Each year on the Friday before Thanksgiving, our regular choir is joined by other interested singers from our community to perform a major choral composition which is above and beyond the music we regularly sing in Sunday worship.  Following our successes with the Vivaldi GLORIA in 2011 and the Bach MAGNIFICAT in 2012, the Festival Choir will this year present a somewhat more obscure work, the ODE FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).

Handel wrote ODE FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY in 1739, three years before his most renowned work, MESSIAH.  ST. CECILIA shares many similarities with MESSIAH, although there are also several big differences.  For one thing, a complete performance of ST. CECILIA takes only about 50 minutes, whereas MESSIAH is more in the neighborhood of three hours.  Additionally, ST. CECILIA is based on a secular text by John Dryden, whereas MESSIAH is based on Biblical verses.  

Dryden wrote his poem A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY in 1687.  He wrote it to be read on St. Cecilia's Day, which was a major holiday in England at that time.  The holiday was named after Cecilia, Martyr at Rome, who was killed in approximately the year 230 A.D., and who later came to be known as the patron saint of music.   The holiday was often observed with music festivals, and many poets and composers wrote compositions specifically to commemorate the day.  Handel must have liked Dryden's poem, because he chose to set it to music 52 years after Dryden had written it.

After I had already selected this work for our November 22 concert, and after I had already ordered the music, I was reading a historical article and was stunned to learn that St. Cecilia's Day actually occurs on November 22!  I later saw that this fact is even listed on the liturgical calendars at church!  This was absolutely not something I planned in advance, and I can only conclude that this concert was meant to be!

Handel's setting of the poem was first performed on November 22, 1739, so we therefore will be presenting it on the 274th anniversary of its premier.  It is a joyous and glorious work which also has many moments of subtle humor.  The words are essentially a love letter to the art of music.  They suggest that music was already there at the dawn of time, and music will still be there at the end.  The work concludes with a glorious, expansive fugue in the style of contrapuntal writing which no one did better than Handel.

The work also beautifully showcases the abilities of our soloists:  Jim Beal, Victoria McIlvain, Cáitlín O'Reilly, and Catherine Way. Instrumentation will include violin, cello, timpani, organ, and piano.  If I may say so, I don't think there are many churches that could pull off an undertaking like this.  The choir and instrumentalists have worked hard to learn their parts, and we are all tremendously excited to share this magnificent work with our parish and community.  We have all been thrilled with the size of our audiences for the last two Choral Masterwork concerts, and we hope to attract a large crowd once again.

Please join us for this wonderful evening of music, and bring a friend!