Music for Sunday, August 2, 2015

Vocal Music

• Jesus, Shepherd, Be Thou Near Me – J. S. Bach (1685-1750) Bruce Bailey, tenor.

Instrumental Music

• Toccatina – R. M. Stults (1861-1933)
• Jubilee March – R.M. Stults 
• Aria – Philip Baker (b. 1934)

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

• Hymn 8 - Morning has broken, like the first morning (BUNESSAN)
• Hymn 335 - I am the bread of life (I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE)
• Hymn R-247 - Shine, Jesus, shine (SHINE, JESUS SHINE)
• Hymn 325 - Let us break bread together (LET US BREAK BREAD)

I began my organ career at my home church, the First United Methodist Church of Tiptonville, Tennessee. We lived across the street from the church that my mother had attended all her life and served as the volunteer choir director. I cannot remember the first time I had attended choir practice with her, playing in the church while she led the small choir through their paces, but when I was fourteen, I began to sneak into the church and play around with the 1924 Möller Organ.

The 20's were a decade of unprecedented economic growth in America, coming off the end of World War I. Even small town churches like First Methodist were able to build some small but beautiful buildings and furnish them with pipe organs. During the 1920s it is said that the M.P. Möller Organ company was building an organ a day to keep up with the demand.

First United Methodist Church, Tiptonville, Tennessee

In spite of the abundance of church organs, there proved to be a dearth of trained organists, so local pianists would be pressed into service to play for the local congregations. Obviously, they would need simpler music to play, so the Lorenz Publishing Company began publishing a bi-monthly magazine of simple, useful organ music for these novice organists. The organist of First Methodist, Tiptonville, was one of those who subscribed to this magazine, and when I started playing the organ, a stack of these magazines, dating back to the 1920s, was what I used as my introduction to the organ. This Sunday I am playing two pieces from those magazines.

These two pieces, Toccatina and Jubilee March, are from the pen of  Robert Morrison Stults, an American composer of popular music in the late 19th century and early 20th century. His most popular work, The Sweetest Story Ever Told, was published in 1892 and was still popular into the first half of the 20th century. Prior to 1910, Stults mostly wrote popular music, but after 1910, he wrote more sacred and bigger works, including a number of works for the organ. Toccatina is a short, perpetual movement sort of piece with limited pedals (perfect for those piano teachers who could manage the manual (hand) parts but were not as sure with their feet.) The Jubilee March is a typical march, but the pages of music I have are missing what would be the Trio (the B section in the middle), so I have re-created the trio with some music of my own.

The hymns today are from the list of the top 17 favorite hymns as determined from our Summer Hymn Survey. You can see the total results here:
 http://goodshepherdsongs.blogspot.com/2015/08/our-favorite-hymns.html

Morning Has Broken
“Morning has broken” first appeared in the USA in the Presbyterian Hymnbook (1955), but it was not until Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) sang it on his triple platinum album Teaser and the Firecat in 1971 that the song became well known and, as a result, has been included in most hymnals since that time. This is a rare, though not unique, example of a Christian hymn receiving acclaim through the popular media.

Percy Dearmer, editor of Songs of Praise (1931), requested a thanksgiving text from the poet Eleanor Farjeon to the lilting Gaelic tune BUNESSAN. Farjeon (1881-1965) who had around 80 works to her credit including Nursery Rhymes of London Town and The Glass Slipper, wrote a hymn that effectively links and expresses the creation stories in Genesis 1 and John 1, and reminds us that each new day is a gift from God.
The tune BUNESSAN demands a lesser-used poetic meter (dactylic) in threes. The result, according to British hymnologist J. R. Watson, is a “springy rhythm… [and a] beautifully sustained… poem [that] makes a delightful and charming morning hymn.”