Music for March 13, 2022 + The Second Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• According to thy Gracious Word – W. A. Mozart (17), arr. Mark Schweizer (1956-2019)

Instrumental Music

• Three versets on the Kyrie (Messe à l’usage ordinaire des Paroisses) – François Couperin (1668 - 1733)
• Dialogue sur la trompette et le chromorne 
• Récit de chromorne 
• Fugue sur les jeux d'anche

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 147 - Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON)
• Hymn 143 - The glory of these forty days (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn R243 - You shall cross the barren desert (BE NOT AFRAID)
• Hymn 598 - Lord Christ, when first thou cam’st to earth (MIT FREUDEN ZART)

Today's anthem is ostensibly by Mozart, but I think there is more Schweizer than Mozart in this piece. This is the second week in a row that we have sung a choral work arranged by Mark Schweizer.  Schweizer was truly an interesting and talented man. A native of Florida, he received music degrees from Stetson University in Deland, Florida and the University of Arizona including a doctoral degree in vocal performance. He returned to teach at Stetson University from 1982 to 1985 followed by eight years on the music faculty of Louisiana College. 

Mark moved to North Carolina where he founded St. James Music Press, where he served as editor, publisher, and composer. It was a groundbreaking idea, publishing books of choral music which the purchaser could then legally photocopy  as many copies as needed. And just like Netflix, Kindle, and the iPod changed the way people viewed movies, read books, and listened to music, SJMP gave music directors like me a new way to acquire music for our choirs. This has been extremely helpful during the time of the pandemic, when choral forces changed rapidly and music (and church) budgets shrank.

He wrote fifteen “Liturgical Mystery” novels, stories centered around Hayden Koenig, the chief of police AND organist at the Episcopal Church in the little town of St. Germaine, North Carolina. They are as full of humor as they are of mystery. 

He died of a glioblastoma in 2019.

All the organ music for the morning comes from Messe pour les paroisses by the French Baroque composer François Couperin. This music was written to be performed during the Mass, alternating with the choir. In this so-called alternatim practice,  the organist plays when texts would otherwise have been sung. a term which indicates a type of liturgy where alternate sections of the Mass were performed by different forces. 

Today's movements all come from the first part of the mass, the Kyrie, which we normally only use during Lent. The titles have nothing to do with text, but with musical form; the Dialogue sur la trompette et le chromorne is a two-part piece with the trumpet stop playing against the krummhorn, an organ stop which imitates the double-reed wind instrument that flourished between the 15th century and about 1650. The Récit de chromorne features that same stop in an improvisatory solo for the krummhorn, while the Fugue sur les jeux d'anche is simply a fugue using nothing but the reed stops, which on an organ includes the trumpet stops.

François Couperin, the most important member of the renowned Couperin dynasty, is the foremost composer of the French Baroque. A prodigiously talented keyboard player, he inherited the post of organist at the church of St Gervais in Paris when he was just eleven years old, subsequently dividing his time between the capital and Versailles upon becoming organiste du Roi in 1693.