Magnificat Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Bach Magnificat

In addition to our weekly musical contribution between September and June, the choir of First Presbyterian Church of Albany usually endeavors to take on one or two more substantial pieces during the church year. For the First Friday in December 2024, we performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat, directed by our choir director, Michael Lister, in the church’s sanctuary.

The choir had been practicing since September, with three special Sunday afternoon rehearsals. Dr. Lister had also recruited additional vocalists, some from his tenure at the College of Saint Rose (RIP) and from UAlbany. A few of them also came at the end of our regular Thursday night rehearsals to hone their musical understanding of the pieces.

There were two parts to the December 6 program. The first part involved the octet of the choir: Rose, Maria, Fiona, Sarah, Joshua, Nate, Dan, and Tom. They performed:

Ave Regina Coelorum by Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704)

Ave Maria by Tomas Louis Victoria (1548-1611)

Ave Generosa by Ola Gjeilo (b. 1978) with text by Hildegard von Bingen

Blessed Be That Maid Marie, a 15th-century Carol arranged by Susan LaBarr

Magnificat by Arvo Pärt (b.1935)

Bògòroditse Dyevo by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 -1943)

Hacia Belen va un Botrrico, a traditional Spanish Carol arranged by Alice Parker

Estonian

My favorite piece was the Pärt, pronounced like pear with a T at the end. I’ve been a big fan of the Estonian composer for over two decades when my wife and I were at the house of one of her friends, and they were playing some of his music.

It was good that Bach Magnificat involved additional singers because at least five of our choir members were playing in the orchestra instead.

You may recall from the movie Amadeus when the Salieri character cried, “Too many notes!” This is what the Magnificat felt like for both the singers and the instrumentalists. In the case of the former, there was a lot of melisma, which is “a group of notes or tones sung on one syllable.” My favorite piece, which did not involve the full choir, involved the trio of Rose, Carla, and Fiona. They sang the solos and duets along with Joshua and guest vocalist Kristopher.

I’m using this photo that my friend Annika took because at least three people who attended the Magnificat asked if I had participated. Someone in front of me must have obscured me. But in this picture, I’m just left of the lectern. I was there! Really!

I’m always excited when we do a big piece and relieved when it’s over. Here’s the First Friday performance for December 6, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Albany.

November rambling: Unmade beds

The Wonder of Stevie

Unmade beds and overdue books: Photographing the rooms of kids killed in school shootings

Preserving Culture Before It’s Lost Forever

Wildfires come for the Northeast.

TikTok Ban: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

A promising new treatment for PTSD

Remembering Ted Olson, a titan of the law

Civil War Toll Much Worse in Confederate States, New Estimates Show. An analysis of newly released 19th-century census records offers more insight into the conflict’s costs.

Census Bureau Seeks Public Comment on Proposed Updates to the Census Bureau’s Race/Ethnicity Code List

Genealogy: 8 Census Records That Hide Extra Information in Plain Sight

Share of U.S. Coupled Households With Children Declined in 2023

U.S. Volunteerism Rebounding After COVID-19 Pandemic

100 Notable Books of 2024

The New York State Education Department has released data showing outcomes from New York’s 2024 state assessment tests, taken by students in grades 3 to 8 last spring.

Psalms 3:16: The Photo

The thriving business of looking good on Zoom

What Kind of Crier Are You?

Follow These Do’s and Don’ts of the Apostrophe

Spring Training Countdown

A series about Western Publishing and Gold Key Comics

What Happened to the Celebrity Telethon?

Jim Abrahams, ‘Airplane!,’ ‘Naked Gun’ and ‘Hot Shots!’ Master of Mirth, Dies at 80

Chuck Woolery, Host of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Love Connection,’ Dies at 83

If your dead wife tells you to give all your property to a medium, perhaps get a second opinion.

Now I Know: Grace and Typos (I TOTALLY relate!) and The Farmer Strikes Back and The Great Geraint Woolford Coincidence and The Mystery of the Third Shaker and The Historic Connection Between TV Dinners and Diarrhea?

Kolosocracy

Kakistocracy and Kolosocracy

Expert agencies and elected legislatures. Legislatures are entitled to their own (political) opinions but not their own facts.

Top djt picks have ties to Project 2025

Hide, Fido!

What to Know About Jay Bhattacharya, djt’s Potential NIH Pick— Stanford professor is most closely associated with the Great Barrington Declaration

What to know about AG pick Pam Bondi

Caligula’s Horse and Other Controversial Appointments (RIP, the Matt Gaetz choice)

Harris lost the war of “ambient information.”

The Congressional Penis Crisis

Please stop telling me there won’t be an election in 2026 or 2028

The far right grows through “disaster fantasies”

Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

How to Block djt From All Your Screens: A Guide

How to Delete an X (Formerly Twitter) Account Permanently

Four-Year Cruise Offered to Unhappy Voters Who Want to ‘Escape’

Babel

“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit,” writes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his 2022 essay for The Atlantic. [paywall] “Trump did not destroy the tower; he merely exploited its fall. He was the first politician to master the new dynamics of the post-Babel era, in which outrage is the key to virality, stage performance crushes competence, Twitter can overpower all the newspapers in the country, and stories cannot be shared (or at least trusted) across more than a few adjacent fragments—so truth cannot achieve widespread adherence.”

Haidt explains how social media, once widely viewed as a boon for democracy, devolved to a force that has exacerbated the dysfunction of American politics—and suggests three reforms that can help democracy remain viable in the digital age.

MUSIC

Young Lion – Sade Adu

Dance With Everybody – Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors

Coverville 1511: The Tim Rice Cover Story and 1512: The Bruce Hornsby Cover Story

Naturally Stoned – The Avant-Garde, written by group member Chuck Woolery, #40 pop in 1968

Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, sometimes called the “Jupiter”.

Graucha Max– DARKSIDE

K-Chuck Radio: Someone’s Covering the Will-O-Bees

Vocalise by Rachmaninoff

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists: Joy Division, New Order and Killdozer

Fist City– Loretta Lynn

Time After Time – Hiroshi Yoshimura

Gemini – Haley Heynderickx

Bethlehem (Glimpse) – Laraaji

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – Wham!

Open Flair Gänsekapelle

The Wonder of Stevie is a new limited podcast series.

Mary, the Magnificat, was no wuss

“And so in this season, I hear Mary’s Magnificat shouted, not sung” in the places of power and oppression.

At the risk of being labeled a reverse sexist – hey, I can deal with that – I tend to think, in the main , that women are better people than men.

I took some pleasure that the #MeToo movement received TIME magazine’s Person of the Year designation. I’ve had/tried to avoid having debates over whether this particular man (Al Franken, usually, but not always) should have been fired/forced to resign.

Here’s the thing. When you have years (decades, centuries) of oppression, and the oppressed finally get their voice/get some power, the rules to rectify the long-standing wrongs aren’t always clear. Or perceived as “fair”. (If Franken goes, why doesn’t tRump? Because the Senate, and the House of Representatives, have rules about their own members.)

Eventually, some equilibrium, some recognizable standard, is achieved, but it takes a while.

Which brings me to Mary, the Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent by Rachel Held Evans. She says Mary has long been painted “in the softer hues… —but this young woman was a fierce one, full of strength and fury…

“And so in this season, I hear Mary’s Magnificat shouted, not sung” in the places of power and oppression. Great stuff, this. And to the War on Christmas folks, she adds:

“God did not wrap himself up in flesh, humbling himself to the point of birth in a stable and death on a cross, eating, laughing, weeping, and suffering as one of us, so that I can complain to management when a barista at Starbucks wishes me ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas.’ The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday ‘bigger and better.’ It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.”