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Pietro Alesandro Yon (1886 – 1943) Gesu Bambino
During the nine days before Christmas, it is a long established custom for Italian shepherds to play the zampogna (bagpipe) and ciaramella (shawm) in the streets…Yon has here combined a zampognari-type melody with the familiar hymn Adeste Fideles…Pietro Yon was originally organist at the Royal Chapel in Rome, then deputy organist at the Vatican. He came to New York in 1907, first as organist at the church of St Francis Xavier, then from 1927 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral…
Nicholas A. Rimski-Korsakov (1844 – 1908) Prelude et Berceuse –from “Le Coq d’Or”
Rimski-Korsakov’s last major work was the opera “Le Coq d’Or” (…The Golden Cockerel), an oriental fantasy set in a “certain far-off kingdom on the edge of the world”…
Charles Gounod (1818 – 1893) Meditation sur le Premier Prelude de J. S. Bach
In 1852 Gounod added the now familiar melody to Bach’s little study in harmonic progression, then in 1859 made a second version for voice with the Latin text for the Ave Maria. The popularity of both was immediate…
Albert Schaefer (? – ?) Harfen Vorspiel uber Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus
Three months before his death in 1791, Mozart wrote the sublime motet Ave Verum Corpus. One hundred years later, to commemorate Mozart’s 1891 centennial, Albert Schaefer presented this “harp-prelude,” in which the original motet is embroidered with arpeggios from the harp, plus an added coda very much in the Romantic style…” S. Milligan
