All Souls Episcopal Parish in Berkeley, CA

Here's today's sermon by our seminarian, Will Bryant: http://www.allsoulsparish.org/sermons/20201108/

Music in this service streamed with permission under OneLicense #A-706495 and CCLI #20329872.

Composer of the Week (last Sunday's prelude) UZEE BROWN, Jr. (b. 1950) has enjoyed a musical career of exceptional variety and distinction. At age 22, while finishing a B.A. at Morehouse College, he was cast in the first full performance of Scott Joplin’s long-neglected opera "Treemonisha" (published 1911, premiered 1972); he has since continued opera and concert work around the US and in Europe. He later returned to Morehouse as Professor of Voice, and now serves as Chair of...Continue reading

Here's today's sermon by the Rev. Phil Brochard: http://www.allsoulsparish.org/sermons/20201101/

In case you missed the Rt. Rev. Nedi Rivera on Sunday, here's her sermon! http://www.allsoulsparish.org/sermons/20201025/

Composer of the Week (last Sunday's anthem) ANA HERNANDEZ is a composer and self-described song enlivener. She leads group music-makingespecially so-called paperless singingin a wide variety of contexts, including church conventions, singing workshops, and activist settings. The chants and other short works she has composed for these spaces, like much of the wider paperless repertoire, use techniques of ostinato, drone, and cluster, enacting her belief that corporate imp...rovisation should stand alongside through-composed repertoire as a means for spiritual discovery. To her, however, all types of group singing perform the same basic spiritual work, serving as a way to connect to God and Spirit both among and between us, so we can learn to be with one another and lift one another up, and I can see the face of God in you, and...you can see the face of God in me. The piece we are singing this morning, No Body but Yours, is through-composed, but exemplifies the melodic suavity and carefully placed modal inflections found across her entire output. See more

Composer of the Week (last Sunday's anthem) ST. HILDEGARD OF BINGEN (10981179) was a prolific composer of chants and chant texts, as well as a theologian, exegete, hagiographer, and scientist. She experienced visions throughout her life, particularly of an overwhelming radiance that she called the reflection of the living Light. These experiences informed a theology of music that extended common medieval views: where consensus held that earthly music symbolized its heavenl...y counterpartthe unending symphony of praise made by angels and saintsHildegard indicated that human beings could know God through their own musical bodies: singing in particular, she suggested, gave a living voice to the Holy Spirit. Written primarily for the monastic communities in which Hildegard spent her life, her music, which she anthologized under the title Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations, is often thought to reflect something of this vivid devotional world, employing unusually large vocal ranges, frequent melodic leaps, copious melisma (in one case, 80 notes to a single syllable!), and musical depictions of sensory imagery in her texts. The piece Sarita is singing today incorporates several such elements, focusing on Karitas, apparently an allegorical representation of the Holy Spiritin Hildegard’s words, the supreme and fiery force, who sets all living sparks alight.

Here's the audio from today's sermon by the Rev. Phil Brochard: http://www.allsoulsparish.org/sermons/20201018/

Sorry for the massive delay in getting this up, but here is the Rev. Maggie Foote's sermon from Sunday: http://www.allsoulsparish.org/sermons/20201011