The Villager Voice
In the six weeks spanning the last week of January to the first week of March, the Froggatt family has a surfeit of birthdays. And as a musician, I try to stay mindful of the birthdays of classical composers, famous and otherwise, and send family greetings appropriate to the day. My first-born niece, for example, shares a birthday with George Frideric Handel. (I joked with my sister, her mother, that we should sing “For Unto Us a Child is Born,” but she didn’t find that very amusing.) Her sister, the next born, has Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as her co-celebrant. My older daughter was born the same date as German organist and composer Johann Christian Kittle, a student of JS Bach. (Also the lesser known Pee Wee King, whose “Tennessee Waltz” you might recognize.) My younger daughter boasts of two notable composers, Bohemian/Czech musician Bedrich Smetana, whose Moldau is a beloved part of his larger “Ma Vlast,” and 20th century composer Kurt Weill, who wrote “The Threepenny Opera.” And her husband was born the same date as Samuel Wesley, sometimes called “the English Mozart” and writer of two hymns you might know, “The Church’s One Foundation” and “O Church of God, United,” which I still think ought to be our own church’s official anthem.
What brings these to mind is next Sunday’s (March 8) annual United Church Un-birthday Party, the one day a year we celebrate everyone’s birthday no matter when you were born. I have occasionally wondered if it is permissible to attend the Un-birthday party if it falls on your actual birthday, but a quick glance at our March birthdays in the latest Uniter tells me none of you is so disqualified this year. (Although by this metric CPE Bach, Born March 8 1714 would not be invited…) It too comes with a musical soundtrack, as we have our own “Un-birthday Song” we sing to one another that day – to the tune of Franz Lehar’s (April 30) “The Merry Widow’s Waltz.” I know that some of a certain age become allergic to birthday celebrations, so the Un-birthday Party is just the tonic! Hope to see you there.
Links to this Sunday’s bulletin and service are here: