Program from the Newark Museum Program, dated
02/05/1961
Review by Alan Branigan from the Newark Evening
News dated Monday, February 13, 1961. According to my memory, the
concert had to be postponed a week because of snow.
Audio files made from analog recordings taped
in 1960 can be accessed by clicking on the above titles:
God Is Our Refuge; Variations on a Burgundian Carol; The Lone
Prarie; Jesu , Joy of Man's Desiring.
If you have difficulty
reading the news article above, here is the full text BELOW:
Rare Concert
Ancient Music at Museum Well Done by Gerrishes
By ALAN BRANIGAN
A New Jersey family, finely trained in several
musical arts, performed at Newark Museum yesterday afternoon and
drew the applause of an unusually large audience, Mr. and Mrs.
John O. Gerrish of Orange and their four children-John B., James
0., Mary E., and Catherine E., ranging in age from 12 to 22
providing a captivating hour with masters, ancient and modern.
Gerrish, who teaches music at Newark State
College at Union, in addition to being a church organist, pianist
and composer, directed his household in music of several
different kinds. Some required six voices, singing different
parts. Other numbers were for combinations of recorders, those
vertical flutes which are becoming so popular these days.
The most successful composition of the afternoon
was for full ensemble of voices, recorders and two viols. This
was Johan Sebastian Bach's remarkable chorale, "Jesu, Joy of
Man's Desiring," with a triplet theme on recorders weaving
around the main theme of four part chorale, plus harmony on the
viols. It was a marvelous piece of music, easily the best thing
the museum has had in several years, and performed most
effectively.
Good Singing
The Gerrish family, a charming picture as they
stood playing or moving about to set up the next number, proved
to be variously talented. All sing well, with Mrs. Gerrish
providing a warm, flexible soprano and Gerrish himself supporting
the whole structure with his fine, mobile bass voice. The sons
and daughters exchanged solo and accompanying roles with a
modest, unflustered air, as if they did this sort of thing all
the time.
Singing in half a dozen languages, the Gerrishes
delved first into church music. Sacred works by Palestrina,
Heinrich Schuetz and Thomas Tallis were beautifully balanced in
their different parts. One felt, that here was polyphonic singing
of exquisite delicacy and subtlety, which somehow changed the
echoing walls of the museum's court into the hall of an ancient
cloister.
The recorder works were handsomely done,
especially Sweelinck's complicated "My Youth Is
Ending," a quartet number, and Gerrish's own variations on
the old Burgundian carol, "Patapan," written
in five contrasting moods.
There were folk songs, as arranged by Msgr.
Franz Wasner, musical director of the Trapp Family. The viols
used, by the way, belong to the Trapps. Occasional songs with
various accompaniments, all fascinating, followed. Then came the Bach chorale and the program ended in an
immensely fetching manner, besides presenting a picture that
looked like a group of angels by, say, Metozzo da Forli.
For the first time in living memory, shouts of
"bravo" were heard in the museum. They were well
deserved, too.