*********************************************************

Come join us for our next Parish workday

Saturday, March 20, from 7:00 - 11:00 a.m.  

There is a lot to do and the more hands we have the faster the work will go. Keep in mind that the invitation goes beyond the practical need, as real as that is.  Part of loving one another is to serve one another and the greatest way we can serve one another is to be together. Working and laughing together, talking and sharing our lives with one another.

There is something for everyone to do!

Contact Scott Bennion at 480-488-0525or

email at scott.bennion@yahoo.com

"Many hands make light work."

- John Heywood (1497-1580) English Playwright and Poet

This week is our visit to the 18th Century;  and we have left the Baroque Era behind us and are in the middle of the Classical Era.

Our Offertory Anthem is "A Lenten Prayer," by Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), with a text by St. Gregory the Great (540?-604).  Salieri was an Italian composer, conductor, and teacher born in Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a musician, composer, and music director in the Hapsburg court in Vienna.  Schubert, Beethoven, and Liszt are among the best-known of his students.  Salieri was also a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th century opera.  In his later career, he composed, taught, and conducted sacred music at the Imperial Chapel. 

When he was about 14, he lost both parents.  He was taken in for a while by a monk, and then a nobleman, but later was discovered by the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann.  Gassmann educated him, took him to Vienna and promoted him and his career.  As a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown him as a penniless orphan,
all but the wealthiest of Salieri's pupils received their lessons for free,

Despite the stories, plays, and films like "Amadeus," there is very little evidence of any seriously contentious relationship between Salieri and Mozart;  some instances of envy here and there, but also instances that showed mutual respect.

Our Communion Anthem is "Ave, verum corpus," by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.  He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as peaks of their genres.  He composed from age 5, played keyboard and violin, and performed as a child with his sister for royalty all over Europe.  He was born in Salzburg and, except for the European touring, began his career there, but later moved to Vienna, where he enjoyed considerable success.

Mozart met Franz Joseph Haydn in Vienna, and the two composers became friends, sometimes playing string quartets together.  Haydn once told Leopold, Mozart's father, "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."

The central traits of the Classical style - clarity, balance, and transparency - are all present in Mozart's music.  He was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new;  but Mozart advanced the technical sophistication and emotional reach of them all.  He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses;  but also wrote many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.


And from the organ bench ...

For the Prelude, Karen has chosen "Verses from 'Te Deum'" by an anonymous composer from about 1531.  But she chose it because it is from a collection transcribed by Pierre D'Attaignant (c.1494-c.1551), who is said to be the first person in France to print music from single-impression movable type - quite a change from copying by hand.  D'Attaignant published more than 50 collections of chansons, several collections of dance music, and a large collection of other kinds of music  from many composers.
 
The Postlude is "Processional in G Major," by John Stanley (1713-1786).  Stanley was an English composer.  When two years old the future composer had a domestic accident which left him almost blind: he could apparently still distinguish colors and possibly some shapes.

At age 7, he began studying music, but not successfully.  However, under  his second teacher, Maurice Greene, composer and organist at St. Paul's Cathedral, Stanley did so well that at age 9 he played the organ (probably as substitute) at All Hallows, Bread Street.  All Hallows' regular organist died in 1723, and one month later, Stanley was appointed to replace him.  He was 11.  At 14, he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew's, Holborn, and became at 17 the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree at Oxford.  In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple - a position he held for the rest of his life.

Stanley was a conductor, a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist, and also an outstanding violinist.  He composed music with the help of his sister-in-law - he was blind, so he dictated it to her.  He learned new music by having his sister-in-law play it once - that was enough for him to commit it to memory.