Music for November 30, 2014 + The First Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• Sleepers, Wake! (from St. Paul) - Felix Mendelssohn 

Instrumental Music
Three settings of the chorale "Sleepers, wake!" A voice astounds us 

• Opening voluntary - Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)
• Communion voluntary - J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Closing Voluntary - Paul Manz (1919-2009)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 57 -  Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 686 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (FOUNDATION)
• Hymn 73 - The King shall come when morning dawns (ST. STEPHEN)
• Psalm 80 - tone VIIIa

Sometimes I get an idea in my head and I can't let it go. Case in point: In choosing the music for service this week's service, I was studying the lectionary readings, as is my custom. The Gospel reading from Mark 13 has this passage in it:

Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (vv 35-37)

Those words reminded me of the great Lutheran chorale, Wachet Auf! Ruft uns die Stimme, or, as our hymnal puts it, Sleepers, Wake! A voice astounds us. It is such a great hymn that composers from across the centuries have used the text and/or melody in their own works. This was the case with Felix Mendelssohn who included a stanza in his first oratorio , St. Paul. The effect of a voice calling out ("astounds us") is heightened by trumpet notes between the lines. The Good Shepherd Choir will be singing this during the offering today.

Walther

Manz

Bach

I am also using three different settings of the chorale Wachet Auf for organ music this week. The opening voluntary is a setting by the German organist Johann Gottfried Walther. Look at his birth and death years in comparison to Bach's. Not only did  his life span almost the same exact years  of Johann Sebastian Bach, but he was the famous composer's cousin.

Walther was most well known as the compiler of the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), an enormous dictionary of music and musicians. Not only was it the first dictionary of musical terms written in the German language, it was the first to contain both terms and biographical information about composers and performers up to the early 18th century. In all, the Musicalisches Lexicon defines more than 3,000 musical terms. 

Walther's setting of Wachet Auf is pretty straight forward. The melody is in the upper voice of the harmonization, and there is no pedal part in the piece. The opening line of music is used repeatedly in the lower three voices as part of the accompaniment.

The setting of Wachet Auf that I am playing for communion is one of the loveliest melodies of Bach. Originally a tenor solo from Bach's cantata 140, it was arranged for solo organ by the composer himself and included in his Six Chorales for Organ which became known as the Schubler Chorales. Here bach does what he does so well, by writing an obbligato melody that appears to have virtually no connection with the choral, and yet they fit together perfectly. Julian Mincham, on the website The Cantatas of J. S. Bach says this about the composition

It is possible that Bach saw this as a symbol of the earthly and the spiritual, seemingly apart, dissimilar and diverse and yet, by reason of the Ordained Natural Order, ultimately fitting together and perfectly complementing each other. Thus we might consider the chorale as representing matters spiritual, with the foursquare, almost stolid string melody as earthly life and environment. Each may be depicted perfectly well independently but the fundamental message is that they have been conceived, by the Almighty, as the two parts of the same reality.

The final voluntary based on this hymn is by the late composer Paul Manz, another in a long line of Lutheran organist who lived in Minnesota. 

Hymn 57 -  Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY) Yes, I know we just sang this hymn two weeks ago, but it's imagery of Christ's coming, which was pertinent to the readings about the Second coming, is again relative to today's readings on the first Sunday of Advent. Some of you complain the the tune is challenging. It's the tune that John Wesley used in his 1765 hymnal Sacred Melodies with his brother's text of "Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending." Wesley attributed the tune HELMSLEY to Thomas Olivers, but Olivers is said to have heard the tune on the street somewhere. Since the first line resembles a tune by violinist and composer Thomas Augustine Arne composed for Thomas and Sally, or The Sailor's Return in 1761, it is speculated the tune was composed by Arne. Arne is the same guy who wrote "Rule, Britannia."

Music for November 23, 2014 + The Last Sunday after Pentecost + Christ the King Sunday

Vocal Music

• Lord of Life and King of Glory – Michelangelo Grancini (1605-1669)
• Sing, My Soul – Ned Rorem (b. 1923)

Instrumental Music

• Suite Brève: II. Cantilène – Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
• Hymne D’action de Grâce “Te Deum” – Jean Langlais
• There is a Spirit that Delights To Do No Evil – Ned Rorem (b. 1923)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 450 – All hail the power of Jesus’ name (CORONATION)
• Hymn 494 – Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn R-268 – King of Kings (KING OF KINGS)
• Hymn 460 – Alleluia, sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)

This Sunday is New Year's Eve, as far as the church calendar goes. Christ the King Sunday (the last Sunday after Pentecost) ends the liturgical calendar for churches such as ours. Christ the King Sunday celebrates the all-embracing authority of Christ as King and Lord.
To honor that feast, the Good Shepherd Choir sings an anthem based on a duet by the 17th century composer Michelangelo Grancini. Originally called Dulcis Christe, it was edited by the Chicago musician Richard Proulx as a work for 2-part mixed voice choir with the English text which we sing today.

Michelangelo Grancini was an Italian organist and composer who spent his entire life in Milan. He served several churches there and eventually became choir master of the Milan Cathedral in 1630, where he remained until his death. He was so highly regarded that he received a special dispensation enabling him to hold the Cathedral post which customarily excluded married men. During his life time he published nearly 20 volumes of his works including both sacred and secular music, but only a few pieces of his are now in existence.

Ned Rorem, during his Paris days.
Photo by Man Ray, 1953

We also feature music by the American composer and author Ned Rorem. He has received a Pulitzer Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Time Magazine called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism. A native of Richmond, Indiana, he now lives in New York City.

The communion anthem is from his set of Three Hymn Anthems which he wrote for Paul Calloway, director of music at Washington National Cathedral, in 1962. The three hymns, taken from the Episcopal Hymnal, are written for a mixed choir without accompaniment. They are chiefly homophonic, sometimes strophic, and generally one note per syllable, such as one might find in a hymnal. There the similarities end, however, for Rorem adds delicious twists and turns of chromaticism and key-changes, yielding a most listenable and affirming effect in every case

The organ piece is a selection from A Quaker Reader, Rorem's first major work for organ. It was premiered by Leonard Raver at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center in 1977. Rorem was a Quaker, and though he was raised in Quaker silence, he says "I craved Catholic sound". He wrote this suite based on writings of Quakers.“There Is a Spirit That Delights to Do No Evil . . .” is from the dying words of James Naylor (1660)

Rorem spent 7 years of his life after graduate school in Paris, during the same time that our other composer, Jean Langlais, lived and worked as the organist at Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. If Rorem did indeed crave Catholic sound, then he surely must have heard Langlais play the organ, undoubtedly including improvisations or compositions of Langlais.  One wonders if there was any influence on the young composer.

• Hymn 450 – All hail the power of Jesus’ name (CORONATION) - Who doesn't know this thrilling hymn to Jesus? Written  by Edward Perronet, a friend and advisor of John and Charles Wesley, this hymn has gone through many alterations since it first appeared in 1780. It has also been sung to several tunes, including DIADEM and MILES LANE, in addition to the more familiar CORONATION.
• Hymn 494 – Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA) Speaking of Coronation, we continue the theme of Christ the King with another favorite hymn. Matthew Bridges wrote the hymn to illustrate the text, "And on his head were many crowns" (Revelation 19:12).
• Hymn R-268 – King of Kings (KING OF KINGS) Naomi Batya Ginsberg wrote "King of Kings" at the age of 13 with her friend Sophie Conty using a Hebrew melody as the tune. She has gone on to make a career out of songwriting and has written hundreds of songs for independent films, cable TV, ads and video games. The song now appears in 12 major hymnals.
• Hymn 460 – Alleluia, sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL) And yet another barn-burner favorite of the church universal. One usually does not expect an insurance agent to write hymns, but William C. Dix wrote this text as a new Communion hymn for the Church of England. William Dix also wrote "As with gladness men of old," "What child is this?" and 46 other hymns.

Music for November 16, 2014 + The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Almighty God, Which Hast Me Brought – Thomas Ford (1580-1648)

Instrumental Music

• Highland Cathedral– James D. Weatherald
• Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ – Michael Helman (20th C.)
• Praise to the Lord – Anna Laura Page (b. 1943)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• S-204 - Glory be to God on High - Old Scottish Chant
• Hymn 680 - O God, our help in ages past (ST. ANNE)
• Hymn 551 - Rise up, ye saints of God (FESTAL SONG)
• Hymn R-152 - I want to walk as a child of the light (HOUSTON)
• Hymn R-172 - In my life, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn 671 - Amazing grace! How sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 561 - Stand up, stand up for Jesus (MORNING LIGHT)

Stained Glass image of Samuel Seabury

This Sunday is “Kirking of the Tartans” Sunday at Good Shepherd. It’s not found on any liturgical calendar. We do it every year around Samuel Seabury day, the first American Anglican bishop who was consecrated by the Scottish Bishops of the Anglican church during the Revolutionary War. (England was a bit perturbed with Americans, so they would have none of that!) Here is a link to my post from last year which explains the origins of the Kirkin O’ the Tartans. As usual, we’ll have bagpipes, hear Highland Cathedral, and sing “Amazing Grace.” (Not because it’s Scottish, but because it can be played by the pipes!)

The opening voluntary is a rousing handbell setting of a Jamaican tune which is best known around the world as the hymn “Let us talents and tongues employ.” Doreen Potter adapted the Jamaican melody as a hymn-tune for Fred Kaan’s text in 1975, and to date it is in 20 hymnals. You’ll recognize a Caribbean beat in the syncopation, even without steel drums! The arranger of the bell piece is Michael Helman, Director of Music and Organist at Faith Presbyterian Church in Cape Coral, an active composer of handbell, organ, and choral music with well over a hundred pieces in print.

Let us talents and tongues employ,
reaching out with a shout of joy:
bread is broken, the wine is poured,
Christ is spoken and seen and heard.
Jesus lives again; earth can breathe again.
Pass the Word around: loaves abound!

The anthem, Almighty God, who hast me brought, was written by Thomas Ford with a text by William Leighton. Now well-known as a church anthem, this piece was originally published in 1614 as a lute-song in a volume called The teares or lamentacions of a sorrowfull soule. Happy stuff, to be sure.

Ford was an English composer, lutenist, viol player and poet. He was attached to the court of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of James I, who died in 1612

The communion handbell voluntary is a setting of the familiar hymn Praise to the Lord, by Anna Laura Page. Page is a composer, clinician and organist who has taught organ at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. For three years she served as director of the Austin Peay Community Children's Chorus in Clarksville, Tennessee before moving to Sherman, Texas, where she lives with her husband, Dr. Oscar C. Page, President of Austin College.

Hymn Notes:
O God, our help in ages past (ST. ANNE) Considered one of the finest paraphrases written by Isaac Watts, O God, Our Help in Ages Past expresses a strong note of assurance, promise, and hope in the LORD as recorded in the first part of Psalm 90, even though the entire psalm has a recurring theme of lament. Watts wrote the paraphrase in nine stanzas around 1714. Our hymnal includes the most well-known stanzas. The first line, originally "Our God, our help … ," was changed to "O God, our help…" by John Wesley in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns. (1738). It has great stature in the British Commonwealth and virtually serves as a second national anthem.

Rise up, ye saints of God (FESTAL SONG) William Pierson Merrill was an American Presbyterian clergyman, who served in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. Considered an outstanding preacher, he was also an author and a hymn writer. When an editor told Dr. Merrill that there was a need for more hymns on Christian brotherhood, he responded by writing Rise Up, O Men of God, a hymn that emphasizes human priorities and responsibilities. This hymn began to be criticized because it spoke only of men of God and not women, so to make it more inclusive, the term “Men” became “Saints.”

I want to walk as a child of the light (HOUSTON) I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light  was written one sweltering hot summer by Kathleen Thomerson, an Episcopalian organist, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, the previous fall. That summer, her mother came from Houston, Texas, to visit. Because an airline strike cancelled her mother’s travel plans and a heat wave was making St. Louis unbearable, Thomerson decided to drive her mother back to Houston. This hymn came to her as she anticipated visiting her “brothers and sisters in Christ at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston.”  Hence, the tune name is HOUSTON.

In my life, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED) Singer-songwriter and producer Bob Kilpatrick tells this story about writing this standard contemporary chorus. "One evening at my mother-in-law's house I got the idea of writing a private prayer song for (wife) Cindy and me to sing before we would go on stage. While the rest of the family was in the family room I sat alone in the living room with my guitar and Bible and the song 'In My Life Lord Be Glorified' began to come. I had composed all of the melody and most of the counterpoint when Cindy came in. I told her about what I was writing and that it would be just for the two of us. It was Cindy that strongly suggested to me that I sing it publicly. I think she knew from the start that other people would want to sing it, too.”

Stand up, stand up for Jesus (MORNING LIGHT) The Reverend Dudley A. Tyng was a dynamic Episcopal priest known for his preaching. On, March 30, 1858, Tyng preached a sermon on Exodus 10:11, “Go now ye that are men and serve the Lord”, at a YMCA noon mass meeting to 5,000 men, with more than 1,000 of those men responded to the call. Just over a week later, Tyng lay dying as a result of a tragic accident. His final statement, whispered to friends and family, was “Let us all stand up for Jesus.”

The Sunday following Tyng's death, Presbyterian Pastor George Duffield preached a sermon as a tribute to the final words of his friend Tyng. He concluded his sermon with a six-stanza poem. The poem Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, has since become one of the most recognized hymns in all English-speaking Christendom.

Music for November 9, 2014 + The 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Keep Your Lamps – Spiritual, arr. André J. Thomas
• Missa Brevis No. X in C – Healey Willan

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on the hymn tune “Bevan” – Healey Willan
• (Jesus, My Great High Priest)
• Postlude in D Major – Healey Willan
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence -  improvisation 

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 690 - Guide me, O thou great Jehovah (CWM RHONDDA)
• Hymn 57 - Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 436 - Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO)
• Psalm 70 – Tone VIIIg
• Alleuia     Tone VIIIg

To me, there is no purer form of music making than unaccompanied singing. Music that is made
without benefit of any musical instrument is the purest expression of musical art. Don’t get me wrong, I love the piano and the organ, and the cello is one of my favorite instruments, but given a choice between hearing a choir sing with accompaniment or without, and I will take the unaccompanied choir every time. And this Sunday, we feature the Good Shepherd choir in two varied expressions of a capella singing.

André Thomas

The anthem is a setting of the African-American Spiritual Keep Your Lamps by André J. Thomas, the Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Choral Music Education at The Florida State University. He has made it his mission to educate the public about spirituals, arranging the sorts of spirituals and gospel music he had heard as a child. His first such arrangement was Keep Your Lamps, a spiritual based on today’s Gospel reading. Except for a conga drum beat, it is sung completely unaccompanied.

Healey Willan

The service music (Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) is the Missa Brevis No. X by Canadian composer Healey Willan. Willan was well versed in plainsong and became an authority on plainchant in the vernacular (ie, English rather than Latin). He also loved the sound of choral music of the Renaissance period (roughly 1400-1600). A typical choral piece has four, five, or six voice parts of nearly equal melodic interest. Imitation among the voices is common: each presents the same melodic idea in turn, as in a round. This is music with a gentle flow rather than a sharply defined beat, because each melodic line has great rhythmic independence: when one singer is at the beginning of his or her melodic phrase, the others may already be in the middle of theirs.

Inside the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Toronto

The Missa Brevis No. X was written for the dedication of Willan's church, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto, in 1948. It reflects the needs of the church’s Anglo-catholic liturgy and exploits its suggestions of a more mystical approach. Willan’s deep interest in plainsong and polyphonic music is clearly evident in this short mass. The melismatic vocal line, rhythmic freedom based on verbal accentuation, and a strong preoccupation with linear shape rather than vertical congruence combine to form a thoroughly personal idiom. It is this that separates this music from his organ and choral music based on hymns and makes it possibly his most important.

Willan's work as a practical, publishing church musician gave rise to a variety of lesser pieces, including anthems and organ works based on hymn-tunes, collections for junior choirs, and many carols and carol arrangements. Our organ voluntaries are indicative of those kinds of pieces. The opening voluntary is based on a Lutheran chorale, and the closing voluntary is from an anthology of organ music for the church organist.

Hymn 690 Guide me, O thou great Jehovah (CWM RHONDDA) At the urging of a Welsh evangelist, under whom he was converted, William Williams (and not the one in our congregation) began writing hymns as a Welsh Calvinist-Methodist minister. The tune is another one of those great, rollicking Welsh tunes that practically sing themselves!
Hymn 57  Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY) Charles Wesley used the first line but completely recast the rest of a crude hymn by John Cennick six years after Cennick's death. The ideas and language are borrowed from the book of Revelation, and the whole is based on Rev. 1:7, "Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindred of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen." The language is apocalyptic and should be interpreted symbolically, not literally.
Hymn 324 Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY) This hymn comes from the opening of the Eucharist in one of the oldest liturgies of the Christian Church, traditionally ascribed to and named after St. James, the brother of Jesus. Its first written form exists in the mid fourth century in bot Greek and Syriac, and is still sung in Jerusalem on the Sunday after Christmas.
Hymn 436 Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO) This hymn by Georg Weissel (1590-1635) is probably the most famous paraphrase of Psalm 24 (Lift up your heads, Oh ye gates), and reveals a spirit of praise and hope unexpected from the depths of the dreadful years of the Thirty Years' War. Its theme is the preparation for the Messiah's coming, and goes well with these pre-Advent readings today.