Parish Prayer List

Please note that names are listed alphabetically by last name of the person being prayed for (if it is known).  We do not list last names for privacy reasons. For pastoral emergencies call or text one of the clergy: While Father Matt is in the Holy Land, please call Deacon Chisara Alimole (914.338.5194), or call the parish office (914.738.5515).  If you have any updates (birthdays, prayers additions, etc., please let us know.) Please submit names you wish to be included by Tuesday morning, to Marie at: marie@christchurchpelham.org.

Our prayers are asked especially for: Marion, Mark, Marcia, Elizabeth, Zachary, Anne, Rosemarie, Ginny, Ralph, Douglas, Ethan, Barbara, Russell, Fran, Mary, Ralph, Ursla, Marcia, Scot, Sammy, Ted, James, Monica (in hospital), Rebecca, Janet, Jackie, Amina, Celine, Brayden, Alexia Grace, Alison, Nicole, Emma, Pelin, Hildy, Martin, Nate, Yen, Erica, Rosalina, Walter, Susan, Ariana, Danielle, The Salvatore family, Dean, Sue, Xandra, Sigi, Joyce, Julie, Scott, Robert, Sherry, Michelle, Rob, Drue, David, Rob, Chuck,  Bill, Sue, Lael, M&D, Sandy, Morris, and Katie.

We give thanks for those celebrating birthdays this week and in the coming week Ed Cragin (April 11), David Dierking (April 13), Chris Ganpat (April 14), Mia Genovese (April 15), Kristine Valerio (April 16), Kari Black (April 17), Gus Ipsen (April 17), Kristin van OgTrop (April 17), Vanessa Dierking (April 18), and Tom Bricker (April 21).

We pray for those in our Armed Services especially: Joseph, Kevin, Jack, Leopold, Philip, Jake, Matthew, Robert, Philip-Jason, Nicholas, Sam, Helen, Mitchel, Alec, Jonah, Tia, Tyrese, and Terrence.

We pray that all elected and appointed officials may be led to wise decisions and right actions for the welfare and peace of the world, especially Joseph our President, and Kathy our Governor.

We pray for those who have died, (especially ______).  And we pray for those who have died from COVID-19.

Rest eternal grant to them, O Lord

And let light perpetual shine upon them.

May their souls and the souls of the departed, through the mercy of God,

rest in peace.  Amen

About The Music

Tómas Luís de Victoria, he is considered one of the great Spanish composers of the Renaissance. Not much is known about his early life. He appears to have been educated in the classics and music (likely as a cathedral chorister). He spent three years as maestro de capilla (choirmaster) of the cathedrala in Ávila and Plasencia before joining the papal choir in Rome in 1535. He remained a singer of the papal choir for ten years, publishing numerous works and becoming widely known around the continent. After returning to Spain, he had hoped to be appointed maestro de capilla in Toledo, but died before realizing this ambition. Morales’s motet Vidi aquam (I saw water flowing) is treated as a responsory, incorporating a cantor intoning the first phrase of the ancient Gregorian melody associated with this Easter baptismal text as an incipit with the full choir responding in canon.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) was the definitive composer of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 16^th century. Born in Palestrina, near Rome, he was trained as a boy chorister in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Influenced by the Netherlandish composers Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez whose mastery of the polyphonic style and papal service had defined the height of Renaissance motet and mass composition, Palestrina responded to the demands of the Counter-Reformation to eschew elaborate, melismatic polyphony, for a clearer and less florid style of writing where the sacred text retained the central focus. Sicut cervus (Like the deer) is one of his best-known and best-loved motets.

Following an ancient liturgical custom, The Easter Anthems, known in Latin as Pascha nostrum (Christ, our Passover), are prescribed as the Gregorian responsory for Communion on Easter Day n the Liber usualis, and have been incorporated into Anglican liturgy for Eastertide since the first Book of Common Prayer (1549). With a text taken from the fifth and fifteenth chapters of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans, this canticle, which can also replace the Venite at Morning Prayer throughout Eastertide, reminds the Church of the purpose and effect of Christ’s full and final sacrifice both to honor and also to transform the ancient Jewish Passover feast into the joyous celebration of His glorious Resurrection.

Described by the Manchester Evening News as “the premier English organist of his generation,” John Scott (1956-2015) was an English organist and choirmaster. Born in Yorkshire, he trained as a boy chorister at Wakefield Cathedral, was Organ Scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge and held two noteworthy posts as choirmaster in a distinguished cathedral career first at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and then at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue in New York City. John died suddenly and untimely in August of 2015. His setting of the Pascha Nostrum (Easter anthems) is an Anglican chant with rich contemporary harmonies.

Fulbert of Chartres (c. 952-c. 1028) was bishop of Chartres in the early 11^th century. Some biographers believe he was born in Rome; more recent scholarship suggests his birthplace was the village of Laudun in the South of France. Whatever the place of his birth, the circumstances of his birth were undoubtedly humble. He was educated at the Cathedral School of Rheims, which had a reputation as one of the great learning centers in the late Middle Ages in France and where he studied under Gerbert d’Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, one of Rheims’s most noteworthy scholars. Fulbert excelled academically and went on to found a similar school in 990 in Chartres. He was elevated to the office of Archbishop in 1007 primarily at the request of King Robert, who had been his fellow student at Rheims. As a scholar and bishop, Fulbert’s writings include numerous epistles which detail the liturgy and church discipline of the 11^th century, two important homilies, and twenty-seven hymns, of which “Chorus novæ Jerusalem” (“Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem”) remains the most widely known in English translation first published by an Edinburgh attorney named Robert Campbell in his 1850 hymnal Hymns and Anthems and altered for inclusion in Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) was born in Dublin, educated at Cambridge University and the Liepzig Conservatory, and went on to become one of the most influential English composers and musicians of his generation. A founding professor of the Royal College of Music, his notable students there include Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Frank Bridge, and Arthur Bliss. Stanford’s 1910 setting of “Ye choirs of new Jerusalem” is a staple of the Anglican choral repertoire for Eastertide.

The American horn virtuoso and composer Kerry Turner (b. 1960) is a native of San Antonio, Texas who was educated at Baylor University and Manhattan School of Music, and who won a Fullbright Scholarship to study with Hermann Baumann at the Stuttgart College of Performing Arts in Germany. Though he focused in his young adulthood on performing on the French Horn, Turner won the San Antonio Music Society’s Composition Competition at the age of 11 and Baylor awarded him a composition scholarship at 17. After joining the American Horn Quartet, his interest in composition was rekindled in an effort to expand and enlarge the repertoire for horn quartet, which has gained him an international reputation as a composer, particularly as a composer for French Horn. In 1987, Turner composed ’Twas a dark and stormy night for horn duet with orchestra or organ. Inspired by a collection of short, all of them beginning with the same line “’Twas a dark and stormy night,” but each of them entirely different. Of this piece, Turner says “I hoped to fill a major gap, that is, a challenging recital piece for horn[s] and organ that shows off the best loved characteristics of each instrument, and one that is completely different from anything else that might appear on the program.”

Announcements & News

CLICK HERE