Music for March 6, 2022 + The First Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days – Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), arr. Mark Schweitzer

Instrumental Music

• Chorale Prelude on a melody by Orlando Gibbons – Healey Willan (1880-1968)
• Suite No. 4 in E Minor: Sarabande – George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)
• Hilf Gott, Dass Mir's Gelinge, BWV 624 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

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

• Hymn s-67 The Great Litany
• Hymn R112 - You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord (ON EAGLE’S WINGS)
• Hymn 150 - Forty days and forty nights (AUS DER TIEFE RUFE ICH)
• Hymn R9 - As the deer pants for the water (AS THE DEER)
• Hymn 559 - Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us (DULCE CARMEN)
• Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 – Tone IIa

The anthem today is what classical musicians call a quodlibet, which is an arrangement of two or more familiar tunes in polyphonic relationship, meaning that they can be heard at the same time. The arranger, Mark Schweizer, has done that by combining the beautiful melody of Gabriel Fauré's Pavane, Op. 50 with the hymn-tune MORNING SONG (hymn 9 in the Hymnal 1982), using the text, "Lord, who throughout these forty days." The combination is a match made in heaven. Here are links for you to hear the two melodies by themselves. (Just don't listen during the sermon if you are reading this on Sunday!) 

Mark Schweizer

Gabriel Fauré

Fauré: Pavane / Rattle · Berliner Philharmoniker

Morning Song

The opening voluntary is an organ setting of another tune from hymnal which is not an explicitly Lenten hymn, Lord, forever at thy side, found at hymn 670. This tune is used in an anthem, though, which is often sung during Lent, Jesus, Grant Me This I Pray. This setting of the tune from the great English musician of the Renaissance Orlando Gibbons, is by the English-turned-Canadian composer, Healey Willan.

The closing voluntary is a short work by Johann Sebastian Bach found in his collection called Orgelbüchlein. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) is one of the most extraordinary of all Bach’s organ collections and compositions. Even though it may seem to be just a collection of hymn-tune (chorale) arrangements for the church organist, it is considered by many scholars to be a masterpiece of organ literature. 

Bach planned a collection of 119 chorale preludes (only 45 were written) to be used during the liturgical year. Some are quite simple, while others are intricate works in miniature. Today I am playing one of the Lenten chorales on a text and tune well known to congregations during Bach's day.

The text itself is unusual. It was written in the 1500s by Heinrich Müller while he was in prison by the Duke of Saxony for his Lutheran sympathies. Müller included his name as an acrostic, using the first letter of each stanza to spell our his name. Also, the first stanza is weirdly self-referential: the poet asks God’s help “die Silben reimen zwingen” (to force these syllables to rhyme). Most hymns during the Reformation aimed to reach the entire worshipping community, not individual piety.

Much like Müller "forcing syllables to rhyme,"  Bach does the same thing, forcing the right hand to play two voices in canon. It’s an inside joke for the performer. For the listener, who might not perceive these counterpoint games, the idea is still clear from the meandering left-hand and pedal parts. The piece takes a lot of physical work to perform, and it sounds, at best, bizarre.  

Bach’s organ version was probably a deliberately rather awkward harmonic and canonic whole, with a left hand that searches around capriciously from high to low. Maybe Bach also thought it might not be so easy to keep constant faith if you were imprisoned for your religious beliefs for over ten years.