Tag Archives: musicians

2019

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29 January.  We celebrated John Harbison‘s 80th birthday in our Parish Hall with some of his jazz songs, a piece composed by Michael Gandolfi with libretto of Lloyd Schwartz‘ selections from John’s recently published book What Do We Make of Bach, and a tower of cupcakes wheeled in by Pat Krol, Executive Director of Emmanuel Music.

John Harbison at the piano provided by M. Steinert & Sons with Don Berman, Lynn Torgove, Pat Krol, and singers of Emmanuel Music.

  • Thanks to a generous grant from the City of Boston’s Community Preservation, Commission restoration work on our Newbury St. façade began under the direction of Vestry member Peter K. Johnson.  The multi-year project involved repair and refinishing of five sets of doors with their tympana, masonry work for our central entrance and several staircases, and roof work to prevent ice dams.
  • cover of book on Bach

    Craig Smith directing our orchestra with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson on viola; Don Wilkinson, Paul Guttry et al. in the chorus.

    Pendragon Press published Bringing Bach’s Music to Life, a compilation of Craig Smith’s program notes for 24 cantatas, edited by Pamela Dellal, in its series of Monographs in Musicology.

2010

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  • InstitutionMarch 7.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz was installed as 12th rector with the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Shaw presiding.  See The Musical Intelligencer‘s interview with John Harbison, in which he discusses the history of Emmanuel Music, its founder Craig Smith, The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw, Pam’s musical background, and her dedication to our music program.
  • September.  Bishop Shaw presided at our celebration of the 150th anniversary of the church’s founding.
  • Ryan Turner became our Music Director and Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music.
  • Vintage Books published Mary Catherine Bateson‘s Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, in which she discusses the influence of our 9th rector, Al Kershaw (pp. 171-2 & 1979-80). See also Timeline:  1963 & 1969.

2007

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Nov. 14.  Craig Smith, our music director and founder of Emmanuel Music, died.  Richard Dyer wrote an obituary for Emmanuel Music.

Piano-collector Hu Youyi purchased our Casavant organ and shipped it to the Organ Art Center on Gulangyu Island, Fujian Province, China, where it was restored by Rieger Orgelbau and installed in a concert hall (above) in 2017. See also the record for Opus 700 in the Pipe Organ Database.

 

 

 

1989

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  • April 8.  Emmanuel Music gave a concert in honor of Principal Guest Conductor John Harbison’s 50th birthday (20 Dec. 1988).  His wife Rose Mary Pederson Harbison opened with a violin concerto she had played at its 1980 premiere.
  • Katharine Ward Lane Weems died and bequeathed a pair of Spanish candelabra now standing in the  baptistery of our Sanctuary.  Born 22 Feb.1899, she was the only child of  Emma Gildersleeve and Gardiner Martin Lane, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death in 1914. They lived at 53 Marlborough Street and were members of Emmanuel.

Katharine attended the Museum School from 1915 and began to show her work in 1920.  She designed the brick friezes and bronze doors of Harvard’s Biological Laboratories with two massive bronze rhinoceri (one pictured below) installed in the courtyard in 1937.

See also

Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston

1988

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  • June.  Organist Michael Beattie joined Emmanuel Music for rehearsals in our Music Room of Peter Sellars‘ version of Mozart’s opera Le Nozze di Figaro, which played that summer in the PepsiCo Theater in Purchase NY.  Craig Smith conducted; Frank Kelley sang the part of Basilio; Jayne West, the Countess; and Susan Larson, Cherubino.
  • In her “Peace Pentecost” sermon at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul, poet Denise Levertov (1923-97) emphasized the connection between contemplation and action:  “If we neglect our inner lives, we destroy the sources of fruitful outer action.

    Thanks to U. of California Press for this image.

    But if we do not act, our inner lives become mere monuments to egotism.” At Emmanuel she founded a Peace Group to foster the links between spiritual thought and action among her fellow parishioners.

Earlier in the decade she had been attracted to Emmanuel by our social-justice activities, beautiful music and liturgy, and rector Al Kershaw, who counseled her.  “He assured her that doubt was part of spiritual growth and the darkness she encountered might increase her sense of dependence and lead her to God,” says her biographer Dana Greene citing Denise’s diary entry for June 13, 1988.

Denise’s father, Paul Philip Levertoff (1878–1954), born in Belarus, an early proponent of Messianic Judaism, took holy orders in the Anglican Church and preached wearing an alb with a tallit and kippa.

The Rev. Paul Philip Levertoff

In 1922 he had become director of what is now the London Diocesan Council for Work among the Jews and edited its quarterly journal, The Church and the Jews. He was a prolific writer on theological subjects in Hebrew, German, and English and translated into English the Midrash Sifre on Numbers (1926) and the Zohar  (1933).

See also:

  1. Dana Greene.  Denise Levertov:  A Poet’s Life.  Urbana IL:  U. of Illinois Press, 2012.
  2. Denise Levertov.  Making Peace.  Breathing the Water.  NY:  New Directions, 1987.
  3. Donna Hollenberg.  A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2013.
  4. Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey, eds.  The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov.  NY: New Directions, 2013.
  5. Paul Philip Levertoff. Love and the Messianic Age.
  6. Timeline: 1994

 

1911

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June 2. Rector Elwood Worcester presided at the funeral of Dr. Emma W. Davidson Mooers, who had been a parishioner since 1880. She had died on May 31 at 52 of streptococcal meningitis contracted when she and Dr. Elmer Ernest Southard were performing an autopsy.  She was one of 13 women to receive an MD from U. of Michigan in 1884, then worked at Northampton State Hospital,  McLean Hospital, and the neuropathology laboratory of Dr. Alois Alzheimer in Munich before becoming Custodian of Harvard’s Neuropathological Collection in 1910.  Her articles on syphilis and other bacterial infections of the nervous system were published in the precursors to the American Journal of Psychiatry and  New England Journal of Medicine. May this pioneer rise in glory!

Dr. Emma W.D. Mooers seated in center with Dr. Alois Alzheimer (back row 3d from right) and co-workers in his Laboratory for Neurology, Munich, 1909.
Credit: Wikicommons

July.  Choirmaster Weston Spies Gales, young William Appleton Lawrence (1889-1968), and a cook, Mr. Wood, took thirty choirboys to Camp Lowell in Winthrop, Maine, for a fortnight of fellowship.

 

1882

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Our first organist and music director, Silas Atkins Bancroft (1823-1886), retired after two decades of faithful service.  He is buried in Lot 2607 on the Mistletoe Path of Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

B.S. Rotch (1817-1882) at time of our foundation. Photo courtesy of Boston Athenaeum.

Senior Warden Benjamin Smith Rotch died in office. A founding vestry member and warden since 1880, he was later memorialized with his wife Anne Bigelow Lawrence (1820-93) in our sanctuary’s reredos.

They are buried in  Lot 3004 on Bellwort Path in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.  His epitaph from Revelation 2:10 reads:  Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.