Tune in to Composer Talk, July 28, 4:30 to 7:00 PM CT

Saturday, July 28, 2012 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM CT, tune in to www.ktru.org for Composer Talk with hosts composers Chris Becker and Hsin-Jung Tsai.

We'll be playing and discussing Leoš Janáček's Glagolitic Mass and two arias from Philip Glass' opera Akhnaten. Both of pieces use what you might call a "dead" language for their texts. Old Church Slavonic for the Janacek, ancient Egyptian for the Glass (although English or the language of the opera's audience is used in Akhnaten's "Hymn to the Sun.")

If you're not familiar with Glagolitic Mass, you might not recognize its individual movements as a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, as the music is very idiosyncratic, even at times bizarre, and the language strange and unfamiliar to 21st century ears.

Here are the movements to Glagolitic Mass. We'll be playing the remastered 1964 recording by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with Karel Ancerl conducting:

I Uvod (Introduction)
II Gospodi pomiluj (Kyrie)
III Slava (Gloria)
IV Veruju (Credo
V Svet (Sanctus)
VI Agnece Bozij (Angus Dei)
VII Allergo (Organ solo)
VIII Intrada

English, or the language of the opera's audience, is used to great dramatic effect in Akhnaten's aria "Hymn to the Sun," which occurs in Akhnaten's second act and is a central moment of the opera.