Sunday service with medieval music in St. Henry's Church (Pyhtää), the 11th of November, 2018

I honestly believe that Uniarts Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy gives a lot of added value to the Finnish music scene. If you live in Finland and can understand even a bit of Finnish, I recommend to subscribe to their newsletter (http://www.uniarts.fi/en/calendar), since through the newsletter you can hear of even such performances that are not widely advertised but are definitely worth seeing/hearing/experiencing.  One of these was organized in St. Henry’s Church in Pyhtää this Sunday. Taru Hämäläinen, who is studying for her doctorate, had for her first concert of her studies collected a range of medieval liturgical music and that music was heard as part of the Sunday service. Hämäläinen had done a lot of work in collecting the music and transcribing the scores. The service was in principle following a normal Lutheran Sunday service routine including the Holy Communion, but there were some interesting exceptions. For example the priest sang a major part of his lines.

The actual liturgical music was sung by Vocal Ensemble Populus Sion, who is specialized in Gregorian vocal music. The ensemble was led by Taru Hämäläinen and the tone of their sound was ethereally beautiful and the whole performance was planned extremely successfully. The ensemble did not just stand in one place, but part of the songs were performed as if it were a dialogue – some singers on the right hand side and some in the left hand side of the altar. And during the Holy Communion the ensemble sang in the centre aisle of the church. Part of the songs were in Latin, part in old and part in modern Finnish. Also the congregation got a chance to participate in the liturgical singing, since Our Father was sung with medieval scores.

I have to say that. Henry’s Church in Pyhtää was a perfect background for the service and the medieval music. The church is built in1460 and has remained relatively unchanged since then. The church is not very big, but its acoustic is superb and no matter where Populus Sion sang, the result was enchanting.

After the service you felt refreshed and relaxed. Taru Hämäläinen had managed, together with the Pyhtää parish, to create a fine event that all attendants will surely remember for a long time.