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.