Music for December 29, 2019 + Christmas 1

Vocal Music

• Jesu Bambino – Pietro Yon (1886-1943) Bruce Bailey, baritone

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

• Hymn 107 - Good Christians friends, rejoice (IN DULCI JUBILO)
• Hymn 93 - Angels from the realms of glory (REGENT SQUARE)
• Hymn 101 - Away in a manger (CRADLE SONG)
• Hymn 115 -  What child is this, who, laid to rest (GREENSLEEVES)
• Hymn -  Child of blessing, child of promise (STUTTGART)
• Hymn 105 - God rest you merry, gentlemen (GOD REST YOU MERRY)
• Psalm 147:13-21 - Tone VII

The music of Christmas continues this Sunday at Good Shepherd, as we sing some of the carols we did NOT sing on Christmas Eve, and Bruce Bailey sings a favorite Christmas solo by the Italian born composer Pietro Yon. 

Despite being born in the Italian town of Settimo Vittone (near Turin) , Yon is considered to be among the most important American composers of sacred music for the Catholic Church in the first half of the twentieth century. 

After his 1905 graduation from colleges in Milan, Turn, and Rome, Yon served as one of the regular Vatican organists until his move to New York in 1907. He was appointed organist at St. Francis Xavier Church, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1921.In 1927, Yon accepted the coveted post of organist at St. Patrick's Cathedral, a position he held up to his death.

Yon's output was substantial and included 21 masses, many motets, and various other sacred works, solo organ and piano pieces, songs, chamber, and orchestral compositions, including several concertos, but his best-known work by far is his 1917 Christmas hymn Gesu Bambino (Baby Jesus).

Music for the Christmas Services

Monday, December 24: Christmas Eve

(4:00 PM) The Coventry Choir

Vocal Music

• What Child Is This? – English Carol, arr. Jackson Hearn (b. 1958)
• Candlelight, Burning Bright – Helen Kemp (1918-2015)
• How Far Is It to Bethlehem – arr. Jackson Hearn

Instrumental Music

• The Alfred Burt Carols – Arr. Mark Hayes (b. 1953)
• Caroling, Caroling
• The Star Carol
• Some Children See Him
• Come, Dear Children
• Bells of Christmas – arr. Patricia Sanders Cota (b. 1954)
• Come, All Ye Faithful
• Angels We Have Heard on High
• Away in a Manger
• Joy to the World
• Carillon On A Ukrainian Carol - Gerald Near (b. 1942-)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal.)

• Hymn 83 -  O come, all ye faithful (ADESTE FIDELES)
• Hymn 96 - Angels we have heard on high (GLORIA)
• Hymn 100 -  Joy to the world! (ANTIOCH)
• Hymn 87 - Hark! the herald angels sing (MENDELSSOHN)
• Hymn 111 - Silent night, holy night  (STILLE NACHT)                     
• Hymn 99 - Go, tell it on the mountain (GO, TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN)

(6:30 PM) The Good Shepherd Choir

Vocal Music

• My Dancing Day –Alice Parker (b 1925)
• A Great and Mighty Wonder – Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
• Ding Dong, Merrily on High – Charles Wood (1866-1926)
• And There Were Shepherds (from Christmas Oratorio) – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Lully, Lulla, Lullay – Philip Stopford (b. 1977)
• Falan Tidings – Donald Pearson (b. 1959)
• The Little Road to Bethlehem – Michael Head (1900-1976), Allison Gosney, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Noel X – Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772)
• Lo, How a Rose Is Springing  – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Carillon On A Ukrainian Carol - Gerald Near (b. 1942)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 83 -  O come, all ye faithful (ADESTE FIDELES)
• Hymn 96 - Angels we have heard on high (GLORIA)
• Hymn 100 - Joy to the world! (ANTIOCH)
• Hymn 87 - Hark! the herald angels sing (MENDELSSOHN)
• Hymn 111 - Silent night, holy night  (STILLE NACHT)                     
• Hymn 79  - O little town of Bethlehem (ST. LOUIS)
• Hymn 89 - It came upon a midnight clear (TUNE)
• Psalm 96  - (setting by Thomas Pavlechko)

British composer Philip Stopford composed this version of the Coventry Carol in 2008.

The original Coventry Carol dates from the 16th century and was traditionally performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The rocking lullaby tells the story of the Massacre of the Innocents — when King Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two to be killed.

It's sung though from a mother's perspective, as a beautiful lament for her doomed child.

(10:00 PM) Allison Gosney, soprano

• Jesu Bambino – Pietro Yon (1886-1943)
• The Little Road to Bethlehem – Michael Head (1900-1976)

Instrumental Music

• Noel X – Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772)
• Lo, How a Rose Is Springing  – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Carillon On A Ukrainian Carol - Gerald Near (b. 1942)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal.)

• Hymn 83 -  O come, all ye faithful (ADESTE FIDELES)
• Praise 96 - Angels we have heard on high (GLORIA)
• Hymn 87 - Hark! the herald angels sing (MENDELSSOHN)
• Hymn 79 - O little town of Bethlehem (ST. LOUIS)
• Hymn 89 - It came upon a midnight clear (TUNE)
• Hymn 111 - Silent night, holy night  (STILLE NACHT)                     
• Hymn 100 - Joy to the world! (ANTIOCH)

Tuesday, December 25: Christmas Day (10:00 AM)

Organ music and hymns

Instrumental Music

• Noel X – Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772)
• Lo, How a Rose Is Springing  – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• The Alfred Burt Carols – Arr. Mark Hayes (b. 1953)
• I. Caroling, Caroling
• II. The Star Carol
• III. Some Children See Him
• IV. Come, Dear Children
• Carillon On A Ukrainian Carol - Gerald Near (b. 1942)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal.)

• Hymn 83 -  O come, all ye faithful (ADESTE FIDELES)
• Praise 96 - Angels we have heard on high (GLORIA)
• Hymn 89 - It came upon a midnight clear (TUNE)
• Hymn 87 - Hark! the herald angels sing (MENDELSSOHN)
• Hymn 100 - Joy to the world! (ANTIOCH)

Music for December 22, 2019 + Advent IV

Vocal Music

• Maria Walks Amid the Thorn – Hugo Distler (1908-1942)

Instrumental Music

• Ave Maria – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659 & 661 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

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

• Hymn 66 - Come, thou long expected Jesus (STUTTGART)
• Hymn 54 - Savior of the nations, come! (NUN KOMM, DER HEIDEN HEILAND)
• Hymn 475  - God himself is with us (TYSK)
• Hymn R 26 - Jesus, name above all names (HEARN)
• Hymn 56 - O come, O come, Emmanuel (VENI EMMANUEL)
• Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 (setting by Thomas Pavlechko)

This Sunday the choir is really stretching themselves and singing a (hopefully) unaccompanied setting of a German folk song, "Maria durch ein Dornwald ging" (English: "Maria walks amid the thorns", arranged by the 20th century German composer, Hugo Distler.

Hugo Distler

The carol comes from sixteenth century Germany (although it is probably much older) and commemorates the barrenness of the the Old Testament, the longing and waiting, and the flowering of sanctity and joy with the coming of the Messiah. It describes the walk of Mary with the child "under her heart," referring to the story of the visit of Mary to Elizabeth as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, Luke 1:39–56. It ends with the motif of the dead thornwood, a symbol of fertility and death, which begins to bloom during pass of Mary with the divine child.

Hugo Distler is at once one of the more promising and yet most tragic of the German composers of the first half of the twentieth century. John Lienhard, of Houston Public Radio's "Engines of Our Ingenuity," talked about Distler on one of those episodes. I will include his remarks below. (You can listen to it here, in case you'd rather do that - just NOT in church!)

As I listened to a piece by German composer Hugo Distler yesterday, it struck me how remarkable his music was. Distler wrote primarily for chorus and organ, and, if you know his work, you're aware of an utterly distinctive musical flavor.

Hugo Distler was born in Nuremberg in 1908. His high-school years were those of the Weimar Republic and the intense flowering of high German culture that followed WW-I. He studied music at Leipzig Conservatory. The sound of hobnail boots was being heard in the streets of Bavaria, but the sound still seemed far away.

 Just a few years later, Hitler came to power, and the great minds of that period began scattering out of Germany -- people like Albert Einstein, Theodore von Kármán, Paul Tillich, and Bruno Walter. Goebbels named composer Paul Hindemith a cultural Bolshevist and a spiritual non-Aryan in 1934. Hindemith wound up at Yale, Einstein at Princeton, and von Kármán at Cal Tech.

 But Distler was only 25 when Hitler took over -- the newest musical talent of his age. He'd just been made head of the chamber music department at Lübeck Conservatory, and he was still too young to be a target. Yet he was driven by spiritual imperatives that cast a whole new light on traditional church music.

 He brought the declamatory joy of baroque composers like Heinrich Schütz to the foursquare old melodies of the German Reformation. His music was quirky but beautiful, tonal yet chromatic. He made the old melodies dance with delight. It is a sound utterly unlike any other. Once you hear it, you don't forget it.

 But it was a sound heard in the wrong place at the wrong time. A trip I took in 1978 reminds me of what Distler faced. A Polish colleague, driving me down the valley from Silesia to Krakow, stopped to show me Auschwitz. What a chamber of horrors! A sign on one wall explained how the exterminations were scheduled. Jews were allowed to starve for months as they waited their turn in the gas chambers. But clergy were rushed to the head of the line. They were considered too dangerous to keep around.

 Suppressing the established German church was dicey business for the Nazis. But suppress it they would. Distler represented religious intensity the Nazis couldn't tolerate. They told him he was trouble and his music was degenerate. He would be taken from his church post and shipped off to the Wehrmacht! Conscientious objection was treason punishable by death, and Distler could never support the war. So, disillusioned and depressed, he put his head in his own gas oven and ended his life at the age of 34.

He lived not even as long as Mozart, and he worked in a far more hostile climate. His brilliance was a side road that never properly joined the mainstream of twentieth-century musical evolution. Music would not sound the same today if it had. I'll never forget my sense of pure surprise the first time I sang Distler.

Music for December 15, 2019 + Advent III

Vocal Music

• O Jesus, Grant Me Hope and Comfort – Johann Wolfgang Franck (1644-1710)

Instrumental Music

• Aria (The Goldberg Variations) – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Once He Came in Blessing – John Leavitt (b. 1956)
• Magnificat on the Ninth Tone – Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

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

• Hymn 59 - Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding (Merton)
• Hymn S 242 - Canticle: The Song of Mary (Magnificat) – Tonus Peregrinus
• Hymn 493 - O for a thousand tongues to sing (Azmon)
• Hymn 60 -  Creator of the stars of night (Conditor alme siderum)
• Hymn 615 - “Thy kingdom come!” on bended knee (St. Flavian)
• Hymn R 278 - Wait for the Lord (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 76 - On Jordan’s banks the Baptist’s cry (Winchester New)

You could call all the music this Sunday basically Baroque . All but one of the choral and organ music is written by composers of the Baroque period, that period of music from 1600-1750 characterized by the music of such composers as J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi. The one lone stand-out is by contemporary American composer John Leavitt, and even his organ setting of the Advent Chorale Gottes Sohn ist kommen ("Once He Came in Blessing" in our hymnal) is imitative of an organ chorale of Bach, with a long, solo melodic line which is highly ornamented, contrasted against an almost metronomic eighth-note accompaniment grouped into two-beat, sighing motives. So all the music sounds Baroque in spite of the century in which it was written. (Which leads me to say, If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.)

A native of Kansas, John Leavitt received the Kansas Artist Fellowship Award from the Kansas Arts in 2003 and in 2010 he was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces to commission a new choral work in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the State of Kansas.  His music has been performed in 30 countries across the globe and his recordings have been featured nationally on many public radio stations. His compositions are represented by nearly every major music publisher in this country. In addition to his academic posts, he has served Lutheran churches in the Wichita area.

The choir's anthem is a beautiful little motet by the German composer Johann Wolfgang Franck, who was better known during his time as a composer for theatre. He began his career, however, in the service of the Margrave of Ansbach where he composed a considerable body of sacred music for the court chapel. In 1677 he was made court chaplain, but this came to an end in January 1679 when he was forced to flee after murdering one of the chapel musicians and wounding his own wife in a fit of jealousy.

No wonder he turned to opera.

I guess 17th century Bavaria did not possess "the long arm of the law," as he found asylum in Hamburg, becoming musical director of the The Oper am Gänsemarkt, the first public (not court supported) opera in Germany. Here he produced 14 operas between 1679 and 1686. From 1690 to 1695 he was in London, in whose concert life he was an active participant.

December 8, 2019 + Advent II

Vocal Music

• A Shoot Shall Come Forth – Richard Horn (1938-2004)

Instrumental Music

• Partita on Comfort, Comfort Ye, My People – Georg Böhm (1661 – 1733)

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 kleines Walvögelein)
• Hymn 67  - Comfort, comfort ye, my people (Psalm 42)
• Hymn R 92 - Prepare the way of the Lord (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 307 - Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor (Bryn Calfaria)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (Land of Rest)
• Hymn 65 - Prepare the way, O Zion (Bereden vag for Herran)
• Psalm 72:1-8 – Tone Ig

By now, church musicians, like many other American consumers, are experiencing the "Christmas Crush (or, as we'd rather call it, "Advent Angst.") As of this writing, I have yet to complete the first full week of December, but already I'm worn out. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on these music notes this week.

Except to say - all the organ music (the opening, closing, and communion voluntaries) is from one large set of variations on the tune we use for Hymn 67 - our Gospel hymn this week. I'll be using four segments of the partita during the service.

Our hymnal calls the tune Psalm 42, because this form of the tune, with its highly rhythmic, dance-like meter, was first used with a French version of Psalm 42. It first appeared in 1551 toward the end of the Renaissance, in a Psalter edited by Louis Bourgeois. It was he who probably wrote this tune.

In the German Lutheran tradition, those sprightly rhythms were toned down to a staid quarter-note melody in 4/4 time. (One of my church-musician friends calls it "death by quarter-note.") It is the Lutheran version that Georg Böhm used as the theme for his partita.

Georg Böhm  was a German Baroque organist and composer who is best known today for his keyboard works, particularly the chorale partita. A partita is a large-scale composition consisting of several variations on a particular chorale melody. He effectively invented the genre, writing several partitas of varying lengths and on diverse tunes.  Böhm's chorale partitas feature sophisticated figuration in several voices over the harmonic structure of the chorale. His partitas generally have a rustic character and can be successfully performed on either the organ or the harpsichord. Later composers also took up the genre, most notably Johann Sebastian Bach, who was influenced by Böhm  as a young musician.

Bach's son,  Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, wrote that his father loved and studied Böhm's music, and a correction in his note shows that his first thought was to say that Böhm was Johann Sebastian's teacher. In 2006,  the earliest known Bach autographs were discovered, including one signed "Il Fine â Dom. Georg: Böhme descriptum ao. 1700 Lunaburgi". The "Dom." bit may suggest either "domus" (house) or "Dominus" (master), but in any case it proves that Bach knew Böhm personally. This connection must have become a close friendship that lasted for many years, for in 1727 Bach named none other than Böhm as his northern agent for the sale of keyboard partitas nos. 2 and 3