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Herbert Howells 10/17/1892
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RCS 2016/2017 Concert Season -
Mark Your Calendars!
December 3, 2016 - Holiday Concert with the Rockbridge Youth Chorale Lexington Presbyterian Church
January 22, 2017 - Vivaldi: Gloria; Charpentier:
Messe de Minuit Lexington Presbyterian Church
April 2, 2017 - Rachmaninoff: Vespers, aka, All-Night Vigil
Washington and Lee University
The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra,
David Stewart Wiley conducting, opens its 2016/2017 season on October 15 with Beethoven's 5th Symphony at 7:30 PM at the Berglund Center, Roanoke.
Rockbridge Symphony Fall Concert with William McCorkle, Organ Soloist
Works of Jongen, Rossini,
Taylor, Haydn
October 28 at 7:30 PM, Program Discussion
at 6:45 PM
Lexington
Presbyterian Church
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Fall is here, officially. Pumpkins, mums, ghouls, ghosts will abound with the close of the month on All Hallows Eve. Around the world, October 31 begins the three day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. As with other holidays, there is no shortage of music for the season. Here's our list of the top five to set the mood. There are certainly many more just as scary. For sheer spookiness, we are partial to the Bartok. What do you think?
Mussorgsky's
Night on Bald Mountain made every list we surveyed. Inspired by Russian legend, this tone poem depicts the dark ritual of a witches Sabbath. The arrangement by Rimsky-Korsakov has become a concert and seasonal favorite.
Saint-Saens'
Dance Macabre - This creepy 1874 tone poem is a Halloween classic depicting the revelry of the Grim Reaper at midnight. With his cursed fiddle, Death summons the dead from their graves to 'party until dawn'.
Bernard Herrmann's
Psycho Suite was composed for the 1960 film,
Psycho. It is a disturbing dissonance of strings which creates fear even without Hitchcock's horrific shower scene.
Bartok's
Adagio
from Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is so haunting and suspenseful that Stanley Kubrick used it in the soundtrack to his horror film,
The Shining.
Click here
Bach's
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is a perennial Halloween favorite, a towering monument of organ music with a deep sense of foreboding sends the imagination to spooky old castles and a phantom's lair.
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Musical Saints - RIP
As we approach All Hallows Eve, here are a few stories surr
oun
ding the weird and untimely deaths of
musicians.Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.
Austrian composer, Anton Webern, w
as a
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Anton Webern |
pupil of fellow Austrian composer, Arnold Scho
e
nburg. Webern died on September 15, 1945 just at th
e end of World War II. On this evening, he stepped outsi
de to smoke a cigar, unaware that a curfew was bei
n
g enforced by the Allied occupying forces.
He was shot dead by an American soldier who s
aw him light up.
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| Enrique Granados |
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Enrique Granados died in 1916 at the height of his success. This Spanish nationalist composer was
invited by President Woodrow Wilson to give a piano recital at the White House. When Granados and his wife
mi
ssed the boat back to Spain, they procured passage to England and th
en boarded the Sussex ferry which would take them on to France. While crossing the English Channel, the Sussex was hit by a German U-boat torpedo. Granados, who had a life-long fear of the ocean, drowned when he jumped out of his lifeboat in a valiant but futile attempt to save his wife.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, the French Baroque master and King Louis XIV's favorite opera composer,
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Jean-Baptiste Lully
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died in 1687 from a self-inflicted wound to his foo
t.
He stabbed his foot with his own pointed s
taff
(used for keeping time) while conducting a performance of his Te Deum. Resu
lting infection and gangrene killed him three months after he had dealt himself what turned out to be the fatal blow.
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Friends of the Rockbridge Choral Society
Rockbridge Choral Society
PO Box 965
Lexington, VA 24450
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