SALLY MORRIS: EASTER IN MUSIC
It is Easter Sunday! Let us hope that this year we are ready to celebrate fully after a very somber Easter 2020. I wanted to bring you some beautiful music today from three different traditions all honoring the story and heritage of Easter. First, from a composer usually associated with the operatic stage - Giacomo Puccini. Here is his “Messa di Gloria”, although a full mass, written as part of satisfying requirements for graduation from the Instituto Musicale Pacini and was first performed in Lucca, in 1880. It is a true masterpiece, although not as often heard as the masses of some other great composers. Here it is performed at the Igreja Imaculada Conceição in São Paulo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aOeQ6ERMcY&t=927s
From a totally different musical fount comes another work inspired by the Resurrection - Oscar Peterson’s “Easter Suite”. Again, not his most often-heard, yet a great work in the jazz idiom. Peterson was born in Quebec, to parents from the West Indies and grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, where he was inspired by the sounds of jazz. He became one of our preeminent jazz composers and performers. Here he plays his “Easter Suite”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9jawZlFL8&list=PL846941C7B436FE93
Easter is the high point of the Christian year - the point of it all, one might say, the Resurrection - a time for which devout Christians prepare throughout the lenten season. The rebirth of our world in the spring brings joy to so many. After a long winter - and this winter has been a very long one - we really hardly celebrated last year - it is also a time for returning to the joy of life. Irving Berlin understood that, as he understood so much, when he wrote the score for the movie, Easter Parade. We began with the celebration of the glory of Resurrection with Puccini’s offering. Here, now are variations on the theme of Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade”: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=easter+parade+-+youtube&&view=detail&mid=2329B0698C083EC895242329B0698C083EC89524&rvsmid=65097494A1511D44A07865097494A1511D44A078&FORM=VDRVRV
With that I wish you all a blessed Easter, 2021!
DakotaBeacon