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Corelli Christmas Cantata
Click here to download a flyer for this event. At a time when the violin was replacing the viola, the Italian violinist-composer Arcangelo Corelli was in great demand. He had a great influence over the following generation of composers, especially Handel who worked with him for a short time in Rome in 1707. Corelli spent most of his life in Rome, where he served the exiled Catholic Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinal Pamphili and the young Cardinal Ottoboni, in whose palace he lived for a number of years. He died a wealthy man and was buried in the Pantheon, a sign of the respect in which he was held. Duruflé Requiem
This presentation featured the First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir and soloists with a professional orchestra. The Requiem was conducted by Mark Andrew Shaull and was part of our 10:25 am worship service. Click here to download a flyer for this event. Concert for World Peace
Music for your quiet times and inner peace. The concert was performed by the Inner Peace Orchestra and was created and directed by Eddie Gale, San Jose's Ambassador of Jazz who uses his musical talents to help charities raise funds and to spread the word about jazz, especially to young people. This was an event for the entire community and an FUMC fundraiser. Footsteps of the Passion
This unique worship journey from Palm to Passion featured A Service of Darkness by Dale Wood. Footsteps of the Passion was presented at our 10:25am worship service on Sunday, April 1, 2007. Click here to download a flyer for this event. Mozart Requiem in D Minor
This presentation featured the First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir and soloists with a professional orchestra and the Los Altos High School Concert Choir. The Requiem was conducted by Mark Andrew Shaull. This performance was part of our 10:25 am worship service. Click here to download a flyer for this event. 2006 Advent Procession With Carols Service (Audio)Sunday, December 3, 2006 marked the ten year anniversary of our Advent Procession with Carols Service. As in past years, the Chancel Choir led a special evening service of lessons, anthems and carols designed to usher us into the Advent season of meditation and preparation.
Note: Large File Size: 49.1mb MP3 Save it to your iPod! Show rest of '2006 Advent Procession With Carols Service (Audio)'... The Winter Rose
Click here for photos from this performance. If you enjoy listening to, or performing great music, we invite you to come to one of our worship services. A New Creation by René Clausen
In A New Creation, Clausen continues in the tradition of a long line of composers, including J.S. Bach, in his writing of a cantata, literally “to sing,” a work intended for worship presentation and concert performance and modeled on operatic forms. It employs sections of recitative and aria, chorus, and orchestra. Clausen’s cantata uses both English and Latin texts taken from the Bible, the Roman Catholic Mass, and a hymn by George Herbert. In this work, sometimes reminiscent harmonically of Aaron Copland and stylistically of Gian-Carlo Menotti, the accompaniment always reflects the spirit of the text. These tender and passionate texts tenderly and passionately reflect spiritual love and the promise of life everlasting. Missa Brevis in F Major
Click here for photos from this performance. If you enjoy listening to, or performing great music, we invite you to come to one of our worship services. Soloists:
Hallelujah Chorus - Easter 2006Listen to the 2006 Easter Sunday performance of the Hallelujah Chorus. Our Easter Sunday tradition is for anyone who is interested to join with the Chancel Choir on the Chancel steps to sing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. If you enjoy listening to, or performing great music, we invite you to come to one of our worship services.
Dubois' The Seven Last Words of Christ
Click here for photos from this performance. If you enjoy listening to, or performing great music, we invite you to come to one of our worship services. Singing of the Passion Text By the mid-17th century, the Reformation had led to a distinctly German oratorio Passion set in the vernacular, employing recitatives, arias, choruses, and instrumental movements. These oratorio Passions ultimately reached their pinnacle in the great St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. Heinrich Schütz, considered the greatest Lutheran composer prior to Bach, composed his Seven Last Words in the early 17th century. In order to include all seven sayings Christ spoke during the crucifixion, Schütz created a composite text from all four Gospels. Hadyn composed an instrumental work on the Seven Last Words in 1787 and later added choral parts, but no composer is known to have created a major choral setting of this unique version of the Passion story until Théodore Dubois, over two centuries after Schütz. Bach’s Birthday Musical Celebration
Fiume di Musica presented the complete Bach Brandenburg Concerto #4 for two flutes and violin solos, with harpsichord. The choir and Fiume presented a portion of Bach’s Cantata #79. Even the congregation joined in the festivities by singing hymns harmonized by the master himself. There was also a special Bach focus Postludium directly after the worship service. Jeff Workman played two Bach organ selections, and was joined by members of Fiume di Musica for a Bach flute and harpsichord sonata and a Bach harpsichord trio. We used a single-rank north European style harpsichord for the presentations. The following were presented during the Postludium:
Click here for photos from this performance. If you enjoy listening to, or performing great music, we invite you to come to one of our worship services. Christmas Oratorio
On Sunday, December 21, 2003 the FUMC Chancel Choir, Soloists and Orchestra presented the Christmas Oratorio by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. This beautiful work will be the focal point of our worship celebration as we look toward the promise of Christmas Joy. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), French composer, pianist, and organist, born in Paris, made his debut as a pianist at the age of ten and later studied organ and harmony at the Paris Conservatoire. Saint-Saëns’ first position was a church organist at the Parisian Church of Saint-Merry. Arcangelo Corelli's Christmas Cantata
At a time when the violin was replacing the viola, the Italian violinist-composer Arcangelo Corelli was in great demand. He had a great influence over the following generation of composers, especially Handel who worked with him for a short time in Rome in 1707. Corelli spent most of his life in Rome, where he served the exiled Catholic Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinal Pamphili and the young Cardinal Ottoboni, in whose palace he lived for a number of years. He died a wealthy man and was buried in the Pantheon, a sign of the respect in which he was held. Bach Advent Cantata
Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (“Now come, saviour of the gentiles”), one of the best known of all J.S. Bach’s cantatas, was composed at the end of 1714 and first performed in the Weimar court chapel on Advent Sunday, 2 December 1714. The libretto is by Erdmann Neumeister, pastor in Hamburg and the main architect of the reform cantata incorporating simple recitative and da capo arias characteristic of Italian opera. The text was published three years later in Neumeister’s Fünffache Kirchen-Andachten (Leipzig, 1717). The cantata is therefore one of Bach’s earliest expositions in the new cantata form, and the first one he is known to have composed to a libretto by Neumeister. |
On Sunday, December 23, 2007, the Chancel Choir, Soloists and Fiume de Musica presented Arcangelo Corelli's Christmas Cantata - a choral adaptation of the famous Christmas concerto by Richard Shephard during our 10:25am worship service.
On Sunday, November 4, 2007 we presented the Duruflé Requiem as part of our All Saints Day Service.
We hosted a Concert for World Peace on Saturday, November 17, 2007.
On Palm Sunday 2007 our 
On the thrid Sunday in Advent, December 17, 2006, the Chancel Choir under the direction of Mark Shaull presented The Winter Rose during the 10:25am worship service.
As part of our 10:25am, November 5, 2006 All Saints Day Worship Service of Remembrance and Reflection, the FUMC Chancel Choir, Soloists and orchestra presented A New Creation by composer René Clausen. This moving work served as the center piece as we remember our loved ones and members of our church family who have died. 
On March 26, 2006, the Chancel Choir, Soloists and Orchestra presented The Seven Last Words of Christ by Théodore Dubois during Sunday worship. In addition to this musical setting of the passion text, this unique worship experience featured famous depictions of the passion of Christ by the master of visual art forms through the ages.
On Sunday, March 19, 2006 we held a musical celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 321st birthday. Bach was born on March 21, 1685, as the eighth child of Johann Ambrosius and Maria Elisabetha Bach. As one of the best known and loved composers of church and other music for organ, orchestra and choir, J.S. Bach was honored by our presentation of several of his works at the 10:25 a.m. service and afterward at a Bach Postludium.
There were shepherds at night in that same country, abiding in the fields, and silently keeping their watch by night over the
In 1858 he rose to the position of organist at the prestigious Church of the Madeleine where he remained for twenty years. In later life, he brought French music an international reputation touring as pianist and organist at the start of the twentieth century. He played in the United States twice, with an honored presence at the Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1916. Throughout his compositional life, Saint-Saëns provided elegant examples of music in all its forms: opera (Samson and Delilah); symphonies (Symphony No. 3, The “Organ” Symphony); concertos (both piano and violin); oratorio (Oratorio de Noël), and chamber works. He himself wrote, “The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music.”
On Sunday, December 18th, 2005 the Chancel Choir, Soloists and Fiume de Musica presented Arcangelo Corelli's Christmas Cantata - a choral adaptation of the famous Christmas concerto by Richard Shephard during our 10:25 am worship service.
On Sunday, December 4, 2005 the Chancel Choir, Soloists and Orchestra presented Johann Sebastian Bach's Advent Cantata - BWV 61 during our 10:25 am worship service 
The First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto, California - A Welcoming Church spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to the people of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties since 1894. We're conveniently located in downtown Palo Alto near the Stanford University campus. Whether you're in the Silicon Valley or on the Peninsula, we want to be your Church home.
We invite you and your family to worship with us any Sunday morning.
Our members come from all over the San Francisco bay area including Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame, Campbell, Castro Valley, Cupertino, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Fremont, Gilroy, Half Moon Bay, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Newark, Pacifica, Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Carlos, San Francisco, San Mateo, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Stanford, Sunnyvale and Walnut Creek.
Check out our Visitors Information section for more information about the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto
©2000-2008 First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto
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Join us for our regular worship service at 10:30 am or our informal Communion service at 8:30 am.
Readings for Sunday, July 6, 2008: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67, Psalm 45:10-17, Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Join us for lots of fellowship, food and fun at our summer Picnics in the Park!
View the Committee on Lay Leadership's presentation on how they have reconfigured some of our church committees to help us be more effective.
Meet our new 2008/2009 church leaders and committee members
 to June 29th sermon. Save it to your iPod.
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to June 22nd sermon. Save it to your iPod. |