“Recercar con obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla” by Girolamo Frescobaldi

“Recercar con obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla” by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
David Sinden, organ
Audio courtesy Barry Hufker
Videography by Pat Weaver
Early Music Missouri continued its 2023-2024 season with “The Baroque Organ,” featuring 17th- and 18th-century keyboard repertoire performed by David Sinden on St. Peter’s Episcopal Church’s two Mander organs.
Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali or “Musical Flowers” of 1635 is devoted to music for the Mass. A busy, working organist, Frescobaldi composed these pieces as a resource for other professional organists who would have used his music to accompany the Ordinary of the Mass. The most intriguing movement in this collection appears in the Ricercar (an imitative piece similar to a fantasia) of the Messa della Madonna. In this piece, Frescobaldi instructs that a fifth voice is to be sung, not played on the organ. Where in the music the phrase appears, and how exactly it is to be sung (and by whom, and with what words, if any) is for the performer to puzzle out. Frescobaldi acknowledges the unusual nature of this demand in the score: “Understand me, who can, as long as I can understand myself.”
Since 2015, David Sinden has served as Organist and Director of Music at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis, MO. An organist and conductor noted for his “centered leadership and solid musicianship,” David directs several vocal ensembles at St. Peter’s, regularly leading them through a wide swath of choral repertoire. His concert performances with the St. Peter’s Choir and orchestra include Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms (2017), Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (2017), the Duruflé Requiem (2019), Handel’s Messiah, Parts 1 and 2 (2015) and 3 (2018), Lou Harrison’s Easter Cantata (Midwest premiere, 2017), Haydn’s Te Deum in C and “Lord Nelson” Mass (2016), and Mondonville’s Dominus Regnavit (sung with the Kingsbury Ensemble, 2016). In 2019, David led the Choir in Aaron Copland’s unaccompanied masterwork In the Beginning. David directed the St. Peter’s Choir for their recording, Longing for Home (Regent Records, 2020), which has been met with widespread acclaim.
David holds the M.Mus. from Indiana University and B.Mus. from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. As a student at Oberlin, he was the Organist and Choirmaster for College Vespers. David undertook post-graduate study in organ improvisation with Jeffrey Smith at Indiana University and studied organ with Robert Brewer while attending the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX.