Music for March 1, 2015 + The Second Sunday of Lent

Vocal Music

• Lord, for thy Tender Mercy's Sake – Richard Farrant (c.1530-1580) or John Hilton (1565-1708?)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Leoni” - Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• A Lenten Meditation – Robert Powell (b. 1932)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception “NORRIS” which is from Lift Every Voice and Sing.)

• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 147 - Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON)
• Hymn - I can hear my Savior calling (NORRIS)
• Hymn 675 - Take up your cross, the Savior said (BOURBON)

The Choir is singing an anthem from one of my favorite eras and style of choral music: The 16th century Tudor anthem. The word “Tudor” is loosely used to denote the 100 years from the early 1500s to the 1600s, a period which some call the Golden Age of English church music. This genre includes simple four-part homophonic anthems to the more elaborate polyphony of six-, seven- or eight-part motets. Lord, For Thy Tender Mercy's Sake is one of two short anthems by either Richard Farrant or John Hilton, both English composers of sacred music. Farrant was organist at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the middle of the sixteenth century, while Hilton was known as a counter-tenor and organist, most notably at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the beginning, the music is in a simple, a capella, hymn-like style which befits the reflective and restful mood of the text, but at the words "that we may walk in a perfect heart" the choir has a chance to play around with the rhythms of the words and sing much more independently of each other, finally ending with a contrapuntal "amen."   The words are from Christian Prayers and Holy Meditations, by Henry Bull (1566).

Robert Powell at the console of the
organ at Christ Church, Greenville, SC

The Communion voluntary is a handbell piece by Robert Powell, retired music director of Christ Episcopal Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Born in Benoit, Mississippi, Powell attended Louisiana State University. After graduating from LSU, with a degree in organ and composition, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Tokyo, where he conducted a choir of American soldiers and Japanese women; their first big program was Handel's Messiah. After his military service, he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City. While there, he  was assistant organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, where Alec Wyton, his mentor, was organist and choirmaster. His first published work was in 1959, and since that time, he has published over 400 works for choir, organ, handbells, and other instruments, as well as his Service of Holy Communion, which is in our hymnal.

This Week's Hymns

• The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI) Forshadowing the reading from the Old Testament, we open our service with this hymn, which, according to Cyberhymnal.com, is based on The Yigdal of Daniel ben Judah, a Jewish judge in Rome, circa 1400, paraphrased by Thomas Olivers, circa 1765; first appeared in The Gospel Magazine, April 1775. The lyrics are based on the 13 creeds of Moses Maimonides (circa 1130-1204).  Indeed, Cyberhymnal prints twelve verses, which have been shortened to five in our hymnal.  
• Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON) We have a few Early American hymn tunes in our hymnal.  This tune, BOURBON, appeared in Columbian Harmony (1825) and was therein attributed to Freeman Lewis (1780-1859).  The melody is actually in a pentatonic key, which means its scale has five notes.  It also means you could play it on the piano on all black keys.  The tune name comes from Bourbon Country, Kentucky, not from the drink!
• I can hear my Savior calling (NORRIS) - This old gospel hymn is from Lift Every Voice and Sing II (LEVAS), a hymnal published for African-American congregations in the Episcopal Church. The text was written in 1890 by E.W.Blandy, with music composed for it by John S. Norris. LEVAS leaves out the fermatas (the held-out notes) on the last line, ("with him        , with him       ...), so I am going to follow good performance practice and include them as we sing this hymn. This hymn calls us to obey the call of Jesus, and "take up my cross."
• Take up your cross, the Savior said (BOURBON)  Charles W. Everest, an Episcopal priest , was but nineteen when he published Visions of Death, and Other Poems; from this work this popular hymn is taken. This hymn is perfect as a response to today's Gospel, as it describes the fully committed Christian life as denying self, facing all dangers, and following Christ to the uttermost. And, yes, this is the same tune as we sang earlier in the service!

Music for February 22, 2015 + The First Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• Lead Me, Lord – Samuel S. Wesley (1810-1876)

Instrumental Music

• Prélude au Kyrie – Jean Langlais (1907-1991)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 150 Forty days and forty nights (AUS DER TIEFE RUFE ICH)
• Hymn 693 Just as I am, without one plea (WOODWORTH)
• Hymn 142 Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN)
• Hymn 143, st. 5 O Father, Son, and Spirit blest (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Psalm 25:1-9 TONE II

Lead Me, Lord, is actually a part of a longer anthem by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Praise the Lord, O My Soul, written in 1861. Wesley was the grandson of hymn-writer Charles Wesley, and the son of Samuel Wesley, another English musician, but it was Samuel Sebastian (named after Johann Sebastian Bach) that became the famous as one of his country's leading organists and choirmasters. He composed almost exclusively for the Church of England, writing some exquisite music, including the hymn-tune AURELIA (The Church's One Foundation). 

Jean Langlais. You can tell
he's French. Look at that beret!

At communion we hear the opening movement from a collection of organ music by French organist Jean Langlais, written as a homage to the 17th century Italian organist, Girolamo Frescobaldi. It features the melody of the Kyrie from the Gregorian Mass IV - Cunctipotens Genitor Deus  played on a flute stop in the pedal, but only after a lengthy, improvisatory section in the manuals that demonstrates Langlais's ideal of mysticism. The slow tempo and long sustained chromatic chords draw the listener into a state of contemplation through the suspension of time. 

Langlais, like a number of organists, was blind, but he easily managed the manifold aspects of the organ without his sight.  As usually happens with the blind, his other sense made up for what he lacked.  By the sheer sound of a student’s playing, he could tell what fingering he was using.  In one famous story, Langlais was giving a lesson and told the student to use the third finger on a particular note.  The student ignored him, figuring that he’d never know.  “You are so stupid," Langlais exclaimed after failing to get through to him.  “The third finger!  Use the third finger!”   

As is my custom during Lent, I omit playing a festive closing voluntary, opting instead to let the Lenten worshiper leave the church in contemplative silence.

• Forty days and forty nights (AUS DER TIEFE RUFE ICH) - George Smyttan based this hymn on the Gospel reading for today, Mark 1:12-13, dealing with Christ's temptation in the desert, but seemingly it is concerned chiefly with the physical setting rather than the inner spiritual struggles which are more clearly delineated in the other Gospels. It is a great hymn for the first Sunday in Lent (but not of Lent! Sundays don't count!)
• Just as I am, without one plea (WOODWORTH) - "Every head bowed, and every eye closed!" If you ever went to a revival meeting in the South (or even just a regular service in the Southern Baptist Church), you've sung this hymn while the minister pleaded for the wayward sinner to come to the altar and give their life to Christ. The hymn was written by Charlotte Elliott, an invalid daughter of a minister, in 1836, and has since be included in almost every hymnal in the English speaking world, and translated in almost every major lanquage.
• Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN) - As a result of her life-long interest in religious education, Claudia Hernaman wrote 150 hymns for children. This one attempts to explain the deeper meaning of the forty days of Lent - fasting, praying, tempatations, and penitence which point to the joys of Easter which follow the penitential season.
• O Father, Son, and Spirit blest (ERHALT UNS, HERR) - Our presentation hymn is the last stanza of the Lenten hymn The glory of these forty days. Since the last stanza is doxological in nature (praising God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), it is a good choice for this spot in the service. The tune is the same tune that was used as the presentation hymn for the Sundays after Epiphany, though in its original rhythmic form. The Lenten version of the tune is a harmonization by J. S. Bach.

Music For February 15, 2015 + The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• A Little Jazz Mass – Bob Chilcott (b. 1955)
• Be Thou My Vision – Bob Chilcott
• Swing Low, Sweet Chariot – arr. Harry T. Burleigh (Richard Murray, baritone)

Instrumental Music

• Lotus – Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), arr. Alec Wyton (1921-2007)
• Come Sunday – Duke Ellington (1899-1974), arr. Craig Curry (21st c.)
• Processional – William Mathias (1934-1992)

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

• Hymn R201 - Be still, for the Spirit of the Lord (BE STILL)
• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn R247 - Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE, JESUS, SHINE)

"Every Man Prays In His Own Language" - Duke Ellington

It has been said that jazz is truly the most American of musical idioms. What originated in African American communities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries has spread throughout the world and over the years, evolving into a musical style that is as varied and hard to define as the Christian religion. This Sunday we will pray in the language of jazz, using a mass setting by an Englishman in the jazz idiom, and a couple of works by bona fide jazz musicians.

A Little Jazz Mass

First, let's talk about the jazz mass. The mass and the offertory anthem were written by Bob Chilcott, a British choral composer, conductor, and singer, based in Oxford, England. He started his music career as a boy, singing in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, then continuing as a university student.  In 1985 he joined the King's Singers, singing tenor for 12 years. He has been a composer since 1997.

Chilcott has always loved jazz. At the beginning of his composing career, he worked as an arranger for the BBC Radio Orchestra and, while a member of the King's Singers, performed with artists such as George Shearing, Richard Rodney Bennett, John Dankworth, Art Farmer and the WDR Big Band. These experiences and influences have had a major impact on the music he composes.

Chilcott's jazz influences truly come to the fore in A Little Jazz Mass: The Kyrie has real groove, the Gloria echos a 1960s Star Trek soundtrack, the Sanctus and Benedictus utilize "improvised" lines in the soprano parts, and the Agnus Dei draws inspiration from the Blues. The voices are underpinned by a characterful piano accompaniment which gives the flavor of an authentic improvising jazz pianist. (Of which Jackson is not!)

This highly effective setting of the Latin Missa brevis is one of Chilcott's most celebrated and popular choral works to date, and has received countless performances (both on the concert platform and as part of the sung liturgy in church services) across the world, perhaps most notably at St Paul's Cathedral, London.

A Little Jazz Mass was written for the massed choirs of the 2004 Crescent City Choral Festival, and received its premiere in St Louis Cathedral, New Orleans in June of that year.

Lotus and Come Sunday

Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was an originator of Big Band Jazz in the 1930s. Born in Washington, D.C., he began taking piano lessons at 7, and started his own band in his 20s. He hit the top during the Forties with songs such as "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing," "Sophisticated Lady," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Solitude," and "Satin Doll."

Billy Strayhorn was a classically trained musician who joined the Duke Ellington organization in 1939. He'd written "Take the A Train" for Duke, who found it so thoroughly "Dukish" that he hired "Strays" on the spot. He was able to ease Ellington's burden as a composer and contribute many ideas, especially in harmony. The Strayhorn collaboration launched a productive recording period, regarded by many scholars to be the most significant and creative phase of Ellington's career. Strayhorn's training in long-form music became central to the orchestra. Together, the two composers teamed to write longer, more complex suites such as “Black, Brown and Beige,” an unprecedented 43-minute jazz work, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1943.

When Strayhorn  died of esophageal cancer in 1967, a devastated Ellington went into the studio to record a memorial album, And His  Mother Called Him Bill. When the session was over, Ellington went back to the piano. As he sat there alone, he began to play "Lotus Blossom," a tune that Strayhorn wrote in the 1940s. The recording equipment was still on as he played. Two of his band members quietly unpacked their instruments and sat in with Ellington on the second chorus. This became the last track on the album.

The inspiration for the song may have come from a place important to Strayhorn long before he wrote the song. Perhaps as an escape from his alcoholic father, Strayhorn spent a great deal of time in his grandmother's garden, which may have inspired "Lotus Blossom. Fittingly, when Ellington died in 1974, Alec Wyton reworked the song for the organ and he played it at Ellington's funeral at St. John the Divine in New York. It is that version that will open our service.

In the last decade of his life, Duke Ellington turned his attention to sacred music. In October 1962, the Reverend John S. Yaryan approached Ellington about performing at the new Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The cathedral was due to open in three to four years and all sorts of cultural events were to occur there in its first year. Ellington got to work, writing the music for the first concert, which premiered on September 16, 1965. One of those numbers was the song, "Come Sunday," which Jackson will play during communion.

The hymns for this Sunday reflect the readings for the last Sunday after the Epiphany.

Be still, for the Spirit of the Lord (BE STILL) This contemporary hymn, by the English composer/piano teacher David J. Evans, has made its way into nine hymnals since its publication in 1986. I chose it for this Sunday because its second stanza describes what the Apostles must have felt at the Transfiguration. (Mark 9:2-10)

Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON) Another hymn about the glory of Christ, written by the great hymn writer Charles Wesley. This text was published in Hymns and Sacred Poems, compiled in 1740 by Wesley and his brother John. James Montgomery called it "one of Charles Wesley's loveliest progeny.”

Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE, JESUS, SHINE) A year after our opening hymn was first published, English hymn writer Graham Kendrick published this hymn which is now in over 17 hymnals. I like to use it in conjunction with the Mark 9 Transfiguration reading for it's imagery of light and glory. 

As we gaze on your kingly brightness,
So our faces display your likeness,
ever changing from glory to glory.
Mirrored here, may our lives tell your story.

Music for February 8, 2015 + The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• A Gaelic Blessing – John Rutter (b. 1945)
• May the Peace of God – Israeli, arr. Geoff Weaver (b. 1943)

Instrumental Music

• Flourish and Chorale – Michael McCabe (b. 1941)
• The Peace May Be Exchanged (from Rubrics) – Dan Locklair (b. 1949)
• Toccata in Seven – John Rutter

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

• Hymn 423 Immortal, invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO)
• Hymn 529 In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn R191 O Christ, the healer (ERHALT UNS, HERR)

The 1940s is, by far, my favorite decade. I love 40s music. I love 40s movies. I love listening to 40s old-time radio programs. And, judging from today's music list, I love playing music by composers born in the the 40s. All of the choral and organ music this week is by composers born during that great decade. John Rutter, arguably one of the most performed choral composers of the past forty years, has written hundreds of small choral works and several larger works, several of  which have become part of the core concert repertoire the world over. We are singing his A Gaelic Blessing, which is a staple of choirs around the world. It was written as a parting gift for Mel Olsen, the beloved choir director of First United Methodist, Omaha, in 1978. A Gaelic Blessing has become a popular choice at christenings, weddings and funerals. (It was used at the Commendation at the Funeral Mass for Tip O'Neill.) Sometimes known as 'Deep Peace', this piece became a hit in 2003 when a recording of it by Aled Jones was released. The music says words are from an old Gaelic Rune, (an Old Norse word rune meaning 'letter', 'text' or 'inscription'), but there were no Gaelic runes - only Germanic ones - so it is safe to say it's just an old Gaelic blessing.

Dan Locklair, who appears to be as fond of pipe smoking
as he is of pipe organs.

Among the organ pieces today, a favorite is the communion voluntary by the North Carolina native Dan Locklair. This piece is the fourth movement of his liturgical suite for organ called Rubrics. Commissioned in 1988 for the Organ Artists Series of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, its extra-musical impetus and subsequent titles for each movement of Rubrics came the instructions (rubrics) to the services for The Book of Common Prayer.

Peter Hardwick, writing in The Diapason, has called Rubrics “one of the most frequently played organ works by an American composer.” Movements from Rubrics were not only heard at the Washington National Cathedral funeral service of President Ronald Reagan in 2004, but also as a part of the January 2009 Martin Luther King Jr. service in the same venue during the Presidential Inauguration of President Barack Obama. The fourth movement,  “The Peace may be exchanged,” is a lyrical piece, featuring a solo diapason color, accompanied by strings and double pedal throughout.

The opening voluntary, Flourish and Chorale, begins with, yes, a flourish - a trumpet fanfare - with an angular melody in the right hand accompanied by some pretty dissonant chords in the left hand. The flourish announces, so to speak, the arrival of the chorale, a much more lyrical, dignifed procession before it returns with more crashing chords at full organ. It is written by Michael McCabe, a man with two very distinct and varied professions. In addition to being an organist, composer, and teacher, he is also chief nurse anesthetist at the Omaha Surgical Center in Nebraska.

• Immortal, invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO) A verse from 1st Timothy, ("Now unto the King Eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever.") is the basis for this hymn of pure praise. The rollicking anapestic rhythm of the Welsh melody rushes the singer along to the climactic poetic thought of God being invisible only because he is hidden by the splendor of light.
• In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE) The text was written by John Oxenham (the pen name for William Arthur Dunkerly) for a pageant in 1913, and is an example of a prophetic hymn - one that states the ideal to be achieved rather than the present situation. In our hymnal it is paired with a tune that has strong African-American roots, but according to a letter from Charles V. Stanford to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (who arranged the tune for piano in his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, 1905), MCKEE was originally an Irish tune taken to the United States and adapted by African American slaves. It became associated with the spiritual "I Know the Angels Done Changed My Name." 
• O Christ, the healer (ERHALT UNS, HERR) Here is a contemporary hymn that speaks to both individual and societal disease. F. Pratt Green's hymn does this beautifully, naming the link between personal and corporate life as "conflicts that destroy our health" and that find relief only when the healing wholeness of life in Christ "shall reach the whole of humankind." 

The youth of the St. Gregory choir will sing their rehearsal benediction, May the Peace of God, at the beginning of communion. The Israeli folk melody gives this simple song of blessing a haunting quality. It is arranged by Geoff Weaver, another British musician, whose lifelong passion has been teaching and spreading the music of God's people from all over the world. Through his work for the Church Mission Society, he has had teaching assignments in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Nigeria, and published two volumes of World Praise.