Music for September 11, 2022

Vocal Music

• Now Let Us All Praise God and Sing – Gordon Young

Instrumental Music

• Prelude and Fugue in D Minor – Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
• Prelude on St. Columba – Healey Willan (1880-1968)
• Sinfonie from Cantata 29: We Thank Thee, God – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 410 - Praise, my soul, the King of heaven (LAUDA ANIMA)
• Hymn 470 - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER)
• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 571 - Amazing grace (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 708 - Savior, like a shepherd lead us (SICILIAN MARINERS)
• Psalm 51:1-4, 7-8, 11 – Tone VIIIb

Now Let Us All Praise God and Sing

This morning we sing an anthem by twentieth-century American organist and choral and organ composer Gordon Young.  Dr. Young was awarded 18 consecutive annual composition awards from The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. His works works total over 800, and a number of his church anthems such as this one have become standard repertoire.  These are Young's words which speak the praise of God within all our hearts expressed as “Alleluia”, an early Hebrew expression of praise which literally means "Praise to Yahweh" or "Praise God!"

Prelude and Fugue in D Minor

There are not many female composers, especially from the past. One of the few is Clara Schumann, the wife of the composer/pianist Robert Schumann. As a pianist, she was as good or better than Robert, but as a composer we will never know. He wrote over 150 pieces. She wrote only a fraction of that.

Though she had been encouraged by her father to compose as part of her musical education, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life as she grew older, and found it hard to compose regularly. "I once believed that I possessed creative talent," she said, "but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" Her husband also expressed his concern:

"Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out."

The work you will hear today for the opening voluntary is a Prelude and Fugue which was originally written for piano, but I think it works equally well on the organ. The prelude and fugue form was an old compositional form, dating back to the days of Bach and Buxtehude. One can see in this composition that Clara was well-versed in music of other eras.

Sinfonie from Cantata 29: We Thank Thee, God, We Thank Thee

A concerto is a work for solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra, especially one conceived on a relatively large scale. Bach never wrote such a work for organ and orchestra, so the closest we can come is this Sinfonie (overture or prelude) to his Cantata 29 

This work may have a familiar sound to listeners who do not already know this cantata: it is an arrangement of the Prelude from the Partita in E major for unaccompanied violin: 

The treble of the obbligato organ part plays the famous partita tune, transposed here from E major down a step to D major. Bach added trumpet and drum parts here for punctuation, and to make the opening line even more festive than the mood created by the partita theme alone. String and oboe parts provided additional reinforcement. It is unusual to find an obbligato organ part – more importantly, an independent organ part which is separate from the continuo. Was this a showcase for Bach’s own organ virtuosity? Or did Bach serve as a conductor here for the larger than usual cantata ensemble, while someone else – one of his talented sons? – stood at the organ?