‘First Sunday Music’
EDITOR’S NOTE: Saint Philip’s Director of Music, Justin Appel, offers details about how music projects are funded.
Since we just enjoyed a thorough presentation of Saint Philip’s budget at the Annual Meeting, I thought it might be helpful to provide some specific information about how special music projects are funded.
First of all, the operating budget covers a range of expenses: salaries and benefits, lay clerk fees, purchase of choral and instrumental scores, tuning the organ, choir robe replacement (if needed), youth chorister honoraria, and so on. Of these expenses, the largest involve salaries and musician fees to ensure Saint Philip’s has musical direction, excellent organ playing, and solid vocal leadership.
Beyond these week-in, week-out expenses, a huge part of the programming involves larger presentations of the choral repertoire in the context of Eucharistic (morning) services once per month, what is called “First Sunday Music.” This sequence of First Sundays has become an integral part of the yearly liturgical and musical rhythms at Saint Philip’s, and something that the parish has become known for in the local community. Saint Philip’s regularly hires instrumentalists who also play in the Tucson Symphony and for True Concord, so there is a sense of working in a small community where musicians know each other. Saint Philip’s contractor, Homero Cerón, recently retired from the TSO, works hard with me to find the best players for the parish’s projects, and also ensures that players’ fees are fair.
Each year, Saint Philip’s plans the First Sunday Music sequence with a variety of events: some require large forces (such as the recent Magnificat by J. S. Bach), others involve smaller clusters of instruments (such as the recent Advent II service with anthems by James MacMillan), still others involve organ accompaniment (October’s Anthems with Organ), and some utilize a cappella works, like Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G Minor next month. Obviously, the cost of these events ranges from high (where 20 instruments are required) to minimal (where no instruments are involved). Saint Philip’s plans a mixture of events throughout the year in order to provide quality, variety, liturgical appropriateness, tradition, and also affordability. The scale of these projects, with an estimation of their cost, is considered when making programming choices.
Furthermore, it’s important to understand that First Sunday Music is not an operating budget category. It is supported by donations through restricted accounts. This means that music-lovers in and beyond Saint Philip’s donate to the parish’s music programs, and those donations directly support First Sunday Music. On occasion, donors will work together with me to support a specific project. Saint Philip’s recent performance of Bach’s Magnificat on February 5, for instance, was funded by three generous donors from the choir who wanted to memorialize several previous choir members who passed away over recent years. The Kautz Memorial Fund also generously contributes a regular gift each year towards a First Sunday Music project—this past fall it sponsored the Schubert Mass in G on All Saints’ Sunday.
So, the full First Sunday Music sequence requires significant fund raising, and the Music Commission has come to take an active role in supporting this cycle. The Music Commission is a group of lay people who help plan and execute concerts and special projects during the year, and they steward funds that have been raised over time through music-specific donations (Friends of Music). This support helps fill the gap between ongoing fund raising and regular expenses that relate to First Sunday Music and larger concert events.
So how do you support First Sunday Music projects? By donating to Saint Philip’s and designating “First Sunday Music” specifically, or more generally by designating “Friends of Music”—the fund-raising arm of the music department. This will ensure that the Music Commission tracks your donation and accounts for it in its annual plans. All of this means that the cycle of fund raising and event planning follows a yearly rhythm that is reasonably independent of operating budget developments.
I suppose the last thing to say is that First Sunday Music has come to hold an important place in the parish and in the local community. These musical projects bring visitors to the church on First Sundays, and the repeated hiring of local musicians creates a situation of felicitous cultural cross-fertilization. Also, the ebb and flow of larger and smaller projects with “normal” Sunday music is a pattern that ensures parish choristers stay “on their toes,” have interesting and substantial work to do, and that the parish’s worship remains lively yet traditional. It is a system that predates my arrival at Saint Philip’s, and I’ve come to respect it over the years.
In a future post, I hope to speak about another large donation-based project: the UK Residency and CYFM Pilgrimage.
—Justin Appel