a human hand from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love.
Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don’t have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world.”
– Salmon Rushdie
