Featuring Keith Perry singing “The Crucifixion”--one of a cycle of ten songs from The Hermit Songs composed by Samuel Barber and first performed by Leontyne Price, soprano, with the composer at the piano, at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., on October 30, 1953.  They are settings of anonymous Irish texts of the eighth to thirteenth centuries written by monks and scholars, often on the margins of manuscripts they were copying or illuminating--perhaps not always meant to be seen by their Father Superiors.  They are small poems, thoughts or observations, some very short, and speak in straightforward, droll and often surprisingly modern terms of the simple life these men led, close to nature, to animals and to God.

“At the cry of the first bird

They began to crucify Thee, O Swan!

Never shall lament cease because of that.

It was like the parting of day from night.

Ah, sore was the suffering borne

By the body of Mary’s son,

But sorer still to Him was the grief

Which for His sake

Came upon His Mother.”

And also featuring Michael Latsko playing “Prelude and Fugue” by German composer and organist Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck who lived 1700-1846.

Reader: Harry Gamble.

Officiant and Homilist: Fr. Miles Smith

The liturgical excerpts are from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.