Now that Christ has ascended, and the Holy Spirit descended (last week, on Pentecost), the liturgical calendar marks tomorrow as Trinity Sunday, the end of the Easter season and a feast celebrating the Trinity of Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus. Please don't ask me to explain it to you! It's probably better to listen to music that approaches "le mystère de la Sainte Trinité," in the words of Olivier Messaien.
The practical part is that Trinity Sunday is the beginning of "ordinary time" -- that long, long season of green vestments and altar cloths stretching all through the summer and fall. It means in another week we go on "chori vacation" for a couple of months, and those who show up to sing on Sunday mornings won't have to put on heavy cassocks and surplices.
Tomorrow, however, we will, but we'll be singing some glorious music while we sweat, and hearing more on the organ. Here's the full program, below; Evensong will be broadcast live/streamed live on the internet on Radio Ville-Marie at 4:00 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time, so if you'd like to end your weekend with an hour-long concert of almost-all-Russian choral music, here's a rare chance to do just that. The Rachmaninoff piece is from his "All Night Vigil," one of the great, great works of liturgical music.The inks in teh programme below give information and a few include online resources for listening.
It's a Sunday for poetry too: I am one of the lectors, and was surprised and happy to to see that the passage I'll be reading is Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ."
TRINITY SUNDAY, CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, MONTREAL
The Cathedral Singers
Prelude: Le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité from Le Corps glorieux [Messiaen himself: Grooveshark], Olivier Messiaen (1908-92)
The Cathedral Singers
Prelude: Gloria tibi Trinitas, John Bull (1562-1628)
Introit: Cherubic Hymn [text] [YouTube], Dimitri Bortniansky (1751-1825)
Preces and Responses: “Dresden,” John Sanders (1933-2003)
Psalm: 146 (Atkins)
Magnificat: [Polyansky: YouTube], Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Nunc Dimittis: [Kelly: YouTube], Alexander Gretchaninoff (1864-1956)
Anthem: Hymn to the Trinity [text] [St. Louis Cathedral: YouTube], Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93)
Postlude: Gloria tibi Trinitas, John Bull
The Episcopal Church year always reminded me of a pie chart with green predominating over the small slices and slivers that made up the rest of the year. I like how you describe it as "ordinary time." I wonder how no season seems directly dedicated to an eschatological period. It may be because the church is like the Orthodox Church -- amillennialist? (Though a confirmed Episcopalian, I know little about its theology . . .)
While I was growing up in the Episcopal Church, the interminable green season made me feel like the church calendar as a whole was on vacation, that we weren't made to take the excitement and drama of the purple and red and white without a large space to process it all and to put it in perspective.
Posted by: Peter | June 19, 2011 at 03:51 AM
Yes, Peter, that's exactly how I felt - and how it is, to some extent!
Posted by: Beth | June 19, 2011 at 08:07 AM
Oh my, what a programme, and what a feast of links! I shall be coming back to this a few times. St Patrick's Breastplate is a favourite from school days, and I love Byrd and Palestrina. Thanks Beth!
Posted by: Lucy | June 20, 2011 at 09:57 AM
Lovely.I will come back to this too
Posted by: john | June 20, 2011 at 11:38 AM
Oh, good! Shall have to dig around and find it after company departs. I take it you are lector rather than lay reader since you did the first reading...
Posted by: marly youmans | June 20, 2011 at 02:58 PM