All movements of the Mass in G minor will be presented in this Sunday's liturgy by the Chancel Choirs from the United Parish in Brookline and First Church in Cambridge Congregational, UCC.
The choirs will present the 30-minute mass setting during worship on May 13 at the United Parish in Brookline (210 Harvard St.) unitedparishbrookline.org and on May 20 at First Church,Congregational UCC, in Cambridge (11 Garden St., Cambridge) firstchurchcambridge.org.
With its two choirs and a quartet of soloists
setting up a dialog of rich harmonies and textures, the Mass in G minor has become a favored work of choirs, congregations, and audiences alike. It is entirely unaccompanied, and shifts fluidly between the major and minor modes while borrowing melodies and cadential turns from the ancient church modes and Gregorian chant. Composed in 1922, the Mass in G minor was the first to be
written in a distinctly English manner since the 16th century and artfully bridges English liturgical music of the distant past with that of the present.
