Music for September 23, 2018

Vocal Music

• Cantique de Jean Racine – Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Instrumental Music

• Praise to the Lord, the Almighty – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)
• Preamble – Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
• Prelude on “Engleberg” – Craig Phillips (b. 1961)

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

• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)
• Hymn R148 - Brother. Let me be your servant (SERVANT SONG)
• Hymn 301 - Bread of the world, in mercy broken (RENDEZ A DIEU)
• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 711 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn 477 - All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGLEBERG)
• Psalm 54 – Tone VIIIa

"How do you choose the music you use for worship at Good Shepherd?" asked one person at Daughters of the King that night I talked to them about Growing Old Gracefully. (Note to self: stick with what you know.)

I always start with the congregational music, choosing hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs that support and magnify the scripture readings for the day.  Everything else comes from those choices.

Often I can find an organ or piano piece based on a hymn-tune that we are singing that Sunday. Such is the case this week, as I have two works based on the opening and closing hymns.

The opening voluntary is a chorale-prelude based on the German chorale LOBE DEN HERREN (Praise to the Lord.) It is by the  German organist and composer Johann Gottfried Walther. A cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach, his life paralled that of his now-famed relative not only in the years spanned but also in their profession. (For a time they both lived in Weimar, Bach as court musician, and Walther as organist at the Weimar Stadtkirche. Walther remained at that post until his death.)

In the prelude this Sunday you will hear the melody played in the pedal on a trumpet stop. This setting is what is called a "gapped" chorale setting - a movement in which the chorale melody is heard phrase by phrase against a continuously moving texture in counterpoint to it.

Likewise, the closing voluntary is based on the closing hymn. ENGELBERG was composed in 1904 by the British composer Charles Villiers Stanford for the hymn "For All the Saints." It was fashionable in the earlier 20th century until it was eclipsed by the immensely popular SINE NOMINE, which Ralph Vaughan Williams composed for the same hymn in 1906.

Craig Phillips

It regained its prominence when it was paired with the  hymn "When in Our Music God Is Glorified" in 1972. Other texts that have been paired with this tune are "We Know that Christ Is Raised" and today's hymn, "All Praise to Thee, for Thou, O King Divine."

The organ piece by Craig Phillips, Prelude on "Engleberg," is more "Prelude" than "Engleberg." It starts with an opening fanfare before going into an original melody on the solo trumpet. It is a noble, heroic melody with a fanfare-like rhythm that goes on for three pages of music before we finally hear the familiar hymn-tune, played through, just once, with each phrase interrupted with a pedal solo reminiscent of the heroic melody from the first section. The piece ends with a recapitulation of the opening "A" section.

Louis Vierne

The other organ piece is the first piece from 24 Pièces en style libre op. 31, by the famed French organist Louis Vierne. Blind since birth, it is said that, at two years old, he heard his first piano. A pianist played a Schubert lullaby for him, and when he finished young Louis promptly began to pick out the notes of the lullaby on the piano. He attended the Paris Conservatoire and then became assistant to the organist Charles-Marie Widor at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris in 1892. He subsequently became principal organist at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, a post he held from 1900 until his death in 1937. He died at the organ of Notre-Dame at the end of his 1750th recital.

I've chosen it to compliment the other French piece today, the Cantiqe de Jean Racine by Gabriel Faure. We sang this piece a year ago, so go here to read about it.