Music for October 25, 2020 + The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• My Jesus, I Love Thee – Dan Forrest, arr. (b. 1978) Bruce Bailey, Baritone

Instrumental Music

• Suite du Premier Ton – Louis Nicolas Clérambault (1676 1749)
• Duo
• Trio
• Basse et Dessus de Trompette
• Récits de Cromorne et de Cornet Séparé
• Choral Partita on Werde Munter – Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
• Trumpet Tune in D – David N. Johnson (1922-1987)

Bruce Bailey is singing a hymn familiar to Protestant Christians, "My Jesus, I Love Thee." I think the story of this hymn is fascinating, as told on the website hymnary.org:

Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, William Featherstone most likely wrote this hymn at the age of sixteen on the occasion of his conversion and/or baptism. He sent the text to his aunt in Los Angeles, who sent it to friends in London, where it was published anonymously in the London Hymn Book to a now forgotten tune. Adoniram Judson Gordon found it, wrote a new tune for it, and also published it anonymously in The Service of Song for Baptist Churches. It wasn’t until around 1930, fifty years after its publication, that enough research had been done to establish Featherstone as the author, who had died at the young age of 28. Today, it is a much loved hymn of assurance and confession of faith, with words of comfort and peace. And perhaps bolstering the power of the text is Featherstone’s story itself. A young man with no connections, who simply wrote a poem one night about his own faith, has, unbeknownst to him, come to bless millions. God certainly works in mysterious ways to use the gifts and talents of his people.

Today's arrangement of the hymn is by the North Carolina composer Dan Forrest. Originally published in 2011 as a choir anthem, this setting of the well-loved hymn, with a piano countermelody floating over top of the traditional hymn tune, was written as a memorial piece for one of Forrest's friends. The memorial setting was the reason for the tender musical style, as well as the choice of stanzas, including “I’ll love Thee in life, I’ll love Thee in death” and the triumphant final stanza about heaven. Forrest reset the choral piece as a solo work in the last 24 months.

In the last decade, Dan’s music has become well established in the repertoire of choirs in the U.S. and abroad, through both smaller works and his major works Requiem for the Living (2013), Jubilate Deo (2016), and LUX: The Dawn From On High (2018). Dan holds graduate degrees in composition and piano performance, and is active as a composer, educator, publisher, editor, and pianist. 

The opening voluntaries are from a Suite for Organ by the French composer and church organist, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault. Like so many musicians of the 18th century, Clérambault came from a musical family. His training began at an early age, and soon he was organist at various churches in France, including St. Sulpice (Paris). This suite was the first of what was to be a cycle of pieces in all keys but Clérambault never completed the cycle.

You'll hear four of the seven pieces. The titles describe the compositional form and registration (sounds) to be used. "Basse et Dessus de Trompette" is simply a piece employing both the bass and soprano (treble) registers of the trumpet stop. A "récit" is a piece in which a single voice emerges soloistically above all others by means of special registration. This is indicated in the title, here it's a Récit de Cromorne AND a Cornet - a solo stop made up of five different ranks of flute sounds at different pitches.)

The Choral partita during communion is a set of variations on the German Chorale Werde munter, mein Gemüte, which most people would recognize as the tune used for the choral part of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Originally used for an evening text, it is paired with a Eucharistic text in our hymnal, hymn 336 (Come with us, O blessed Jesus.) Even though we aren't able to sing this, the words will be printed in the bulletin for you to follow along. This is the third Sunday in a row I have played works by Johann Pachelbel. His music is so well suited for church! (And easy to play - usually!) You see, there is SO MUCH more to Pachelbel than his famous Canon in D!