Music for April 25, 2021 + The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Good Shepherd Sunday

Vocal Music

• Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us – William Bradley Roberts (b. 1947)

Instrumental Music

• He Leadeth Me/Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us – arr. Phillip Keveren (b. 1961)
• My Shepherd Will Supply My Need – arr. Brian Henkelmann (b. 1956)
• Communion – Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
• Tuba Tune – C. S. Lang (1891-1971)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “*” which are from Wonder, Love, and Praise.)

• Canticle*- Christ our Passover (Pascha nostrum) (SINE NOMINE)
• Hymn 208 - Alleluia! The Strife is O’er (VICTORY)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Psalm 23 - simplified Anglican chant by Jerome W. Meachen

The fourth Sunday of Easter is also called Good Shepherd Sunday, for the Psalm is always Psalm 23, and the Gospel reading references sheep. Many churches named after saints will often claim that saint's day as their "patronal" festival, so it is fitting that the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Kingwood should look to this day as our own feast day.

Jackson Hearn and Grace Tice
(looking for all the world like a prom picture)

With that in mind, we celebrate with music appropriate to the day. Not only does this Sunday mark the official return of the choir, but also brings a guest musician, the oboist (and my dear friend) Grace Tice. Grace is a free-lance musician in the Houston area, with degrees from North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas) and Rice. She has performed with the Houston Ballet Orchestra as well as several regional orchestras. She is a favorite of church musicians in Houston, because not only is she extremely musical but also because she lives up to her name, Grace.

Grace will be heard on the choir's anthem, a setting of the text "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us" which first appeared in Hymns for the Young, 1840, which was edited by Dorothy Ann Thrupp. Although no author's name appears with the text, it is thought that Thrupp wrote it, since she often published hymns anonymously, under the pseudonym "Iota," or simply using her initials. 

The text is coupled with a new tune written by William Bradley Roberts, the Professor Emeritus of Church Music at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria. Previously he was a parish musician, serving at St. John’s, Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C., and at churches in Tucson, Newport Beach, Louisville, and Houston, where he was a student at Houston Baptist University.

In addition to playing with the choir on their anthem, Grace and I will play arrangements of some "Shepherd Hymns" for oboe and piano. We will start with a "mash-up" of two American hymn-tunes associated with the texts He Leadeth Me and Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us. If you came to the Episcopal church out of any other Protestant tradition, you will likely recognize these two tunes.

He Leadeth Me is a hymn paraphrase of Psalm 23, written in the late 1800s by Baptist minister Joseph Gilmore. With its tune by William Bradbury, it has appeared in well over 1150 hymnals - with 50 of those being published since 1979. It is not in The Hymnal 1982.

The other tune in this "mash-up" (I still can't use that term without thinking of the TV series GLEE which introduced it to me.) is the  tune used in most hymnals for Savior, like a Shepherd lead us. This tune is named BRADBURY, after its composer, William Bradbury (the same William Bradbury who wrote He Leadeth Me.) This tune is pair with this text in at least 254 modern hymnals, while the tune in our hymnal, SICILIAN MARINERS, is paired only three times.

This arrangement of these two hymns is the work of Phillip Keveren, a multi-talented keyboard artist and composer living in Brentwood (Nashville), Tennessee. He composes in a variety of genres, and is widely acclaimed for his piano publications. Mr. Keveren is a prolific arranger, orchestrator and producer. His work is featured in numerous instrumental recordings, church choral, educational piano and Christian artist releases. His arrangements and compositions appear on recent projects by Sandi Patty, Travis Cottrell, Sara Groves and Ronan Tynan. Keveren holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition from California State University, Northridge, and a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Southern California.

The other piece in the opening voluntary is a oboe and piano setting of the Southern hymn, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need. It is arranged by Brian Henkelmann, a pianist, organist, composer and educator currently living in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where he is organist at the First United Methodist Church and on the faculty of Arkansas State University. Henkelmann holds a bachelor of arts in music from Moravian College, a master of arts in theological studies from Moravian Theological Seminary, and a master of church music from Concordia University Chicago.