Trinity Sunday (May 27, 2018)

The First Sunday after Pentecost can also be acknowledged as Trinity Sunday. And it is to this traditional feast day on the Roman calendar that Sunday morning’s Baroque era organ selections will honor. A setting of the trinitarian hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Her” (To God Alone on High be Glory) by early Baroque Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck begins the service. Sweelinck refined Renaissance  era composition practices and helped usher in the North German organ school of composers which included Georg Böhm, J.S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Samuel Scheidt, the latter two also being heard this Sunday morning. “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott” (We all believe in one true God) serves as the Offertory this week. There are numerous settings in the organ literature of this Martin Luther hymn, whose text is based on the words of the Nicean Creed. Samuel Scheidt, also a student of Sweelinck, provides the setting this week. Buxtehude’s galloping Fugue in C Major concludes the service. Subtitled the ‘gigue fugue’, the work is in a compound three meter imitating the imported British jig dance. Bach employed many numerological references to the Trinity in his organ works (abundant in the triple fugue of his “St. Anne” E flat major masterpiece). Buxtehude did not presumably intend this ‘gigue’ to be a trinitarian reference, but it will do.

Come back later to Plymouth for a jazz-inflected service at 6:00. Vocalist Adrienne Harlow and trombonist Rob Borger and friends will join Bobby for a musically adventurous evening.

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