SWINGING SAINTS! Music for November 6, 2022 + All Saints (Observed)

Vocal Music

• By All Your Saints – Joel Martinson, arr. (b. 1960)

Instrumental Music

• Morning Canticle – Sondra Tucker (b. 1957)
• How Can I Keep from Singing – Sondra Tucker, arr.
• Sine Nomine – John Weaver (1937-2021)

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

• Hymn 287 For all the saints, who from their labors rest (SINE NOMINE)
• Hymn 286 Who are these like stars appearing? (ZEUCH MICH, ZEUCH MICH)
• Hymn 618 Ye watchers and ye holy ones (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn R127 Blessed are they, the poor in spirit (BLEST ARE THEY)
• Hymn 625 Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)

It's not your usual Sunday  (musically) at Good Shepherd. First, its the Sunday we observe All Saints Day (which is on November 1st).  We remember those who have died and have "gone before," as they say. We usually use music by the "saints" of church music, (read "dead, white men") but today we also offer choral and instrumental music by a living white man AND a woman. We can feel the earth shake even as we write this. Read on.

By All Your Saints

For the offering, the choir will sing an setting of hymn 231, a poem by Horatio Nelson (a British politician and relative of the famous Naval hero Lord Nelson) set to a Finnish folk tune, NYLAND. It is arranged by Joel Martinson, director of Music Ministries and Organist at The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas, Texas.

Morning Canticle and How Can I Keep From Singing    

These two handbell pieces, played by our Good Shepherd Bell Choir, are by the Houston composer Sondra Tucker. Sondra and I have known each other since our days together in Memphis, over 25 years ago. She has served Presbyterian and Episcopal Congregations in both Memphis and Houston, and is currently the director of the Houston Bronze Ensemble, a professional handbell group in Houston (of which I am a member.) She is also acting as organist and choir director at First Congregational Church of Houston.

The prelude, Morning Canticle, is a bright, original tune which sparks an interesting match with the melody of "Holy Holy Holy", which is played by handchimes in the middle of the piece.

The communion piece is a lovely arrangement of the American Gospel hymn, How Can I Keep From Singing. The text and tune were both written by Robert Lowry, a Baptist minister who became a popular writer of gospel music in the mid- to late-19th century. His best-known hymns include "Shall We Gather at the River", "Christ Arose!", and "Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus". Despite his protestations that preaching was his main vocation and that music was merely a sideline, it is as a hymnwriter that Lowry is chiefly remembered. 

I think it's funny that I first heard this hymn not in church but on a CD of music by the New-Age singer/musician Enya, who changed some more overtly Christian lines.

In this arrangement we will also hear the handchimes playing the melody on the middle verse of the hymn.

Sine Nomine

Of all the music we are presenting this Sunday, the one I am most excited about is the closing voluntary, Sine Nomine. "SINE NOMINE is the tune name of the opening hymn this morning, the wonderful All Saints hymn, For all the saints, who from their labors rest. But did you know that SINE NOMINE is not the first, much less the only tune for that hymn? When the hymn was first published, it was sung to the melody SARUM, by the Victorian composer Joseph Barnby, until the publication of the English Hymnal in 1906 when Ralph Vaughan Williams, the editor of that hymnal, wrote a new tune which he called SINE NOMINE.  The tune's title means "without name" and follows the Renaissance tradition of naming certain compositions "Sine Nomine" if they were not settings for preexisting tunes.

What excited me about this organ piece is that it combines both the original tune SARUM with the later tune SINE NOMINE. But wait! THERE'S MORE! It also combines the Black spiritual, When the Saints Go Marching In with SINE NOMINE. And, if that is not enough, the whole piece is played in a Dixieland Jazz style! Yes, folks, you read that right. The hymn tune many consider to be the epitome of Anglican hymn tunes is given the Dixieland treatment. 

This genius "mash-up" was the brain child of American organist John Weaver. Weaver served as Organist and Director of Music at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church from 1970-2005. He also headed the Organ Department of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1972-2003 AND chaired the Juilliard School's Organ Department from 1987-2004.

Originally, this was the closing movement of a Hymn Sonata, commissioned by the Reuter Organ Company for the dedication recital at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in 1995. The style of a New Orleans Dixieland band infuses the entire piece, and Sine Nomine sounds unexpectedly right with dotted rhythms and jazz harmonies! The juxtaposition with Oh, When the Saints also draws attention to the fact that the opening of one tune is the inversion of the other.

A lyrical statement of SARUM, with its repeated notes and foursquare feel, essentially acts as a contrasting second subject. Following this there is another statement of SINE NOMINE as a jazz trumpet solo, after which SARUM and SINE NOMINE are combined. Finally, SINE NOMINE and Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In are grandly combined.