Music for August 14, 2022 + The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

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

Instrumental Music

• If Thou but Trust in God to Guide Thee, BWV 647 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Chorale Prelude on “Houston” – Rebecca Groom Te Velde (b. 1956)
• If Thou but Trust in God to Guide Thee, BWV 642 – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn 366 Holy God we praise thy Name (GROSSER GOTT)
• Hymn 635 If thou but trust in God to guide thee (WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT)
• Hymn From North and South (LASST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 490 I want to walk as a child of the Light (HOUSTON)
• Hymn R 291 Go forth for God (GENEVA 124)
• Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18 – Tone IIa

Welcome Back, Choir!

The Good Shepherd Choir makes its return to our 10:15 service this Sunday, singing one of the best known excerpts from an anthem by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. This short passage from the larger work Praise the Lord, O My Soul is known as Lead Me, Lord.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley was born 212 years ago this very day, Aug. 14, in London. Known as a composer and organist, he was one of the most distinguished English church musicians of his time. The grandson of Charles Wesley and the natural son of Samuel Wesley (his father had left his first wife and started a new family with another woman - but that's a post for another time!), he was a chorister of the Chapel Royal and held posts in London and at Exeter cathedral, Leeds Parish Church, Winchester cathedral, and Gloucester cathedral. He was prominent as a conductor of the Three Choirs Festival and was professor of organ at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Wesley's father was enamored with the music of Bach. In fact, he helped introduce the music of J.S. Bach into England, playing his music and publishing the an English edition of Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier). He was so infatuated with the German musician that he named his son Sebastian in Bach's memory. So perhaps it is fitting that I am playing two pieces by J. Sebastian Bach alongside the music of S. Sebastian Wesley.

If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee

One of the first pieces I studied on the organ when in college was Bach's setting of the chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott, which is in our hymnal at hymn 635. (We will also sing it today.) This setting, which I am playing as the closing voluntary, is from Bach's collection Orgelbuchlein. The hymn is in AAB form, meaning that the first two lines of music are identical, while the last line uses new material. The same can be said of Bach's setting. The first line is repeated twice before ending the piece. In this chorale prelude, the unadorned cantus firmus is in the soprano voice. The two inner voices, often in thirds, are built on a motif made up of two short beats followed by a long beat—an anapaest — often used by Bach to signify joy. The pedal has a walking bass which also partly incorporates the joy motif in its responses to the inner voices. For Albert Schweitzer, the accompaniment symbolized "the joyful feeling of confidence in God's goodness."

The opening voluntary follows the same AAB formula. What makes this interesting is that this is basically Bach's arrangement of the central duet from his cantata based on this hymn, Cantata 93, which Bach composed in 1728.  Bach published this setting for organ, BWV 647, around 1748 as part of his Six Chorales of Various Kinds, commonly known as the Schubler Chorales. All six works for organ are based on cantatas. They provided an approachable version of Bach's cantatas through the more accessible medium of keyboard music, and the fact that Bach chose to edit these (while the rest of his cantatas remained largely unpublished during his lifetime), says something about the musical statement that they represented.