CONFIRMED: Music for January 22, 2023 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848 – 1918)

Instrumental Music

• Andante Moderato in C Minor – Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
• Prelude on “Kelvingrove” – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Allegro con spirito in B-flat Major – Frank Bridge

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982 with the exception of Will You Come and Follow Me which is from other sources.)

• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERRN)
• Hymn 381 - Thy strong word did cleave the darkness (TONY-Y-BOTEL)
• Hymn 513 - Like the murmur of the dove’s song (BRIDEGROOM)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn – Will you come and follow me? (KELVINGROVE)
• Hymn 530 - Spread, O spread, thou mighty word (GOTT SEI DANK)
• Psalm 27:1, 5-13 - Dominus illuminatio (simplified Anglican Chant)

Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

The choir sings one of our favorite anthems this Sunday, the beautiful Dear Lord and Father of Mankind by the British composer Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. This hymn, now one of England’s favorites, began life as the ballad of Meshullemeth (‘Long since in Egypt’s plenteous land’) in Act I of Judith, Parry's oratorio of 1888. It was only after Parry’s death that permission was granted by Novello and Parry’s estate to allow George Gilbert Stocks, the head of music at Repton School, to adapt the music to this text for the school’s hymn book, at which time the melody became known as REPTON.  It was also published in 1941 as the hymn-anthem (which we are singing today) in which much of the original music of the aria was restored.

Ironically, the author of this beautiful and much-loved hymn deeply disapproved of singing in church. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) was an American Quaker who firmly believed that God was best worshipped in silent meditation and who deplored the histrionics associated with both the High Church and the Evangelical movement.

He did, however, allow these verses to be used in a hymn book published in 1884. They are drawn from an interlude in his long and eccentric poem called The Brewing of Soma, which describes in shocked terms the Vedic Hindu habit of drinking hallucinogenic concoctions as a way of whipping up religious enthusiasm. Michael Hawn, professor of sacred music at Perkins School of Theology at SMU, tell's of the hymn's origins here.

Whittier advocated waiting instead for "the still small voice of calm" – an injunction beautifully suggested in the climax to this tune composed by Parry.

Parry was head of the Royal College of Music from 1895 until his death at age 70 in 1918. His 1916 composition, Jerusalem (And did those feet in ancient times), is belted out at sports events and is often called the unofficial English national anthem. 

Prelude on "Kelvingrove"

If you read my blog last week, you might remember that I played an organ setting of this same tune. Even though we weren't singing the hymn, I chose it to go along with the Gospel story of Jesus calling his first disciples. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when Father Bill used the text of that hymn in his sermon, recalling how this hymn was popular with young people in the days when he was working with youth. 

Since the Gospel this week continues the story of Jesus calling his disciples, I decided to include that hymn as a piano voluntary as well as a congregational hymn during communion. The piano voluntary is by Charles Callahan, a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts who is well-known as an award-winning composer, organist, choral conductor, pianist, and teacher. He is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pa., and The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

Frank Bridge

The opening and closing voluntaries are organ works by Frank Bridge, an English composer, violist and conductor of the first half of the twentieth century. Underappreciated, underplayed, and still little known even in his native England, Bridge is most frequently recognized today as the teacher of the young Benjamin Britten, who acknowledged his teacher's influence in a popular early work, Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge.

Although he was not an organist, nor personally associated with music of the English Church, his short pieces for organ have been among the most performed of all his output. This Sunday I will play two of them,  the Andante Moderato in C Minor and Allegro con spirito in B-flat Major. I have to say that I was surprised to learn he had no training as an organist, for his organ works are highly idiomatic for the instrument, and fit under the hands (and feet!) very comfortably.