Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is streamed online every Wednesday at 12:00 noon MDT. Piping Up! can be viewed on TheTabernacleChoir.org, the Choir’s YouTube channel, the Choir’s Facebook page, and Broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. When concerts are concluded, they are available for on-demand viewing on the Choir’s website, YouTube and Facebook.

These programs continue the tradition of noon organ recitals at Temple Square—a tradition that has lasted for more than a century. The concerts are produced without an audience and comply with all COVID-19 guidelines. Each concert will feature a different Tabernacle or Temple Square organist and is hosted by Luke Howard.

Repertoire

Organist: Brian Mathias

1. Grand Chœr Dialogué^† . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eugéne Gigout
2. a. Sketch in D-flat Major . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Schumann
b. A Méditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabriel Dupont
3. a. Hymn: Come, Come, Ye Saints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . arr. by organist
b. An old melody Wondrous Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .arr. by organist
4. As if the Whole Creation Cried, from Triptych. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Paulus

^† LISTENER REQUESTED SELECTION Go to the Piping Up! web page to make your request!

Focus Piece

An on-going feature of Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is a focus piece with additional inspirational background on a specific repertoire selection. Written by host Luke Howard, a professor of music at Brigham Young University, the focus piece connects the music in a unique way to lift and inspire listeners.

“As If the Whole Creation Cried” (Paulus)

When Stephen Paulus was composer-in-residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, his well-earned, international reputation was as a composer for the voice: operas, song cycles, works for chorus, and so on. And he wrote extensively for orchestra, as well. The keyboardist for the Atlanta Symphony, Norman Mackenzie, approached Paulus, wondering if he would consider writing an organ concerto, to be performed at the 1992 meeting of the American Guild of Organists in Atlanta.

What Mackenzie didn’t know at the time—what few people, in fact, knew at the time—was that Stephen Paulus had “dallied” with the pipe organ as a youth, took organ lessons in high school, and learned a good deal of organ literature through his father, Harry, who was a diligent amateur organist in Minnesota.

That first Organ Concerto from 1992 opened the floodgates, and commissions for more organ works began pouring in rather quickly. Paulus eventually produced a small handful of works for solo organ, along with a number of other organ concertos and ensemble pieces. It just took that one invitation.

In Paulus’s Triptych for organ, published in 2000, all of the three sections draw musically from a hymn he’d written himself earlier that same year, titled “God with Me.” Paulus wrote both the hymn and the Triptych for his own House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The hymn uses an old Celtic invocation as text, and it’s very beautiful.

The three movements of Paulus’s Triptych are also inspired by, and titled after, other well-known hymn texts. The final movement refers to a line from the hymn, “When in Our Music God Is Glorified.” The organ piece itself is titled “As if the Whole Creation Cried,” but please don’t think that this title is sad or mournful—quite the opposite. In the hymn, these words are followed immediately by an Alleluia! This is a vigorous, energetic, worshipful piece that represents the coming together of all creation to collectively and powerfully cry out to God in praise through music. Paulus simply left the “Alleluia” off the title of the work, and put it into the music instead. Brilliant!