Music for January 10, 2021 + The Baptism of Our Lord

Vocal Music

• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – William Roger Price (b. 1955)
• Camryn Creech, soprano and Harrison Boyd, baritone
• Hymn 297 Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)

Instrumental Music

• When Jesus went to Jordan’s Stream, BWV 684 and 685 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Chorale – Ola Gielo (b. 1978)
• Toccata in E, BWV 566 – Johann Sebastian Bach

This Sunday, the focus of the service is Jesus' baptism. Jesus goes to the River Jordan and is baptized by his cousin John (hereinafter known as "the Baptist," meaning his action, not denominational affiliation). Baptism offered a new beginning, and this was true of Jesus. Mark;s Gospel includes nothing of Jesus' life before his baptism, where Jesus went public and begins his ministry.

The Baptism of Christ Window 
at Good Shepherd

To mark that, I am playing two preludes by J. S. Bach based on the Lutheran hymn Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Hymn 139 in our hymnal, When Jesus went to Jordan's stream.) These two chorale preludes are found in the third volume of his Clavier-Übung, which means keyboard exercises, but in typical Bach fashion, they are really beautiful works of art. The first, BWV 684, is a four-part setting for two manuals and pedal; and the second, BWV 685, a setting for single manual with no pedal part. 

BWV 684 is a trio sonata with the melody in the tenor register of the pedal . Bach specifically stipulates two keyboards to give different sonorities to the imitative upper parts and the bass part. In the left hand you’ll hear an unceasing figure of flowing 16th notes which give the idea of the water flowing at the Jordan River, while the right hand motif depicts the descending of the Holy Spirit over Jesus Christ.

The manualiter chorale prelude BWV 685, despite being only 27 bars long and only in three-parts, is a complex composition with dense fugal writing. The subject and countersubject are both derived from the first line of the cantus firmus (the melody). The subject is presented three times as written, and three time inverted (or turned upside down.) Hermann Keller suggested that this represents the three immersions at baptism. Others have seen allusions to the Trinity in the three voices. The subject and countersubject have been seen as representing Luther's baptismal themes of Old Adam and New Man.

The closing voluntary, the Toccata in E Major, BWV 566, is the first of five sections of a larger organ work written by J. S. Bach when he was young. In 1703, when he was but 18, Bach was appointed organist at the New Church in Arnstadt. In 1705, he was granted a four week leave of absence to visit the organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude in the northern city of Lübeck. The visit to Buxtehude involved a 280 mile journey each way, reportedly on foot. Four weeks turned into four months, which did NOT sit well with his employer. 

This work is probably from that period, for its compositional form resembles that of the preludes by Buxtehude. The first section alternates manual or pedal cadenzas with dense suspended chords.

Bach also wrote a transposed version of the piece in C major (BWV 566a), to play on organs tuned in meantone where E major would sound discordant due to the tuning of the organ (with a very sharp D♯). Modern organs or those tuned to a more equal temperament do not have this need.

Our offertory today is a setting of the hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, arranged by the Oklahoma composer and pianist, Roger Price. It is sung by our college students Camry Creech and Harrison Boyd, who are singing one last time before returning to their respective schools in Oklahoma (Camryn - Oklahoma City University) and Mississippi (Harrison - The University of Mississippi.)