Music for December 1, 2019 + Advent I

Vocal Music

• Zion Hears the Watchman Singing – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)

Instrumental Music

• “Sleepers, wake!” A voice astounds us – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Ecce Dominus Veniet – Marcel Dupre (1886-1971)
• Fugue in A Major – Johann Sebastian Bach

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

• Hymn 57 - Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 73 - The King shall come when morning comes (ST. STEPHEN)
• Hymn 74 - Blest be the King whose coming (VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN)
• Hymn R 152 - I want to walk as a child of the light (HOUSTON)
• Hymn R 92 - Prepare the way of the Lord (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 68 - Rejoice! rejoice, believers (LLANGLOFFAN)
• Psalm 122 – Tone 1f

One of my Facebook colleagues posted this week that if it’s Thanksgiving, Advent can’t be far behind. And it’s true this year, for many of us won’t be sick of turkey yet when we light the first candle on the Advent wreath this Sunday. And since this is year A of the lectionary cycle, we’ll hear these words from Romans13:11

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers… 

It just makes it easy when choosing music. One of the great Advent hymns is the German chorale, WACHET AUF, which you’ll find in our hymnal at hymn 61. It’s not that well known in our congregation, but so many composers from Bach’s time to today have arranged this hymn for choir or organ that I can use it several times, which is what I’m doing this Sunday.

First, you’ll hear it at the opening voluntary when I play J. S. Bach’s own organ transcription of his tenor solo from Cantata 140. It’s one of Bach’s most inspired melodies, and that’s just in the accompaniment! This casual, lyrical melody just goes alone, minding its own business, when suddenly, the watchman enters with his solemn warning, in the form of the chorale melody played on the trumpet stop. The two tunes don’t have anything to do with each other, yet they form to join a beautiful duet.

 The same chorale tune is used in the offertory anthem by a contemporary of Bach’s, Johann Gottfried Walther. Like Bach, Walther was an organist and composer of the Baroque era. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that of J.S. Bach, he was the famous composer's cousin. He also studied organ with Bach’s second cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach.

In 1707 he was appointed organist at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Weimar.  Bach had been appointed to the Duke of Weimar’s ‘Capelle und Kammermusik’in 1708. In 1712 Bach was godfather to J.G. Walther’s son. In his biography of Bach, J. N. Forkel told a story of how J. G. Walther played a trick on Bach, to cure him of boasting that there was nothing he could not read at sight.

Johann Gottfried Walther wrote sacred vocal works and numerous organ pieces, consisting mostly of chorale preludes. In fact, today’s anthem is one of his organ preludes which Mark Schweitzer arranged for choir. (It must be noted that Schweitzer, a fine singer and composer in his own right, died this past November in North Carolina. His passing will be a great loss to church musicians.)

The communion voluntary is an organ work by the brilliant French organist Marcel Dupré. Dupré’s international fame developed soon after the First World War as the direct result of his skill as an improviser, specifically on plainsong themes. The Six Antiennes pour les temps de Noël, Op.48, written in 1952, take as their basis the plainsongs of the Christmas antiphons. The first is for Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent;

Ecce Dominus veniet, et omnes sancti ejus cum eo: et erit in die illa lux magna, alleluia.

"Behold the Lord will come, and all his saints with him, and there will be a great light in that day, Alleluia."

Music for November 24, 2019 + Christ the King Sunday

Vocal Music

• My Eternal King – Jane Marshall (1924-2019)

Instrumental Music

• Duo (Glorificamus Te) Livre d'orgue  – Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703)
• Thou Man of Grief, Remember Me – Gardner Read (1913-2005)
• Crown Imperial – William Walton (1902-1983)

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

• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn 421- All glory be to God on high (ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HÖH)
• Hymn R 128 - Blessed be the God of Israel (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn R 268 - King of kings and Lord of lords (KING OF KINGS)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus! (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn R 229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R 227 - Jesus, remember me (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 477 - All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGLEBERG)

In 1952, Jane Marshall was a 28-year old housewife and mom in Dallas. (A real Dallas housewife!) She had a undergraduate degree in music, but her only musical outlet was singing in Highland Park Methodist Church choir. So she decided to write an piece of music for that choir, resulting in the anthem which we will sing this Sunday, My Eternal King. The piece proved to be a hit.

Published in 1954 by Carl Fischer Music, it became one of that venerable music publisher's all-time bestselling anthems and remains popular with choirs across denominations.

Jane Marshall, 2014

Using a text which began as a Spanish sonnet, translated into Latin by St. Francis Xavier, then translated in English by Anglican clergyman and later Roman Catholic convert-priest Edward Caswall in 1849, it is an anthem which has been referred to as the American equivalent of an English Cathedral anthem. Meditative at the start, soaring to triple fortissimo at the end, encompassing a range of tone colors and sumptuous harmonies, My Eternal King is a masterful match of text and music.

Jane went on to write another anthem, Awake, My Heart, which won the 1957 American Guild of Organist Anthem competition, and He Comes to Us, a setting of a text from Albert Schweitzer. Lloyd Pfautsch, director of choral activities and church music, encouraged her to return for her Master of Music degree in choral conducting and composition.

Jane Marshall was a much-published composer of choral music, a skilled choral conductor and clinician, and a gifted hymn writer of both texts and tunes. (Three of her hymn-tunes are in our Hymnal 1982.) Important as any of these accomplishments, she gave herself to pedagogy and mentorship both in the classroom setting with graduate students (she was one of my professors at SMU in 1981), in myriad workshop settings with novices in the field, and with individual consultations.

Music for November 17, 2019

Vocal Music

• The First Song of Isaiah – Jack Noble White (1938-2019)
• Praise the Lord who Reigns Above – Jody Lindh (b. 1944)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude in A Major, BWV 536 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Auf Meinen Lieben Gott – Dietrich Buxtehude
• Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott – Johann Pachelbel

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

• Hymn 688 - A mighty fortress is our God (EIN FESTE BURG)
• Hymn 482 - Lord of all hopefulness (SLANE)
• Hymn R 172 - In my life, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn - Steal away to Jesus (SPIRITUAL)
• Hymn 620 - Jerusalem, my happy home (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 598 - Lord Christ, when first thou cam’st to earth (MIT FREUDEN ZART)

The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is well represented by the choral music this Sunday. The Canticle is a setting of the First Song of Isaiah by Jack Noble White, an Episcopal musician who passed away this month in Fort Worth at the age of 81. The offertory is an anthem by Jody Lindh, a retired Methodist musician living in Dallas. Both anthems will be sung by our children's choir.

Since it was first published in 1976, White's FIRST SONG OF ISAIAH has been sung by millions of people worldwide. White was organist/choirmaster at the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Mobile, Alabama in 1975 when a group of 90 youth from California, Nevada, Nassau in the Bahamas, and Alabama gathered for a music conference near Mobile. White composed this setting for that group, including keyboard, guitar, drums, bass guitar, and handbells to accompany the choir. Today we will sing with just the piano as the Coventry Choir leads the congregation of the singing of this Canticle found in the Book of Common Prayer (which was in experimental use at the time.)

Jack Noble White

Jack Noble White spent most of his career in Texas, of which he is a sixth generation native. He divided his time between music and education. White served as Secretary of the Episcopal Church’s National Music Commission from 1962-1977. He began writing and publishing during that time and now has many works in print. In 1977 he became the Executive Director of The Texas Boys Choir, leading them into a continuous international limelight with numerous tours. He and his wife, Johanna, founded the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, still housing the 70-year-old choir. Retiring from that position in 1995, he devoted his attention to writing and other projects, including the Dorothy Shaw Bell Choir, and their annual Fort Worth play-pageant of the Nativity, The Littlest Wiseman, now in its 59th year.

Jody Lindh

Jody Lindh had an unusually long tenure as director of Music at University Park United Methodist in Dallas, beginning as organist while still a student at Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation, he was named director of music, where he served for 45 years until his retirement in 2013. He is married to Jonell Lindh, a semi-retired United Methodist Minister on staff of First United Methodist in Dallas.

A little known fact about Lindh: He’s a Lutheran. He's an associate member of University Park, but remains a member of Elim Lutheran Church in Marquette, Kansas, the church he grew up in. "My great-grandfather was a founder of Elim in the 1880s, and my whole family is there," he said. "I couldn't possibly leave it!"

Music for November 10, 2019 + Kirkin o' the Tartans

Vocal Music

• Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs – Paul Ritchie
• I Know that My Redeemer Liveth – G. F. Handel, Amy Bogan, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Highland Cathedral - James D. Wetherald, arr., Richard Kean, pip
  er 
• Traditional Piping Tunes – Richard Keen, piper

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

• Hymn R 5 - God is here, and we his people (ABBOTT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn 295 - Sing praise to our Creator (CHRISTUS, DER IS MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn - I know that my Redeemer lives (DUKE STREET)
• Hymn R 90 - Spirit of the Living God (LIVING GOD)
• Hymn R 36 - I love you, Lord (I LOVE YOU, LORD)
• Hymn 671 - Amazing grace! how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 625 - Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)
• Psalm 17:1-9 - Tone Vc, Refrain by Jane Marshall

This is a favorite Sunday for many parishioners at Good Shepherd when we “Kirk (or bless) the Tartans.” Though we have been doing this for over 20 years, it is still a relatively new thing, beginning in the early 1940s, when Peter Marshall (the Presbyterian minister who was chaplain of the Senate - not the game show host) held prayer services at New York Avenue Presbyterian in D.C to raise funds for War Relief. At one of the services, he preached a sermon called “Kirking of the Tartans,” and thus a legend was born. You can read a more detailed history here at the Scottish Tartans Museum website. (Side note: the Scottish Tartan Museum is in Franklin, North Carolina, NOT Scotland)

Samuel Seabury

The reason we "kirk the tartans" is to remember our Anglican history,  specifically Samuel Seabury, the first American Anglican bishop who was consecrated by the Scottish Bishops of the Anglican church during the Revolutionary War. (England was a bit upset with the Americans, so they would have no part of that!) Thus we commemorate his consecration on the Sunday nearest his feast daym which is the anniversary of his consecration as a bishop, November 14, 1784. We wear our tartans, hang them in the church, and hear the bagpipe play. For twelve years now we have begun the service with the piper playing Highland Cathedral and end with him playing traditional piping tunes.

Amy Bogan, our soprano section leader, is singing one of the favorite arias from Handel's Messiah, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.  It's the opening movement of the third part of the oratorio, which is considered to be the Easter section, but the text is not New Testament, but is mainly from the Old Testament book of Job. As our first lesson this Sunday is that passage from Job, it is only fitting that Amy sing it during communion.