And also (in the new calendars) the feast of her Immaculate Heart. Pius XII established the feast of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart in 1944, replacing the traditional rite celebrating the Octave. Paul VI moved it to the Saturday following the feast of Our Lord's Sacred Heart, at the same time moving the feast of Our Lady Queen from the 31st May to today, the 22nd August (this imposition of the Novus Ordo calendar in 1969 is also when the feast of Our Lady's Visitation was moved from 2nd July to 31st May). In any event...
... It is a good day to acknowledge the great Mother of God in her dominion, co-extensive with Her Son's. Time for Terce and then I'm baking another coffeecake, this time with raspberries.
There's a premiere of a Mass by Maria Faust in Tallinn later on; she is famous for being a saxophonist, ahem.
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Almost forgot to take the cake out of the oven, tsk, but do have the Estonian Klassika Raadio on so won't miss the beginning of the Faust premiere.
Maria Faust's name is mainly associated with non-traditional jazz currents and free improvisation. Saxophonist, composer, arranger and improviser, she received a prestigious award from the Danish Association of Composers and Songwriters, which is given once a year to an outstanding composer.
The title "genre shifter" has been used for Faust, who is known for her experimental sound language and has just released Sacrum Facere's album "Organ".
"Mary's Mass is dedicated to Estonian women who have suffered through personal violence", Faust has said. It is a commissioned work by the chamber choir Collegium Musicale and is based on a three-part text compiled by Eero Epner. The Mass is dedicated to all victims of domestic violence.
That's my tidying up of a machina's translation of text from Klassica Raadio. What follows is the Inakustik site's own English (from the German). Miss Faust's...
"... (N)ew album, entitled Organ, focuses on the sound and story of cathedral organs. Originally invented as a communicative medium between humans and God, the instrument has also been called "God Praising Machine".
Organ is inspired by the composer’s own personal body memory. It is a celebration of the human body (and life) as a mystical cathedral with soaring ceilings, holy altars, statues, memorials, scripts… and organs, around which everything is centered. Depending on the activity, the room and body can celebrate, dance, sing, mourn, weep, and shake.
St. Nicholas´ Church in Tallinn, where the new recording took place, is an architectural, spiritual, and historical treasure. During the middle ages, it was one of the wealthiest and most beautiful churches in the city."
I'm not a listener of modern jazz but Faust sounds like her heart is in the right place, as it were, whatever "personal body memory" may mean. It is striking that the cathedral, which we believers see as a built symbol of the earthly and celestial Civitas Dei, has been re-purposed by the composer as "a celebration of the human body (and life)", if 're-purpose' is the right verb: of course the cathedral is also a celebration of human life..
The Kyrie is stunningly beautiful, contrary to my unspoken expectations.
This is a trailer from the Organ album, I guess; I haven't listened to it.
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