Music for June 27, 2021 + The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• For the Beauty of the Earth – David Ashley White (b. 1944)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

1. Hymn 518 Christ is made the sure foundation (WESTMINSTER ABBEY)
2. Hymn 707 Take my life and let it be consecrated (HOLLINGSIDE)
3. Hymn 493 O for a thousand tongues to sing (AZMON)
4. Psalm 30 – Tone VIIIa

This week I am on holiday visiting my children in Tennessee. Karen Silva has graciously agree to play the service, leading the choir through the anthem, a setting of the familiar text, For the Beauty of the Earth, by Houstonian David Ashley White.

It's a setting he wrote for his parents 50th anniversary. 

Music for June 20, 2021 + The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• We Shall Be Delivered – Sea Chanty, arr. Sanford Dole

Instrumental Music

• Fantaisie en ut - César Franck (1822-1890)
• Humbly I Adore Thee – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• March Pontificale – Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881)

Congregational Music (hymns from the Hymnal 1982, or Renew (marked “R”) or Lift Every Voice and Sing II (marked *)

• Hymn R194 - Jesus, what a Friend for sinners (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn* - When the storms of life are raging (STAND BY ME)
• Hymn 608 - Eternal Father, strong to save (MELITA)
• Psalm 107– Tone VIIIa

We all know sea shanties. A sea shanty (chantey or chanty) is a genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large merchant sailing vessels. They were found mostly on British and other European ships, and some had roots in lore and legend. These songs were simple, rhythmic melodies that were easy to learn and easy to sing. There is usually lots of repetition, either of lyrics or a refrain. The most commonly known is probably “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor.” The Gilligan’s Island theme song is written in the style of a sea shanty.

 
Sea shanties resurfaced in popular culture. In 2009 a BBC Radio presenter was in Cornwall on holiday and came across homemade CDs of some local fishermen. An agent travelled to Port Isaac and negotiated a recording contract worth £1 million for them with Universal Music Group, who, taking quite a gamble, signed them to a recording deal. To everyone’s surprise, Fisherman’s Friends and their album reached number 9 in the charts and achieved Gold Record status.

 
Then early this year, a Scotland-based postman named Nathan Evans posted a rendition of the New Zealand shanty "Soon May the Wellerman Come," on TikTok. Nathan’s incredible rendition of The Wellerman exploded on the platform and has even become something of a TikTok challenge.

Using the TikTok duet feature - which lets you record a video alongside another TikTok user - users are layering their harmonies over Nathan’s original video, including the renowned composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. To date, over 17.5 million people have watched the original video.

Taking that same song, “Soon May the Wellerman Come,” some Episcopal church musicians in California have rewritten the words to fit this Sunday’s Gospel lesson.

One day our Lord, his sermon over, said, “Let’s go off to the other shore.”
So each disciple took an oar and they began their voyage.
The boat set out for the other side and for an hour did gently ride,
but then the watchman loud did cry, “A storm is coming in!”
Then how the wind did blow, the waves did over the gunwales flow,
strong as the crew did row, the ship was close to found’rin’.

I have to admit, it’s a fun song to sing, and I hope it will help cement the lesson in our hearts as well as our minds.

All of the hymns reinforce the theme that Jesus calms our troubled seas. The opening hymn is Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners by the great Presbyterian evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman. The hymn includes these two stanzas:

Jesus! what a help in sorrow!

While the billows o'er me roll,

even when my heart is breaking,

he, my comfort, helps my soul.

    Refrain:

Hallelujah! what a Savior!

Hallelujah, what a Friend!

Saving, helping, keeping, loving,

he is with me to the end.

Jesus! what a guide and keeper!

While the tempest still is high,

storms about me, night o'ertakes me,

he, my pilot, hears my cry. [Refrain]

The opening and closing voluntaries are works by two Belgian organist who live at the same time, César Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck, who was based in Paris most of his adult life, and Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, who studied in Paris and Germany before returning to Belgium. 

Music for June 13, 2021 + The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Hymn of Promise – Natalie Sleeth (1930-1992)

Instrumental Music

• Symphonie Gothique: 2. Andante Sostenuto - Charles-Marie Widor (1844 –1937)
• Jerusalem My Happy Home – George Shearing (1919-2011)
• Praeludium from Suite in D Minor – Johann Krieger (1651–1735)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 525 The Church’s one foundation (AURELIA) 
• Hymn 302 Father, we thank thee who hast planted (LYONS)
• Hymn 657 Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Psalm 92 – Tone VIIIa

This Sunday the Good Shepherd SUMMER Choir will sing one of the simplest and loveliest anthems in our library, the beautiful Hymn of Promise by Natalie Sleeth. I have written about it before, so if you want to read the story of how it came to be, please go here.

Often we sing hymns which we have sung all our lives, and never think about what they mean. This Sunday, we are closing the 10:15 service with Charles Wesley's great hymn, Love divine, all loves excelling. It's one of the few hymns of that era that depicts God as a loving god, and not a judgmental deity. Every line in this hymn can be traced back to the Bible. Every thought is based on God's word. Here is an example of just the last stanza of the hymn:

Finish then thy new creation (2 Cor. 5:17)
Pure and spotless* let us be, (Cant. 4:7, Eph. 5:27
Let us see thy great salvation, (Heb 2:3, 2 Peter 3:14)
Perfectly restored in thee; (Psalm 51:12, Isaiah 49:6, 58:12)
Changed from glory into glory (2 Cor. 3:18)
Till in heaven we take our place (John 14:2-3)
Till we cast our crowns before thee (Rev 4:10)
Lost in wonder, love, and praise (Rev. 8:1)
* the original word was "sinless," influenced by John Wesley's belief that humans could strive toward perfection, thus being sinless.

But a couple of lines are a bit obscure. I want to lift those out and give an explanation of them.

Line five of the third stanza says we are "changed from glory into glory." This comes from 2nd Corinthians 3:18

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

You have to remember the story of Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. It's said that his face was shining so brightly from being around the glory of God that he had to veil his face to keep from blinding his people. This glory comes from knowing the Law of God. But with Christ, we are a new creation (see the first line) and, as William Barclay says in his Commentary,

...we see the glory of the Lord with no veil upon our faces, and because of that we, too, are changed from glory into glory. Just possibly what Paul means is that, if we gaze at Christ, we in the end reflect him. It is a law of life that we become like the people we gaze at. (William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, The Westminster Press, 1954)

And in the penultimate line, we sing about casting our crowns before him. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John describes an event that will take place sometime after the Judgment Seat of Christ. The scene involves twenty-four elders, sitting upon twenty-four thrones, all of which encircle the throne of God.

Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads …. (Revelation 4:4)
The twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne. (Revelation 4:10)

For the saints to cast their crowns before the throne of God is to publicly acknowledge Christ’s right (and His alone) to wear those crowns. At this time they will “give credit where credit is due.” During their lives, these believers had faithfully represented Christ to the world in both character and service. But the ability to do so had not been generated by their own will and power but, instead, by the will and power of God. 

Music for June 6, 2021 + The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Lead Me, Lord – S. S. Wesley (1810-1876)

Instrumental Music

• Partita on Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan (What God Ordains Is Always Good) – Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) 
• Nocturne in A Minor – David Karp
• Toccata in C – Johann Pachelbel 

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of the last hymn which is from Lift Every Voice and Sing II.)

• Hymn 594 Go of grace, and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
• Hymn 533 How wondrous and great thy works (LYONS)
• Hymn When peace like a river (VILLE DU HAVRE)
• Psalm 130– tone VIIIa

As I am away this week at the Diocese of Texas Music Camp for Youth, I am unable to go into a detailed account of the music. So here are some quick notes

The anthem is an excerpt from a much longer anthem, Praise the Lord, O my soul, by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, an English organist and composer. The grandson of Charles Wesley, he was born in London, and sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal as a boy. He learned composition and organ from his father, Samuel, completed a doctorate in music at Oxford, and composed for piano, organ, and choir. He was organist at Hereford Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, Leeds Parish Church, Winchester Cathedral, and Gloucester Cathedral. Wesley strove to improve the standards of church music and the status of church musicians; 

The original anthem was written in 1861, with this excerpt first published in 1905 in The Anthem Book, no. 8. But it was not until it was published in The Church Anthem Book in 1933 that it became quite popular. Now you can find this simple song in almost 30 hymnals, including the Episcopal book Lift Every Voice and Sing II, and the Renew hymnal which is in our pews.

Music by Johann Pachelbel opens and closes our service. First is a partita (an instrumental piece composed of a series of variations, as a suite) on the Lutheran Chorale What God Ordains Is Always Good (Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan). There are nine variations of varying difficulty and styles, even including a gigue, which is perhaps a little out of character for church music, but is fun to play, nevertheless.

During communion you will hear a Nocturne in A Minor by David Karp. As you mighty imagine, a nocturne is a slow, dreamy, sleepy kind of piece. This one is no exception. David Karp was on the piano faculty while I was at SMU, and, in fact, still is. He wrote this piece in memory of another professor at SMU, Louise Bianchi, who was Professor Emerita of Piano Pedagogy.

Dr. Karp is a nationally known pianist, composer, educator, lecturer and author, who holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Colorado with additional doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. At Southern Methodist, he teaches classes in performance, chamber music, improvisation, advanced class piano for piano majors, required piano classes for music majors and sight-reading classes for piano majors. In addition to his academic work,  he is prolific composer, with compositions numbering over several hundred and published by several major music publishers in America. These compositions are performed in competitions, recitals and a variety of music venues all over the world, often listed as required repertoire for students.