A Rosary Concert

by Gary D. Penkala

Here's a great idea for a Marian concert, particularly in May or October. Dr. Gregory Hamilton, music minister at Saint Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, conducted a program titled, A Decade of Ave's, which began with ten settings of the prayer, Ave Maria.

1. Gregorian chant (12th century) sung in procession
2. Tomas Luis de Victoria (1580)
3. Jacques Arcadelt (1550)
4. Claude Mouton (1510)
5. Franz Schubert (1845) soprano solo
6. Bach / Gounod (1885) mezzo soprano solo
7. Joseph Rheinberger (1880)
8. Gregory Hamilton (2004)
9. Pietro Mascagni (1920) soprano solo
10. Igor Stravinsky (1935)

At Saint Thomas Church Dr. Hamilton directs a very accomplished 40-voice choir, a sizeable music ministry, and produces "Musical Offerings," a community concert series of twelve concerts annually which promote the great wealth of music from the Roman Catholic tradition.

He continued the concert above with Romance for violin (Beethoven), three organ settings: Fugue on Magnificat, Ave Maria de Lourdes, and Prelude & Fugue on Victimæ paschali laudes (Dom Paul Benoit), Adagio for violin (Mozart), Sonata for two violins (Bach), and Ave Maria, Star of the Sea (anonymous Slovak melody).

One might also round out the ten Ave Maria settings by preceding them with a chanted version of the Apostles' Creed (perhaps using an Anglican chant) and a setting of the Lord's Prayer (Gallus, Obrecht, Palestrina, Willaert, Hassler, Schütz, Cherubini, Gounod, Liszt, Malotte, Meyerbeer, Bortnianski, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Biebl, Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, Peeters). The concert could conclude with one of the numerous settings of the Gloria Patri (Palestrina, de la Rue, Pergolesi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn) and the Salve Regina (the familiar chant version or the motet by Dufay, Goudimel, Obrecht, Ockeghem, Palestrina, Anerio, Byrd, Victoria, diLasso, Charpentier, Marenzio, Martini, Pergolesi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Aichinger, Hasse, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Rovetta, Rheinberger, Tchaikovsky, Fauré, or Poulenc).

In addition to the ten settings of Ave Maria above, here are some other examples:

• Aichinger, Gregor
• Biebl, Franz
• Brahms, Johannes
• Bruckner, Anton
• Cherubini, Luigi
• des Prez, Josquin
• Davies, Peter Maxwell
• Dering, Richard
• di Lasso, Orlando
• Donizetti, Gaetano
• Dvorak, Antonin
• Elgar, Edward
• Franck, César
• Fux, Johann Joseph
• Goemanne, Noel
• Gretchaninov, Alexandre
• Gumpelzhaimer, Adma
• Haydn, Michael
• Isaac, Heinrich
• Liszt, Franz
• Luzzi, Luigi
• MacIntyre, David (21st century)
• Mozart, W.A.
• Ockeghem, Johannes
• Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi
• Peeters, Flor
• Rachmaninoff, Sergei
• Rheinberger, Josef
• Rossini, Gioacchino
• Stravinksy, Igor
• Verdi, Giuseppe
• Vermulst, Jan
• Villa-Lobos, Heitor
• Willaert, Adrian

See the CNP editions of Ave Maria by Arcadelt or Victoria