Music as Meditation

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Where Improvising on Hymn Tunes Might Lead Us

     From time immemorial, musicians everywhere have cultivated the skill of improvising on well-known tunes. Religious services often provide the venue for this kind of inspired music-making. The theme running through February's Music as Meditation is how music, whether complex or simple, transcends systems of belief and opens the door to the soul in ways that the spoken word cannot. 

     This month two friends join me to help us experience the answer to question implied in the subtitle above. Nancy Farris, Christ Church's organist, shares a famous embellishment of a hymn tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams: Rhosymedre. Nancy's sensitive rendering and Christ Church's mellow Cassavant Brothers tracker pipe organ bring out the loveliness of the tune. 

     As if a chance to hear the voice of the pipe organ were not enough, Greg Huang-Dale, a local musician with Minnesota roots, brings us the quiet resonance of a hammered dulcimer. He will play some tunes by Peter Ostroushko, Minnesota composer and mandolinist. 

     I will add two resonant pieces for piano which could be classed as hymns-without-words. The first is by nineteenth-century eccentric composer Eric Satie and the second by Peter Ostroushko. Though crafted in different centuries and on different continents, both pieces provide time for peaceful reflection; each is sparse in its notes but rich in its sonorities. 

     The program is not without complexity. Mrs. Farris will give us the intricate majesty of a Toccata by Leo Sowerby, one of 20th century America's most significant organ composers. The interactions of all that embellishment on tunes you might know will provide its own surprises. Who knows where improvising on hymn tunes might lead?