"Hear my Prayer" – "a trifle", as he modestly calls it – is one of Mendelssohn's most popular and widely-known choral works. It was written at the request of Mr. William Bartholomew for a series of Concerts given at Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate Street, in the "forties", by Miss Mounsey, who afterwards became Mrs. Bartholomew. The work was first performed at Crosby Hall on January 8, 1845, with Miss Mounsey at the organ, and was published in the same year by Messrs. Ewer and Co…
The Old Testament lesson this Sunday is the account of the children of Israel being led out of Egypt and crossing the Red Sea. The first song I thought of was the old Negro Spiritual, Go Down, Moses.
Many of the Negro Spirituals, which were sung in the field as well as in church meetings, were "code songs," songs that sounded like Bible stories, but with double meanings which were most often covert. Therefore, only Christian slaves understood them, and even when ordinary words were used, they reflected personal relationship between the slave singer and God.
The codes of the first negro spirituals are often related with an escape to a free country. For example, a "home" is a safe place where everyone can live free. So, a "home" can mean Heaven, but it covertly means a sweet and free country, a haven for slaves.
"Go Down, Moses" does not employ the hidden symbolism of the code songs.
Only a very obtuse listener can miss its point. It says flatly that Moses freed these Egyptian slaves boldly and justly because slavery is wrong. It clearly projects the principles of this experience to all the world: wherever men are held in bondage, they must and shall be freed. The "Let my people go!" refrain is thunderous. It does not argue economic, sociological, historical, and racial points. . . . It wastes no words and moves relentlessly toward its goal of filling every listener with a pervasive contempt for oppression and a resounding enthusiasm for freedom. -from Black Song, 1972, pp. 326-327
Vater unser im Himmelreich is Martin Luther’s interpretation of the Our Father: the only prayer that came directly from Jesus himself and which has thus always had a special place in Christianity.
Of the various organ arrangements Bach made of this chorale, this is the most subdued and timeless. The piece is written in stile antico – the ‘ancient’, vocal, polyphonic composition style of the sixteenth century. Bach may have used the ‘ancient style’ here to emphasise the fact that Vater unser im Himmelreich is a prayer, implying words and thoughts, either spoken or sung. In fact, this arrangement is a four-part motet in the ancient style and you could easily perform the whole piece in song. Occasionally, there is a slightly more daring harmony, which is all that betrays the fact that this piece is not really a motet from the 1500s.
This tune is found in our hymnal at hymn 575, though to a different text. (Before thy throne, O God.)
As a singer he has performed with the Houston Symphony, the Houston Choral Society, Houston Chamber Choir, Greenbriar Consortium, the San Antonio Symphony, and Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Opera in the Heights, and Carnegie Hall.
He is probably best known in Kingwood as the director of the Kingwood Chorale, which he has conducted since 1996, and as director of music at First Presbyterian Church in Kingwood. Since both churches are yet to meet live, it made it possible for us to collaborate for the music this Sunday.
I often joke when someone asks what music we will be doing on Sunday and say "Something by some dead white man."
The names of women and people of color are sorely lacking when you look at the list of music so often sung in most congregations. So when Todd gave me a choice between two songs, I chose "The Lord Is My Light," by the British composer Mary Frances Allitsen. So this Sunday I get to talk about a dead white WOMAN!
Frances Allitsen was born as Mary Bumpus in London, but her family moved to a small village where Frances felt isolated and lonely. She said of that time, "It was impossible to go out walking of an afternoon without it being imputed that I was going to see the young men come in on the train, where the chief subject of conversation was garments, and the most extravagant excitement sandwich parties." Her family did not support her interest in music and as a result she was discouraged from seeking a formal education in the subject.
She began her musical career as a singer, but her voice failed and she ended her singing career and turned to voice coaching and composing. She took some of her compositions to Thomas Henry Weist Hill, principal of the Guildhall School of Music, and he expressed his regret that she had put off serious study till so late. She began to apply herself to her musical studies with determination, but because she had to teach in order to support herself, and, at that time, this required travelling to her pupils' residences on trains and buses, she had to confine her studies to the night hours, in a state of fatigue. Later, on tour in America to promote her music, she told Etude magazine that, looking back, she scarcely knew how she lived through those days.
Allitsen published over fifty songs in many different styles, the most successful being the setting of Psalm 27 which we will hear this Sunday.
She also wrote two overtures, entitled Undine and Slavonique, a Funeral March, and a Tarantella, (which were performed by the Royal Artillery Band and by the Crystal Palace orchestra), and other piano pieces.
The opening voluntary is one of Bach's Schübler Chorales, "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" ("Whither shall I flee?") Named after its publish, Johan Georg Schübler, the original title was Sechs Chorale von verschiedener Art: auf einer Orgel mit 2 Clavieren und Pedal vorzuspielen (lit. 'six chorales of diverse kinds, to be played on an organ with two manuals and pedal')
At least five preludes of the compilation are transcribed from movements in Bach's church cantatas, mostly chorale cantatas he had composed around two decades earlier. The only questionable one is the one I'm playing today. There is no extant model from which the chorale prelude may have transcribed. Most scholars assume that the source cantata is one of the 100 or so believed to have been lost.
The trio scoring of the movement suggests the original may have been for violin, or possibly violins and violas in unison (right hand), and continuo (left hand), with the chorale (pedal) sung by soprano or alto.
