Tickets can be purchased online at www.VoicesofAscension.org or call the box office at (212) 358-7060.

In addition to the concerts, we invite you to join us Sundays at the 11:00am service when major organ music is played each week (come early for the Preludial music at 10:45-10:50!) The music for each Sunday’s service is listed on our website www.ascensionnyc.org by Thursday or Friday each week.

For those interested, there is a detailed, color booklet on The Manton Memorial Organ for sale ($10). Ask any usher. You are welcome to come up and look at the organ consoles after the Postlude.

Today we hear:

At the Prelude (10:45 am):
Gloria in excelsis, François Couperin (1668-1733)
(from Mass for Convents)

Couperin was organist at the church of St. Gervais in Paris (near the Hôtel de Ville). During Couperin’s time, French churches often had “Organ Masses”. Among the many Sunday Masses each week there would be one where the Grand Orgue would be heard in improvisations or composed pieces for the Kyrie, Gloria, etc. This particular collection of pieces was intended for use in convents. Over the past few months I have played a many excerpts from Couperin’s great Convent Mass. Today I play the entire Gloria (minus two short movements).

In the French Baroque, the names of the movements are the names of the stops you are supposed to use. And the organs in France between 1650 and 1800, for the most part, all had basically the same stops – some organs had more, some less – but the general design of organs in France varied little during this century and a half. The core of our new organ is based on organs of Dom Bedos, the great builder of the French Baroque; so all of these Couperin pieces today are played on exactly the sounds that Couperin had in mind.

The Gloria starts with the Plein jeu movement. This is the registration (combination of stops) which is the back bone of the organ. A full and majestic sound, it is made up of all the principal stops (or Montres in French). Next comes the Petitte fugue sur le Cromorne. Although hardly a fugue in the style of Bach, the sweet theme is nonetheless heard in all four contrapuntal voice parts. A Cromorne is a bit like a Baroque clarinet: a beautiful reed stop, full-bodied, but with a little bite to it. The Duo sur les Tierces is a sprightly, fun movement calling for two cornets – a normal one in the right hand, and 16’ cornet in the left hand. And the two cornets play off each other in this duo. The lower cornet is a really marvelous and unique sound – one seldom heard outside of France. (A “Cornet” is a special organ sound made when 5 flute stops of different pitches [8’, 4’, 2-2/3’, 2’, 1-3/5’] are combined. The timbre created is rather “reedy” even though only flute pipes are playing.) Basse de trompette movements are very common in French Baroque suites. The accompaniment is in the right hand, and the melody is played on the trompette stop in its bass register. Most of the time, the honky character of the stop is portrayed in these movements. This particular basse de trompette – also one of the best ever written – is rather atypical. It is more singing, more lyric than most, and more substantial.

Last week I played one of the most profound movements of the French Baroque, a tierce en taille, which is a cornet in the tenor (taille) register. The Cromorne sur la Taille is the same thing, but played on the tenor register of the cromorne, a register where it is fuller than the treble. The depth of expression in this short work place it among the masterpieces of the repertory.

The term Voix humaine could be literally translated as “human voice,” but, in organ terms, it is a very particular, thin reed stop. Our organ actually has two of these stops, one in a Baroque style and the other in a 19th Century style (heard in today’s postlude). For this Dialogue sur la Voix humaine I use the Baroque one which is exceedingly delicate, sweet and tender. I combine it with a Bourdon (flute) and the Tremblant (a device that disrupts the air flow, causing a lovely undulation of tone.) The accompaniment is played on the Flûte conique of the Positif, also with Tremblant. The word Dialogue refers to a dialogue going on between the treble and bass registers of the Voix humaine, almost as if they were two different stops.

Finally, the Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux displays perhaps the single most impressive sound of the French Baroque: the Grands Jeux. This is all the reed stops and all the cornets played together to create an amazing blaze of tone.

At the Postlude:

Choral-Improvisation on “Victimae Paschali”
Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)
reconstituted by Maurice Duruflé

Charles Tournemire was a protégé of César Franck and one of his successors at Ste. Clotilde in Paris. This deeply spiritual, mystical man composed a great deal of music, but was even more famous as the most inspired improviser of his time. In the early 1930’s a recording company set up equipment at Ste. Clotilde and recorded him in five amazing improvisations. Some twenty years later his student, Maurice Duruflé, listened to a copy of the recording over and over again, taking down the notes by dictation. This improvisation on the Gregorian chant for Easter Sunday (“Victimae paschali laudes” – “Christians, to the Pascal Victim”) is the most famous of the five. It perfectly shows Tournemire’s mercurial personality: at one moment grandiose, at another wildly exciting, at still another poetic, mystical, ecstatic. The work calls for full organ (often), and the middle poetic section makes use of the 19th Century-style Voix Humaine, which is more full-bodied than the delicate Baroque Voix Humaine heard in the Couperin piece. It also has a stronger Tremulant than the Baroque stop. (A Tremulant is a device that alters the wind, giving the pipes a vibrato effect.) This Romantic Voix Humaine sound with the strong Tremulant was a very special, mystical sound of 19th Century France.

In this reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, intimacy jumped out. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” But why would we? What are we afraid of? To begin with, we have a high priest who already knows us, “…before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare.” And who better than He is able to sympathize with our faults, for “we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.” So why do we hesitate? This is a fear of intimacy, of being known, exposed fully. The word of God “is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” and we are fortunate that our high priest “is one who in every respect has been tested as we are.” Jesus was a man, fully human. He is sympathetic to us. So why be afraid?

As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Of His great humility God chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus, and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance… If God had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all.”

Choir Introit:  Gregorian Chant, Surrexit Dominus vere. Alleluia!

Gloria in excelsis in B-flat Major, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Offertory Anthem:  Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Sanctus (sung in Latin) from Lord Nelson Mass, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Communion Music:  O Taste and See, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)

Woman, Why Do You Weep? (1978), Bruce Adolphe

Postlude:  Toccata (Symphonie V), Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)