Music for December 3, 2017 + The First Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• O Thou the Central Orb – Charles Wood (1866-1926)

Instrumental Music

• Sleepers, Wake! A Voice Astounds Us – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)
• Sleepers, Wake! A Voice Astounds Us – Johan Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Sleepers, Wake! A Voice Astounds Us – Paul Manz (1919-2009)

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

• Hymn 616 - Hail to the Lord’s Anointed (ES FLOG EIN KLEINS WALDVÖGELEIN)
• Trisagion S-102 – setting by Alexander Archangelsky
• Hymn 57 - Lo! he comes, with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 68 - Rejoice! Rejoice, believers (LLANGLOFFAN)
• Hymn R278 - Wait for the Lord (Taizé)
• Hymn 73 - The King shall come when morning dawns (ST. STEPHEN)
• Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 - Tone VIIIa

As we enter the new Church Year with the season of Advent, we find two themes in Sunday's service:  In the opening collect, Psalm, and the Gospel we see the juxtaposition of darkness and light. We also hear the warning, "Stay Awake! Be ready, for you don't know when the Bridegroom comes."

At Children's choir this past Wednesday, as we began our study of Advent, we read the opening verses from Psalm 80:   

1 Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; *
    shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim.
2 In the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, *
    stir up your strength and come to help us.
3 Restore us, O God of hosts; *
    show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

I asked them if they could remember the last time it really rained. Often times children struggle to answer such broad questions such as this, but not this time. "Harvey!" was the immediate answer. "Well, do you remember the first time you saw the sun after that rain?" I asked them. Indeed they did, and recalled what joy they felt at seeing those beams of light.

Well, that is the same kind of joy we can feel if we look for the beams of light this Advent season. It's the kind of light we hear of in the anthem today:

O Thou the central orb of righteous love,
Pure beam of the most high,
Eternal light of this our wintry world,Thy radiance bright awakes new joy in faith,
Hope soars above, above.

Come, quickly come, and let thy glory shine,
Gilding our darksome heaven with rays divine.

Thy saints with holy lustre round Thee move,
As stars about thy throne, set in the height
of God’s ordaining counsel, as Thy sight
gives measur’d grace to each,
Thy power to prove.

Let Thy bright beams disperse the gloom of sin,
Our nature all shall feel eternal day,
In fellowship with Thee,
Transforming clay to souls while ere unclean,
now pure within. Amen.

The words are by H.R. Bramley, and in researching on the web, I found this well written meditation on the text by the Revd Canon John Seymour of Leicester Cathedral. I hope you take a moment to read it.

Charles Wood, contemplating
the answer to 8 across in the Times
Crossword Puzzle.

The composer of the anthem, Charles Wood, wrote a considerable amount of church music and most of it is still in use today simply because it is well written and enjoyable to sing. Much of it is skilfully crafted, and this is amply demonstrated in today's anthem where the organ part which accompanies the melody sung by the basses ("Come, quickly come") shows careful handling of the chromatic counter-melody.

Wood spent much of his life in Cambridge at the University and wrote the chimes for the Gonville and Caius College clock. Like his counterpart C. V. Stanford, Wood collected and published Irish folksong (both were Irish), and he succeeded Stanford to the post of Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge in 1924. Wood only began church music towards the end of his life and much of it was published posthumously. In his earlier years he composed much larger works for stage, oratorios, and three string quartets.

The organ voluntaries are all based on the quintessential Advent hymn, "Sleepers, Wake!"  I am playing the best known setting of this by J. S. Bach for the communion voluntary. Bach himself arranged this for organ from his Cantata No. 140, where it was originally sung by the tenors alone. The accompaniment itself is one of the most beautiful melodies ever written, and when Bach brings the stark, straight-forward chorale melody in (played on the trumpet stop), it acts as a clarion call to "wake up!"

The opening Voluntary is another setting of the same hymn by Bach's cousin, Johann Gottfried Walther, whose life was almost exactly contemporaneous to that of J.S. Bach.   In 1702, at the age of eighteen, he was made organist of the Thomaskiche in Erfurt. At twenty-three he was appointed Weimar town organist and music master to the ducal children. In 1721 he became a court musician.

Walther wrote sacred vocal works and numerous organ pieces, consisting mostly of chorale preludes.