Music for April 10, 2022 + The Sunday of the Passion

Vocal Music

• Ride On, King Jesus – arr. Hall Johnson (1888-1970)
• O Savior of the World – John Goss (1800-1880)

Instrumental Music

• O Sacred Head, Now Wounded – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Ah, Holy Jesus – Johannes Brahms

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

• Hymn 154 - All glory, laud, and honor (VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN)
• Hymn 435 - At the name of Jesus (KING’S WESTON)
• Hymn R235 - O sacred head, now wounded (HERZLICH TUT MICH VERLANGEN)
• Hymn R214 - Your only Son, no sin to hide (LAMB OF GOD)
• Hymn R227 - Jesus, remember me (Taizé)
• Hymn 474 - When I survey the wondrous cross (ROCKINGHAM)

Two composers of the Romantic era are featured in the 10:15 service this Sunday, one of them being arguably more famous than the other. Let's look at the music of the lesser known composer.

Sir John Goss was an English composer, chiefly of English cathedral music and hymnody. His position in the London musical world was an influential one as a teacher, writer, composer and critic.

Born to a musical family, Goss was a boy chorister of the Chapel Royal, London, and later a pupil of Thomas Attwood, organist of St Paul's Cathedral. After a brief period as a chorus member in an opera company he was appointed organist of a chapel in south London, later moving to more prestigious organ posts at St Luke's Church, Chelsea and finally St Paul's Cathedral, where he struggled to improve musical standards.

As a composer, Goss wrote little for the orchestra, but was known for his vocal music, both religious and secular. In The Hymnal 1982 his tune LAUDA ANIMA is used as the setting for the hymn "Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven" (#410). The music critic of The Times described him as the last of the line of English composers who confined themselves almost entirely to ecclesiastical music. One such composition is today's anthem, O Savior of the World. 

O Savior of the World uses as a text the prayer of adoration of the cross found in the Good Friday service (as well as the laying on of hands in the Ministration of the Sick in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 455). This had become one of the most popular Passiontide anthems, as much for congregations as for choirs. It has just the right combination of melodic interest and chordal structure, the later emphasising key words in such a way as to make the whole readily relevant to the listener. There is also just enough repitition of the words to emphasize the poignancy of "save us and help us."

The two organ voluntaries are settings of hymns commonly associated with the Passion, HERZLIEBSTER JESU (Ah, Holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, #158) and HERZLICH TUT MIR VERLANGEN (O Sacred head, sore wounded, #168), from Johannes Brahms's collection Eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122. 

Brahms may well be the greatest composer of the Romantic period. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow. He wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and more than 200 songs. The only major form in which he did not write was opera.

Brahms was the great master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters such as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven in a period when the standards of this tradition were being questioned or overturned by the Romantics.

Unlike the great classical masters, Brahms wrote several works for organ. The collection I am drawing from this morning, the Eleven Chorale Preludes, is a work written in 1896 at the end of the composer's life and published posthumously in 1902. They are based on verses of nine Lutheran chorales, two of them set twice, and are relatively short. 

The communion voluntary is the second of two variations on the PASSION CHORALE (O Sacred Head). This setting of the “passion” melody is remarkably uniform in texture.  The melody itself is placed in the pedals.  In the manuals, the almost hypnotic motion begins in an introduction.  The right hand, set in the tenor register, piano and molto legato, plays flowing, winding arpeggios in sixteenth notes.  The left hand has two voices, most notably a throbbing bass line with repeated notes. The changes of pitch in this bass line are slow and deliberate, but they actually reflect the notes, and even the rhythm, of the first line from chorale melody itself.  The upper left hand line is in longer notes.  

The closing voluntary is  based on hymn 158. The melody is heard in long, sustained notes on top, while the accompaniment has a three-note upbeat pattern throughout, while a shorter, downward leap pattern appears in the pedal. It is slow, majestic, and tragic.