Music for December 20, 2015 + The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• Gabriel's Message– arr. David Willcocks (1919-2015)
• Ave Maria – J. S. Bach/Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Instrumental Music

• Savior, of the Nations, Come BWV 659, 661– J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 74 - Blest be the King whose coming (Valet will ich dir geben)
• Hymn 54 - Savior of the nations, come! (Nun komm der Heiden Heiland)
• Hymn 66 - Come, thou long expected Jesus (Stuttgart)
• Hymn 60 - Creator of the stars of night (Conditor alme siderum)
• Hymn 436 - Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (Truro)

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner 1896

The last Sunday in Advent focuses on the Annunciation, that moment in our story when the Angel Gabriel visits Mary to tell her that she is going to be the Mother of the Christ. To keep with the Gospel story, the choir sings David Willcocks' lovely a cappella setting of the Basque Carol, Gabriel's Message. This carol is based on 'Birjina gaztettobat zegoen, collected by Charles Bordes and published in the series Archives de la tradition basque, 1895. The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, who wrote several novels and hymns (including 'Onward Christian soldiers) and who had spent a winter as a boy in Basque lands, translated the carol into English, reducing the original 6 stanzas to 4 and giving Gabriel the very beautiful and very Victorian 'wings as drifted snow'.

Sir David Valentine Willcocks

Sir David Willcocks, whom Britain's The Independent newspaper called "one of the most remarkable musicians of his generation," died this year at the age of 95. He became forever connected to Christmas when, in  1957 he became Organist of King's College, Cambridge, which already had a fine reputation courtesy of their annual Christmas Eve broadcast of A Festival of Nine Lessons And Carols. Over the coming years, this would be enhanced by greater television exposure and the newly emerging stereo LP. 

His connection to Christmas Choral music was further cemented in 1961 with the publication of the first of four volumes of choral music called Carols for Choir. His collaboration with John Rutter has influenced the course of choral music for Christmas for over 50 years. We'll be performing three of his carol arrangements on Christmas Eve (6:30 and 10 PM).

In 1853, French composer, Charles Gounod improvised a melody to Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C Major, which Bach published in 1722 as part of The Well Tempered Clavier - a book of clavier (keyboard) music Bach wrote to demonstrate the versatility of the 'new' even temperament method of tuning. Gounod's work was originally published for violin/cello with piano and harmonium, but in 1859, after receiving a request from Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann (Gounod's future father-in-law who transcribed Gounod's improvisation) Jacques Léopold Heugel released a vocal version with the melody set to the text of the Ave Maria prayer. Jade Panares, one of our choral scholars and a vocal performance major at the University of Houston, will sing this beautiful setting during communion today.