by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, Mikhail Grazhdanov (pictured) will play French Baroque music for harpsichord & organ on the Tuesday Organ Plus series at the Church of the Covenant.
And at 5:30 pm, The Regis Bookshar Trumpet Ensemble with Jim Riggs, organ. will perform a free, 50-minute rush hour concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church.
For details of this and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, falls on this date each year, and marks the beginning of autumn in many Christian cultures.
It lends its name to the fall term in British universities, and gives rise to a number of folk customs, including making Michaelmas Bannock on the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael from equal parts of barley, oats, and rye without employing any metal implements.
St. Michael and Satan on the façade of Coventry Cathedral (Sir Jacob Epstein).
And Michaelmas draws the line after which you should stop picking blackberries. That last piece of advice derives from the legend that when the Archangel Michael expelled the rebellious Lucifer from heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush (ouch!), which he cursed and defiled in a special way. Don’t eat the berries.
Angels — divine messengers charged with delivering news good and bad to humans — are part of the rich mythology of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike.
The archangels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel join a trio in “The Heavens are telling” in Haydn’s The Creation (sung here by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw). Later, Gabriel returns to the story to bring surprising news to Mary of Nazareth (listen to Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria sung by Chanticleer). He’s also likely to have been part of the heavenly host that sends the shepherds to the stable in Bethlehem (as re-enacted by Kiera Duffy and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale).
And Gabriel may even have taken up a viol to entertain the bystanders as in Matthias Grünewald’s altarpiece that Hindemith turned into “The Angel Concert” in Mathis der Maler (here played by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt).
Celebrate Michaelmas with a recent service of Choral Evensong for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels from Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.
Burrow deeper with Herbert Howells’ Sequence for St. Michael, written for Sir George Guest and the choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and dedicated to the memory of Howells’ son Michael, who died as a child. Click here for a performance led by John’s incumbent organist Andrew Neghsingha
