Music for November 26, 2017 + Christ the King Sunday

Vocal Music

• King of Glory, King of Peace – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• My Shepherd Will Supply My Need – Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)

Instrumental Music

• The Lord My Shepherd Is and Guide – Helmut Walcha (1907-1991)
• Partita on Auf meinen lieben Gott, BuxWV 179- Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• Postludium in C – Helmut Walcha

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

• Hymn 450 - All hail the power of Jesus’ name (CORONATION)
• Hymn R267 - The King of Glory comes (PROMISED ONE)
• Hymn 460 - Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn R29 - He Is Lord (HE IS LORD)
• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Canticle S-35 – Come, let us sing unto the Lord (Jack Noble White)

Just a few notes about this Sunday's music for Christ the King Sunday. As we end this holiday weekend, it seems appropriate that, on the Sunday following one of the most American Holidays, we hear choral works of two American composers. I've written about Gerald Near before, so you can click here to read about him. The other composer is Virgil Thomson, a composer and a music critic from the 20th century.  He composed in almost every genre of music, producing a highly original body of work rooted in American speech rhythms and hymnbook harmony.

Born 121 years ago on November 25 in Kansas City, Missouri, Thomson was inspired by a strong sense of place—rooted in heartland America and its Protestant traditions. The biography on the webpage VirgilThomson.org tells us

His early connection to music came through the church, through piano lessons beginning at age 5, and stints accompanying theatricals and silent films. The music he heard was part and parcel of the wide world around him: Civil War songs, cowboy songs, the blues, barn-dance music, Baptist hymns, folk songs, popular songs, in addition to the canons of Western art music that he studied. 1

Virgil Thomson

 When he finished junior college, he joined the army to fight in World War I, stationed in New York City. He trained in radio telephony and in aviation and was set for embarkation for France when the war ended. 

In 1919, he enrolled as a student at Harvard where he became interested in all things French, so he secured a fellowship in 1921 to study organ and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, where he met Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Igor Stravinsky and Eric Satie, among many others. Returning to Harvard in 1922, he graduated in 1923. 

Between 1923 and 1940 he live between New York and Paris, composing opera, film scores, ballet scores, incidental music for the theater, and musical portraits, a genre in which he created more than 140 works. 

He finally settled in New York in 1940 when he accepted a job as chief music critic for the New York Herald Tribune, a position he held until 1951. 

His many honors and awards included the Pulitzer Prize a Brandeis Award, the gold medal for music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Book Circle Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, and 20 honorary doctorates.

In contrast to the American choral music for today, the instrumental music for this Sunday all comes from Germany. The communion voluntary is a partita by Dietrich Buxtehude on the German chorale In my beloved God. What is unusual about this partita (set of variations) is that the hymn is arranged for clavier, or keyboard (harpsichord) as opposed to the organ, which was normally used for sacred tunes. Buxtehude also used the typical dance rhythms of the day (sarabande, courante, gigue) as framework for different variations. These are forms that would normally be reserved for secular music.

Helmut Walcha

The opening and closing voluntaries are by 20th century organist and composer Helmut Walcha, a specialist in Bach and neo-baroque music.  As a result of a smallpox vaccination, Walcha had poor eyesight since childhood, and was fully blind by sixteen. He learned new pieces by having musicians (including his mother in his childhood and his wife in later years), play for him four times (each hand separately, the pedal part separately, and the complete piece). Having perfect pitch, he would memorise the piece while listening. Read this article from Pipedreams about his prodigious memory skills here.

His own music followed some of the same principles of music from the Baroque era, while incorporating harmonies and sounds found in more modern music.

1 http://www.virgilthomson.org/about/biography Accessed November 24, 2017.