Vocal Music
- Open My Eyes – Clara H. Scott (1841-1897) Bruce Bailey, tenor
Three Antiphons from Vêpres du commun des fêtes de la Sainte Vierge, Op.18 – Marcel Dupré (1886 – 1971)
- Antiphon I: While the King sitteth at his table (Song of Solomon 1:12)
- Antiphon III: I am black but comely, O Ye Daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Solomon 7:6)
- Antiphon V: How Fair and how Pleasant art Thou (Song of Solomon 1:5)
- Hymn 366 - Holy God, we praise thy Name (Grosser Gott)
- Hymn 537 - Open your ears, O faithful people (Torah Song)
- Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus (In Babilone)
- Hymn 490 - I want to walk as a child of the light (Houston)
- Hymn 473 - Lift high the cross (Crucifer)
- Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18, Tone VIIIa, refrain by Jackson Hearn
A couple of weeks ago, Bruce Bailey came into my office inquiring about a hymn that he had sung growing up. Bruce and I share the same background of growing up in the Methodist Church, often singing out of the Cokesbury Worship Hymnal, a slim, brown hymnal from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South that contained many hymns and gospel songs that were popular in the middle of the twentieth century. (You can still buy a copy for $14!) The hymn in question was Open My Eyes, That I May See. I recalled that, as a teenager, we joked it was written by Fanny Crosby, a famous blind gospel song writer of the late nineteenth century. (And how a teenage boy in rural Tennessee knew about blind hymn writers of the 1800s is still a mystery.) My copy of the Cokesbury Hymnal lists Charles H. Scott as the composer. It turns out that is wrong.
Open My Eyes, That I May See was written in 1895 by Clara H. Scott, a Midwesterner who taught music at the Ladies' Seminary, in Lyons, Iowa. She married Henry Clay Scott in 1861, and in 1882 published the Royal Anthem Book, the first volume of choir anthems published by a woman.
Horatio R. Palmer, an influential church musician in Chicago and later New York City, was a source of encouragement for Scott, and helped her publish many of her songs. This hymn first appeared in Best Hymns No. 2, by Elisha A. Hoffman & Harold F. Sayles in 1895. Three collections were issued before her untimely death, in a buggy accident cause by a runaway horse in Dubuque, Iowa.
Bruce will be singing it this Sunday in an arrangement of mine where I combine the melody by Scott with the accompaniment of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, so if it sounds familiar when the piano starts, that's why. With some minor adjustments in harmony, the two go well together. Schubert will be turning over in his grave.
The organ music is by the famed French organist, Marcel Dupré. Dupré was the foremost French organ virtuoso of his time, an heir to the great tradition of Romantic French organ playing and composing. In addition to his technical prowess, Dupré was well known for his ability to improvise.
Ninety-seven years ago on August 15, 1919, Dupré was substituting for the regular organist at Notre Dame for Vespers. The office of Vespers includes five psalms, a hymn, and the Magnificat. An antiphon (a short scriptural text) is sung before each Psalm. Dupré improvised 15 organ responses to the Psalms, Ave maris stella, and Magnificat.
An Englishman, Claude Johnson, the General Managing Director of Rolls-Royce, was attending Vespers. A man of great vision and sensitivity, he was struck by the beauty of Dupré’s music and wanted to buy a copy of it.
On being told that it had been improvised, and therefore not written down, he at once persuaded Dupré to try to recapture his original inspiration and commissioned the set of 15 pieces. They appeared the following year. It is three of the five antiphons, based on verses from the Song of Solomon, that I am playing today.
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| Clara H. Scott |
Open My Eyes, That I May See was written in 1895 by Clara H. Scott, a Midwesterner who taught music at the Ladies' Seminary, in Lyons, Iowa. She married Henry Clay Scott in 1861, and in 1882 published the Royal Anthem Book, the first volume of choir anthems published by a woman.
Horatio R. Palmer, an influential church musician in Chicago and later New York City, was a source of encouragement for Scott, and helped her publish many of her songs. This hymn first appeared in Best Hymns No. 2, by Elisha A. Hoffman & Harold F. Sayles in 1895. Three collections were issued before her untimely death, in a buggy accident cause by a runaway horse in Dubuque, Iowa.
Bruce will be singing it this Sunday in an arrangement of mine where I combine the melody by Scott with the accompaniment of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, so if it sounds familiar when the piano starts, that's why. With some minor adjustments in harmony, the two go well together. Schubert will be turning over in his grave.
 |
| Marcel Dupré |
Ninety-seven years ago on August 15, 1919, Dupré was substituting for the regular organist at Notre Dame for Vespers. The office of Vespers includes five psalms, a hymn, and the Magnificat. An antiphon (a short scriptural text) is sung before each Psalm. Dupré improvised 15 organ responses to the Psalms, Ave maris stella, and Magnificat.
An Englishman, Claude Johnson, the General Managing Director of Rolls-Royce, was attending Vespers. A man of great vision and sensitivity, he was struck by the beauty of Dupré’s music and wanted to buy a copy of it.
On being told that it had been improvised, and therefore not written down, he at once persuaded Dupré to try to recapture his original inspiration and commissioned the set of 15 pieces. They appeared the following year. It is three of the five antiphons, based on verses from the Song of Solomon, that I am playing today.
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