Music for July 19, 2020 + The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Thou Fount – setting by Roland E. Martin (b. 1955)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude in C Minor – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Magnificat in G Major, Opus 41, No. 2 - Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 290 - Come, ye thankful people, come (ST. GEORGE'S, WINDSOR)

“Do not cry for me, for where I go music is born”

-Bach, to his wife, on his deathbed

Today, when almost every serious student of the cello learns the unaccompanied cello suites of J. S. Bach, it is hard to imagine that these works were almost lost. There is no manuscript of the music in Bach's own handwriting, just a copy of the music by Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena, and three other handwritten copies from the 18th century. They seemed destined for oblivion.

The suites were discovered and finally published in 1825. But in spite of their publication, they were not widely known by anyone besides a few cellists who viewed them as exercises. The development of the cello as a solo instrument continued without Bach's influence for another century, during which, again, virtually no music for solo cello was written.

In 1889, A 13-year-old Catalan wunderkind cellist by the name of Pablo Casals went for a stroll with his father, and they stepped into a second-hand music shop. There, Casals stumbled upon an old copy of Bach's Cello Suites. He took them home, began to play them, and fell in love. When he recorded them in 1936, the works were suddenly thrust into the consciousness of every cellist.

I tell you all this, because one of the Suites is hidden within the offertory duet sung by our KHS graduate Camyrn Creech and Ole Miss student Harrison Boyd. Much like Charles Gounod used the Prelude in C from Bach's Das wohltemperierte Klavier for his Ave Maria, Roland Martin used the Prelude from the G Major Suite as the basis for the accompaniment. (Except it's played on the piano, and in the key of D.)

Roland E. “Ron” Martin is a member of the music faculty of The Buffalo Seminary, Daemen College, and the University at Buffalo. He is organist and Director of Music at St. Joseph University Church, Buffalo and the founder and director of Speculum Musicae, an ensemble for early music, and Music Director of the Freudig Singers of Western New York. He also serves as conductor/music director for Opera Sacra for many of its productions.

Félix-Alexandre Guilmant, the composer of the closing voluntary, was a French organist and composer living in Paris. He was the organist of La Trinité from 1871 until 1901. A noted pedagogue, performer, and improviser, Guilmant helped found the Schola Cantorum de Paris. He was appointed as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896