| Description: | Lent begins today, and this collection of Diemer's Easter music deserves to be re-uploaded. Some may therefore recognize the music, as you did get a chance to hear it once before.
Emma Lou Diemer’s Seasonal Psalms for Organ, Volume 1 offers a liturgical journey through the church year, grounded in the language of the psalms and the resonance of beloved hymn tunes. Some are modest in scale, and most are accessible to intermediate/early advanced players, while a few are anything but simplistic. Diemer’s voice throughout is eclectic: lean and thick, unsentimental and expressive, quietly inventive and boldly spirited, favoring clarity of shape and tune in some places and over-embellishment and showy bravura in others. Each setting feels purposefully crafted for its place in the calendar, despite some being ironically unexpected, yet she always balances the integrity of the source tunes with inflections of mood, color, and harmonic language.
Throughout the cycle, Diemer speaks with conviction but never excess. Her idiom is one of economy and direction, always rooted in the text and its liturgical role. For the performer, this music invites attentiveness most of the time with some flashes of bravura thrown in; for the listener, it is a chance to hear ancient words and familiar melodies refracted through a modern, American sensibility that is clear-eyed, spiritual, and sincere.
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