Thursday, February 21, 2019

Music for February 24, 2019 + The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

  • O Lord, I Will Praise Thee – Gordon Jacob (1895-1984)
  • We Are Not Alone – Pepper Choplin (b. 1957)
  • Praise the Lord – Natalie Sleeth (1930-1992)

Instrumental Music

  • Do Not I Love Thee, O My Lord? – Gardner Read (1913-2005)
  • Hymne – Evángelos Papathanassíou (b. 1943)
  • Toccata on “Lobe den Herren” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)

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 576 - God is love, and where true love is (MANDATUM)
  • Hymn 295 - Sing Praise to Our Creator (CHRISTE, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
  • Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
  • Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
Natalie Sleeth
The Coventry Choir will sing this Sunday. Our first through fourth grade choir has been working on two anthems that they will sing today. The first is an anthem by Natalie Sleeth, an American composer of sacred songs and anthems. She wrote both text and tune of this fine praise hymn in 1975 when she worked with church school children and a junior choir at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Similar to Psalm 150 and Francis of Assisi's "All Creatures of Our God and King" (hymn 600), this text is a wonderful catalog of things, times, and places. All instruments and all occasions can be used to sing our praise to the Lord. Note that God's praise is warranted not only in the good times but also in "the time of sorrow" or in "the peace and quiet" (st. 2).

Pepper Choplin
The second anthem, which they will sing with the Good Shepherd Choir, is the song We Are Not Alone, an a cappella anthem that captures that confident thought and presents it in a straightforward, honest way.  The adult choir sings a gentle, rhythmic choral ostinati ("We are not alone, God is with us") that supports the smooth, sustained melody, sung by the Coventry Choir.

It was written Pepper Choplin, a full-time composer, conductor and humorist (with a name like "Pepper" I guess it's natural he should have a sense of humor!) who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. With a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Choplin went on to earn a Master of Music degree in composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Good Shepherd Choir will also sing an anthem with a text based on Isaiah 12:1-6, set to music by English musician Gordon Jacob. Though there is a lot of unison writing, and the organ doubles the voices quite a bit, there are just enough syncopated rhythms, harmonic shifts, and wide, angular melodic motives that make it challenging for a choir such as ours that is used to square, predictable harmonies of Bach and Handel or the flowing melodies of Mendelssohn or Brahms.

A native of London, Jacob studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where his teachers included Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Sir Hubert Parry and Herbert Howells. He taught briefly at other schools before returning to the Royal College as a lecturer in 1926; he was to remain there until his retirement in 1966.

The opening voluntary is an organ arrangement of a tune that first appeared in A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony in1820. The tune, DETROIT, is found in our hymnal at no. 674, Forgive Our Sins As We Forgive. The composer of the organ prelude is Gardner Read. Professor emeritus of composition at Boston University, Read was a prolific composer of orchestral, choral, and chamber works and pieces for piano, organ, and solo voice. In addition, he authored a number of texts on musical notation and composition.

Gardner Read
Between 1941 to 1948, Read headed the composition departments at the St. Louis Institute of Music, the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1948, he was appointed composer-in-residence and professor of composition at the School of Music, Boston University, retiring in 1978. In addition, Read served as principal conductor with the St. Louis Philharmonic Orchestra in 1943 and 1944, and put in guest conducting appearances over the years with the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic, and various university orchestras in performances of his own works.



Friday, February 15, 2019

Music for February 17, 2019 + The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

  • Blessed Is the Man - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
  • O How Amiable – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Instrumental Music

  • Grazioso – Arnold B. Sherman (b. 1948)
  • Partita on  Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten - Georg Böhm (1661–1733)
  • Präludium in A Minor - Georg Böhm

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

  • Hymn 423 - Immortal, invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO)
  • Hymn R191 - O Christ, the healer, we have come (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
  • Hymn 635 - If thou but trust in God to guide thee (WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT)
  • Hymn R127 - Blest are they, the poor in spirit (BLEST ARE THEY)
  • Hymn R224 - Healer of my soul (John Michael Talbot)
  • Hymn 493  - O for a thousand tongues to sing (AZMON)

Two anthems by the choir, plus a work for Handbells, are featured in this Sunday's music. 
First is a work by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Known primarily for his symphonies, concertos and ballets, Tchaikovsky was also deeply interested in the music and liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1878 he set the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom to music, followed by the All-Night Vigil and nine sacred songs. All of these were of seminal importance in the later interest in Orthodox music, which up until this time was highly controlled by the Imperial Chapel.

This anthem, Blessed Is the Man, is not the "Blazhen Muzh" (Blessed is the man - Psalm 1) from his All-Night Vigil, but is a creation by Gene Lowell, an American choral director active in the 1950s, who took a piano work of Tchaikovsky (In Church, the last number in his collection Album pour enfants, Op. 39) and added words based on two verses from Psalm 1.

 The offertory anthem is the grand work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the great English symphonist of the 20th century. Though he was described as "a cheerful agnostic," he was highly influential in the music of the Anglican church, not only writing some beautiful choral works, but serving as Musical Editor of the English Hymnal (1904) and writing two of our most beautiful and well-known hymntunes, SINE NOMINE (For all the Saints) and DOWN AMPNEY (Come Down, O Love Divine). His interest in folk songs and hymn tunes is evident in many of his works, including today's anthem. Terry Blaine, in his notes to the CD Anthem - Great British Hymns & Choral Works recorded by the Huddersfield Choral Society, wrote this about the anthem:
Simplicity is a keynote in Vaughan Williams’s O how amiable, and the reason is the circumstances in which it was composed. In 1934 the novelist E.M. Forster wrote “The Abinger Pageant”, a play about the history of England, performed to aid preservation work at a church near where he lived in Surrey. Vaughan Williams’s anthem was written to be sung by amateur performers as part of the festivities, and the mainly unison writing reflects this. It also emphasizes the communal nature of the pageant experience, as does the addition of a verse from the famous hymn “O God our help in ages past” at the conclusion. (c) 2016 by Terry Blaine
The Handbell piece at communion is a beautiful work written in memory of Norma Taubert Brown, a handbell ringer, who died of cancer in 1988. The music tells the story of Norma's life, her struggle with illness, and her ultimate journey to heaven.  Each section of the music reflects this journey.

It was commissioned by Area 10 of the Handbell Musicians of America right after Norma had been in Seattle to share the podium with Arnold Sherman, the composer of Grazioso. She was ill at that time but wanted to keep her commitment to conduct at the Greater Puget Sound Festival. When she was not conducting, she would lay on a couch  that had been moved into the gym. When it  was her turn to conduct, she  seemed to have extra strength to ascend the podium,  conduct her rehearsal as if she were in perfect health and then return to the couch after she had finished.  She passed away two weeks later.

Arnold Sherman is director of Music and Fine Arts at Pollard United Methodist Church in Tyler, Texas as well as a free-lance composer and co-founder of Red River Music. His undergraduate work in music education was done at Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland, and Baylor University, Waco, Texas. Arnold was the founder and Director of the East Texas Handbell Ensemble. A clinician and guest conductor, he has led choral and handbell workshops, festivals, and reading sessions throughout the United States, Canada, England, Japan and the Bahamas. Arnold has over four hundred choral and handbell pieces in print and has been an active member of the AGEHR where he has served as Area IX Chairman.



Friday, February 8, 2019

Music for February 10, 2019 + The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

  • O, Praise God in His Holiness – Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)

Instrumental Music

  • Variations on “Nicea” – Piet Post (1919-1979)
  • Benedictus: Chromhorne en Taille (Mass for the Parishes) – François Couperin (1668-1733)
  • Carillon on “St. Edmund” – Malcolm Archer

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

  • Hymn 362 - Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty (NICEA)
  • Hymn - Tú has venido a la orilla (PESCADOR)
  • Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
  • Hymn R208  - Santo, santo, santo (UNKNOWN)
  • Hymn R149 - I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM, LORD)
  • Hymn R308 - Thuma Mina (Send Me, Lord)  (THUMA MINA)
  • Hymn 537 - Christ for the world we sing (MOSCOW)
  • Psalm 138:1-6, 8-9 - simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome W.  Meachen
holy (adjective): exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." - Isaiah 6:1-3
This beautiful passage from the prophet Isaiah, used as the first scripture lesson this Sunday, was the inspiration for much of today's music. I look for any reason to sing the hymn "Holy, holy, holy," so it was a natural choice to begin the service, not only as the opening hymn, but also as the opening voluntary. 

I begin with four variations based on the tune NICAEA by contemporary Dutch composer Piet Post. He was the organist from 1949 to 1979 of the Jacobijnerkerk in Leeuwarden.  After hearing a pretty straight-forward setting of the hymn, you will hear (I.) a lilting setting of the tune in a flowing 6/8 rhythm, (II.) a light, fantasy style movement outlining the melody with rapid flourishes using the 8' and 2' flutes in the swell, (III.) a variation featuring a 16th-note ostinato pattern accompanying the melody, played in the left hand on an oboe stop, and finally (IV.) a slow movement in 3/4 time with a steady, insistent quarter-note pulse provided by the pedal. The piece then concludes with a Finale which I will use to introduce the hymn.

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1922)
by Herbert Lambert

We continue to focus on the holiness of God with the anthem by English composer Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, O, Praise God in His Holiness, written for the 1953 Festival of the Federation of Essex Women's Institutes in honor of the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It is a festive setting of Psalm 150.

Gibbs studied at Cambridge and with Vaughan Williams at the RCM, where he taught (1921-39). His best works are his songs, especially to poems by de la Mare, but he also wrote much for choirs and chamber orchestras and achieved immense success with his slow waltz Dusk, which Queen Elizabeth requested for her 18th birthday.