Thursday, July 27, 2017

Music for July 30, 2017 + The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

  • The Holy City – Stephen Adams (Michael Maybrick) (1841 – 1913)
  • Give Me Jesus – Moses Hogan, arr.
    • Mitchell Hutchins, tenor

Instrumental Music

  • Sonata – Ignazio Cirri (1711-1787)
  • If Thou but Trust in God to Guide Thee, BWV 642 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

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

  • Hymn 388 - O worship the King, all glorious above! (HANOVER)
  • Hymn 615 - “Thy kingdom come!” (ST. FLAVIAN)
  • Hymn 302 - Father, we thank thee who hast planted (RENDEZ A DIEU)
  • Hymn 711 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
  • Hymn R145 - Lord, I want to be a Christian (I WANT TO BE A CHRISTIAN)
  • Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
  • Psalm 119:129-136 Mirabilia – Tone VIII.a
Mitchell Hutchins singing with
The Kingwood Chorale, 2016
This Sunday we welcome back to Good Shepherd Mitchell Hutchins, a former choral Scholar and Staff Singer of Good Shepherd. Mitchell, who graduated from LoneStar College Kingwood and Stephen F. Austin, has been teaching choir in the Nacogdoches ISD. This fall he will have the opportunity to start his own Choir Program at Cleveland Middle School in Cleveland, Texas.

He will be singing two favorites of the congregation. The Holy City is often sung on Palm Sunday, but it is actually more appropriate at other times of the year. While it includes not only the triumphal entry but the crucifixion, the third stanza goes on to detail the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. This will literally be heaven on earth. It is referred to in the Bible in several places (Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:10; 12:22–24; and 13:14), but it is most fully described in Revelation 21. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate fulfillment of all God’s promises.

(I wrote an interesting "rest of the story" article about the composer in March 2016, which I won't repeat now, but you can access it by clicking here.)

The other solo is a repeat of the solo he sang last year, which was a huge favorite of the congregation. It is Moses Hogan's setting of the spiritual, "Give Me Jesus." Using the piano as accompaniment, it repeats the refrain, "you may have all the world, give me Jesus."

The opening voluntary is a Sonata by Italian organist and composer Giacomo Matteo Ignazio Cirri He lived his entire life in Forlì (current Emilia-Romagna), Italy. He was a friend of Giovanni Battista Martini, who had a portrait of Ignazio Cirri among his valuable men's portraits. In 1759, Cirri became Maestro di cappella in the Cathedral of Forlì and he was admitted in the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna.

In 1770 he published his first works, Twelve Sonatas for Organ. As typical of the early Italian Baroque, these sonatas were in two parts, a slow movement followed by a faster second movement. Also typical of the Italian organ of the day, there is no pedal part, as the Italian organ was rather primitive compared to the German organ of the same time period.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Music for Sunday, July 23, 2017 + The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

  • Finlandia – Jean Sibelius, Margie VanBrackle, Soprano

Instrumental Music

  • All Glory Be to God on High– Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
  • Let Us Break Bread Together – Richard Proulx (1937-2010)
  • Psalm XIX: The Heavens Declare the Glory of God – Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739)

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

  • Hymn 290 - Come, ye thankful people, come (ST. GEORGE’S, WINDSOR)
  • Hymn 686 - Come, thou fount of every blessing (NETTLETON)
  • Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
  • Hymn  - We are climbing Jacob’s ladder (JACOB’S LADDER)
  • Hymn 344 - Lord dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)
  • Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23 Domine, probasti – Tone VIII.a
Thanksgiving in July? - Why are we singing "Come, ye thankful people, come?"
The Gospel this Sunday contains the parable of the weeds, where one person sows good seed, but another comes in the night and sows bad seed. (Who would do this? Is this the fore-runner of the modern internet virus?).  It's also known as the tares among the wheat. And here is where the opening hymn becomes relevant. Hear (or read, or SING) stanza two:
All the world is God's own field,
fruit as praise to God we yield;
wheat and tares together sown
are to joy or sorrow grown;
first the blade and then the ear,
then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we
wholesome grain and pure may be. 
So there you have it!

I am back from my two week pilgimage to England and Wales, studying and listening to the Cathedral Choir music of the Anglican Church, and being edified in the faith by prayers and preaching. I will not bore you with it here, but if you would like particulars, ask me! I'll try to make it brief!

Friday, July 14, 2017

Music for July 16, 2017 + The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

  • Aria di Chiesa: Pietà, Signore! Attributed to Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682) - Richard Murray, baritone

Instrumental Music

  • Tuba Tune in D Major – C.S. Lang (1891-1971)
  • Andante in G – R. M. Stults (1861-1933)
  • A Hymn of Glory - Edward Broughton (Lani Smith) (1934-2015)

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

  • Opening Hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy Word (LIEBSTER JESU)
  • Before Gospel Hymn R90 - Spirit of the Living God (IVERSON)
  • Offertory Hymn 707 - Take my life and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
  • Communion Hymn R 248 - O let the Son of God enfold you (SPIRIT SONG)
  • Closing Hymn 535 -  Ye Servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)
  • Psalm 65 - Tone V
The offertory today is a solo work from the Italian repertoire; more specifically, it’s from the collection "Twenty-Four Italian Songs And Arias.” If you’ve ever studied voice, you probably began with this book. For well over a century, the G. Schirmer edition of 24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries has introduced millions of beginning singers to serious Italian vocal literature. In 2015, the pop-culture website Buzzfeed published a review of the 24 songs included in the collection. Here is what they had to say about this number:
This is a dark, churchy song for the guiltiest of souls. It's kind of a cosmic bummer. The next time you do something awful, like hooking up with your best friend's ex, blast this and beg for forgiveness. (1)
In this book, the music is attributed to Alessandro Stradella, an Italian composer of the middle Seventeenth century of some prominence. However, all indications point to another being the composer. In 1833, the Italian art song, "Se i miei sospiri", appeared in a Paris concert organized by François Joseph Fétis, a Belgian musicologist, composer, teacher, and one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century. Fétis published the piece for voice and strings in 1838 and then again in 1843 for voice and piano with alternate lyrics ("Pietà, Signore"). It is these alternate lyrics with which the piece is now typically associated. Fétis attributed the song to Stradella and claimed to possess an original manuscript of the work but never produced it for examination. As early as 1866, musicologists were questioning the authenticity of the song, and when Fétis' library was acquired by the Royal Library in Brussels after his death, no such manuscript could be found. Owing to this and the fact that the style of the piece is inconsistent with Stradella's own period, the authorship of the piece is now typically attributed to Fétis himself.
François Joseph Fétis,
It's not completely unheard of for composers to write compositions themselves and then claim that it's the work of another composer--a kind of reverse plagiarism--Parisotti and Kreisler are among the list of composers who have done this. Some seem to do it as a prank, others to get attention to a work that they feel would be ignored otherwise, and there are probably still more reasons. In any case, this is not the first of such works, and doubtless won't be the last.

The heavy mood of this powerful and moving work is set by a fairly lengthy instrumental introduction, and then the voice enters with short, subdued phrases, which eventually pick up momentum and intensity. The lines vary in length, but always contribute to the sense of a highly structured piece.

Jackson Hearn is away this week, attending the annual conference of the Association of Anglican Musicians. This year the conference is at Winchester, England, where he will worship at and tour Winchester, Salisbury, and Chichester Cathedrals, attend workshops, and gather with other Episcopal Musicians from around the world. He would like to thank Jill Kirkonis and Richard Murray for leading the music while he is away.

REMINDER! We're having an Old-Fashioned Hymn Sing on  Friday, August 11 at 7 PM. Help us decide what hymns to sing!  You can give Jackson Hearn a list of your favorite hymns at church or in an email. (jacksonhearn@goodshepherdkingwood.org). Or, you can vote on your favorite hymns by going to http://doodle.com/poll/4gh2kpy5vwyeyxa4 (or use scan this QR code on your smart phone or table)

(1)   A Definitive Ranking Of "Twenty-Four Italian Songs And Arias" (February 20, 2015) retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/ninamohan/a-definitive-ranking-of-twenty-four-italian-songs-and-arias?utm_term=.aqxM3e5lz#.hcnG2E7eW

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Music for Sunday, July 9, 2017 + The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

  • Shine, Jesus, Shine – Mark Hays, arr.

Instrumental Music - Jill Kirkonis, organist

  • Make the Sounds of Praise - Robert J. Hughes (1916–1999)
  • What Wondrous Love is This -Southern Harmony, 1843, arr. Cathy DeRousse (b. 1954)
  • Song for a Feast Day - Hugh S. Livingston, Jr. (1945–2014)

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

  • Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
  • Hymn 414 - God, my King, thy might confessing (STUTTGART)
  • Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
  • Hymn 302 - Father, we thank thee (RENDEZ A DIEU)
  • Hymn R147 - Softly and Tenderly Jesus is calling (THOMPSON)
  • Hymn 644 - How sweet the name of Jesus sounds (ST. PETER)
The offertory this morning features a piano setting of a British contemporary hymn arranged by the American pianist Mark Hayes. It will feature a small group of choir members signing the words instead of singing them.

Cathy DeRousse
The organ communion voluntary is by a living Texas-born woman, Cathy DeRousse. Born in Dallas, Texas, she began piano studies at the age of eight and was accompanying choirs at school and church by the age of thirteen. She earned the bachelor of music degree in church music with an emphasis in piano at Oklahoma Baptist University, where she also studied composition with C.L. Bass, and the master of music degree in piano from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. She has served as a staff accompanist at several colleges, most recently at East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, Texas, where she also serves as College Organist and Director of the Bennett Technology Lab. She is also a member of Baroque Artists of Shreveport and is active as an adjudicator for piano festivals and competitions and as a clinician for church organists and pianists.   

Mrs. DeRousse lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her husband Paul, a minister of music. They have three grown sons.

Robert J. Hughes was born in Toronto, Canada. He held degrees in music from the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), Trinity College of Music (London, England), and a doctorate from Oxford University (England). Hughes served as organist-choirmaster in Toronto and as bandmaster for the Royal Canadian Air Force Band during World War II.

Hugh S. Livingston, Jr. grew up in Tennessee, where he pursued his interest in music ministry, learned to play several instruments, and began composing original works. He served in music ministries in Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio, providing his talents as a choral director, pianist, organist, and trumpeter. Even in his retirement, Hugh remained active as a church musician, and shared his musical gifts with hundreds of people in assisted living and nursing homes. He will always be linked with the Lorenz Publishing Company. For decades, his compositions and arrangements have been featured prominently in the Lorenz catalog, including a vast number of contributions to our keyboard and choral magazines as well as numerous anthems and keyboard collections. In all, he has published thousands of pieces.

Jackson Hearn is away this week and next, attending the annual conference of the Association of Anglican Musicians. This year the conference is at Winchester, England, where he will worship at and tourr Winchester, Salisbury, and Chichester Cathedrals, attend workshops, and gather with other Episcopal Musicians from around the world. He would like to thank Jill Kirkonis for leading the music while he is away.