This month’s music – March

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 | Uncategorized

Bartholomaeus Gesius (c.1560 – 1613) worked mainly for the Lutheran church in Frankfurt.  His setting of Palm Sunday (28 March) words (in English translation) is chorale-like in character  -  like the hymns of that church. Orlando Gibbons’s beautiful hymn (21 March) was elaborated by the former Westminster Abbey organist Sir Ernest Bullock whilst an earlier Chapel Royal choirmaster, Richard Farrant (c.1525 – 1580), produced a setting of words from Psalm 25, Call to remembrance, O Lord, Thy tender mercy and Thy loving kindness (7 March).

The great Lutheran organist Johann Sebastian Bach provides all our organ pieces for March, many of them based on chorales/hymns appropriate to the season of Lent.  On Mothering Sunday (14 March)

the organ fugue uses a theme sung to the words of the Magnificat  -  the Song of Mary.