Sunday, March 14, 2010

All Saints.

The hymn tune, not the feast. I like this tune, but it's not in our parish's hymnal. Luckily, it is in the Westminster Hymnal, which sometimes supplies hymns for services.The only thing is that the harmonisation is a little different from the one in the English Hymnal, which is the one I'm familiar with. You can hear it Here.
Meanwhile, after mass today, I worked on an alternate harmonisation for the last verse. It's amazing what you can do by just sharping some notes, making other notes flat, and taking a few notes out of the pedal.
I also went over Narenza. That's an easy tune, since it's very similar to the tune 'Swabia'. Nice tune, but our hymnal only uses it for a hymn with four verses.
And speaking of organ music still, I was completeshocked to find out that the organ at St.Mark's near Rittenhouse:
A) Is a Skinner
B) Has over 100 stops.
St.Mark's is such a tiny little church! I though their organ might have 45-50 stops, maybe 65 if they're smart and use lots of mitred pipes and capped stops, but 100? I'm almost more shocked that a church of that size would want an organ with that many stops. It seems like it'd be overpowering.I don't remeber, since it's been, what, at least a year since I've been to St.Marks.I'll have to stop by....eventually.

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