THE PERSONAL CONNECTION - Music for October 30, 2022 + The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• I Sought the Lord – David Ashley White
• Good Shepherd, You Know Us – David Ashley White

Instrumental Music

• Suite Gothic Op. 25 – Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897)

1. Introduction – Chorale
2. Menuet Gothique
3. Prière à Notre Dame – Léon Boëllmann
4. Toccata – Léon Boëllmann

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

• Hymn 688  - A mighty fortress is our God (EIN FESTE BURG)
• Hymn - Blessed assurance (ASSURANCE)
• Hymn 301 - Bread of the world, in mercy broken (RENDEZ A DIEU)
• Hymn 607 - O God of every nation (LLANGLOFFAN)
• Psalm 119:137-144 – Tone VIIIa

Today we sing two pieces by the Houston composer David Ashley White with direct connections to Good Shepherd.

I Sought the Lord

25 years ago, when I first came to Good Shepherd, we had a young mother singing in our choir with a toddler. As the dad wasn't a church goer, she would bring the young boy with her to church on Sunday, and he would sit in the loft with us. People in the congregation down below began to look for his round, cherubic face pressed up against the glass which use to be in the choir loft rail. But life happened, and a divorce brought about a move from the suburb of Kingwood to the inner loop of Houston, and thus a move from Good Shepherd to Palmer Memorial. We missed young Thomas' growing up, and his subsequent battle with cancer, but we kept up through our friendship with his mother, Sarah and social media. Thomas won his battle with cancer, but lost his war with depression. He passed away in August of 2017.

Our mutual friend and church musician/composer, David Ashley White, wrote a beautiful anthem which he dedicated to Sarah Emes and her son, Thomas Oldrin. With a text by an anonymous poet, the anthem was premiered by the Palmer choir and published by Selah Publishing Co. in June 2018. Sarah gave copies of the anthem to Good Shepherd so that we, too, could sing in memory of Thomas.

Good Shepherd, You Know Us

When the congregation and choirs of Good Shepherd celebrated my 25th Anniversary at Good Shepherd on September 11, the celebration included a new hymn written for the occasion by David, which was sung by the choir. We've been practicing it to learn the harmonies, and will sing it again this Sunday during communion. 

Most people don’t realize that a hymn has two parts. One is the text. When Pam Nolting asked David about composing something, he immediately suggested a hymn text by one of his favorite writers, Christopher Idle, a priest in the Anglican Church. The text is perfect for our congregation:

Good Shepherd, you know us, you call us by name,

you lead us; we gladly acknowledge your claim.

Your voice has compelled us; we come at your call,

and none you have chosen will finally fall.

Good Shepherd, you warn us of robbers and thieves;

the hireling, the wolf, who destroys and deceives;

all praise for your promise on which we can stand,

that no-one can snatch us from out of your hand.

Good Shepherd, you lay down your life for the sheep;

your love is not fickle, your gift is not cheap.

You spend your life freely, you take it again;

you died, so we live - we are healed by your pain.

At one with the Father, you made yourself known:

'I am the Good Shepherd', at one with your own.

You loved us before we had heeded or heard;

by grace we respond to your life-giving word.

Christopher Idle b.1938, © Christopher Idle/ Jubilate Hymns

The second part of a hymn is the tune, and the tune has its own title. The tune name for this is, appropriately, Good Shepherd, Kingwood. 

Suite Gothique

In a non-liutrgical nod to All Hallows Eve, I am playing the complete Gothic Suite by French composer Léon Boëllmann. Boëllmann was born on September 25, 1862 in Ensisheim on the Upper Rhine. At the age of 9 he left his homeland and entered Louis Niedermeyer's École de Musique classique et religieuse in Paris. Among his teachers and patrons were the well-known organists Gustave Lefèvre and especially Eugène Gigout, who later even adopted him. In 1881 he graduated from the École with a diploma as an organist and another as a cantor, and became an organist at the Church of St. Vincent-de-Paul in Paris. He later got the position of first organist there. After the founding of the École d'orgue et d'improvisation by Gigout, Boëllmann worked simultaneously as an organist at St. Vincent-de-Paul, as a teacher at his adoptive father's school and as a composer. He also worked as a music critic. Léon Boëllmann died on October 11, 1897 at the age of 35.

His best-known work today is the Suite Gothique op. 25, especially the last movement, the Toccata. This four-movement suite opens with the Introduction in C minor, a chorale rendered in an archaic, neo-modal style. This is followed by the Menuet Gothique, a curious mixture of ecclesiatical-liturgical austerity and eighteenth-century elegance: It begins with a C major minuet, which in the running movement takes on increasingly modal traits through the use of flat sevenths in the harmonies. The contrasting middle section develops through a variety of new keys with a merrily ascending motif of broken chords, producing some brief reminiscences of the opening minute before a recapitulation of the first section rounds out the movement. 

The third movement, Prière à Notre Dame , is in A flat major. A recurring sinuous melody in the muted registers exudes a devotional atmosphere. This is answered by three passages based on a romantic progression of harmony in the unrelated keys of D flat major and E major.

The following Toccata in C minor is not without reason the most played movement from this suite. Brilliant manual figurations over a broad pedal theme create great effect. The somewhat macabre pedal theme rises in dotted rhythm to the flattened dominant, turning the harmonies to D flat major for a few bars. In contrast, a rhythmic, syncopated melody rises in the manual, accompanied by the semitone motif that can be heard at the beginning of the movement. Finally, after some repetitions of these elements in different keys, increasing in dynamism and intensity, the coda brings back the opening theme, played in pedal octaves in triple forte – the dynamic and effective climax to close the suite.