Music for June 20, 2021 + The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• We Shall Be Delivered – Sea Chanty, arr. Sanford Dole

Instrumental Music

• Fantaisie en ut - César Franck (1822-1890)
• Humbly I Adore Thee – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• March Pontificale – Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881)

Congregational Music (hymns from the Hymnal 1982, or Renew (marked “R”) or Lift Every Voice and Sing II (marked *)

• Hymn R194 - Jesus, what a Friend for sinners (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn* - When the storms of life are raging (STAND BY ME)
• Hymn 608 - Eternal Father, strong to save (MELITA)
• Psalm 107– Tone VIIIa

We all know sea shanties. A sea shanty (chantey or chanty) is a genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large merchant sailing vessels. They were found mostly on British and other European ships, and some had roots in lore and legend. These songs were simple, rhythmic melodies that were easy to learn and easy to sing. There is usually lots of repetition, either of lyrics or a refrain. The most commonly known is probably “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor.” The Gilligan’s Island theme song is written in the style of a sea shanty.

 
Sea shanties resurfaced in popular culture. In 2009 a BBC Radio presenter was in Cornwall on holiday and came across homemade CDs of some local fishermen. An agent travelled to Port Isaac and negotiated a recording contract worth £1 million for them with Universal Music Group, who, taking quite a gamble, signed them to a recording deal. To everyone’s surprise, Fisherman’s Friends and their album reached number 9 in the charts and achieved Gold Record status.

 
Then early this year, a Scotland-based postman named Nathan Evans posted a rendition of the New Zealand shanty "Soon May the Wellerman Come," on TikTok. Nathan’s incredible rendition of The Wellerman exploded on the platform and has even become something of a TikTok challenge.

Using the TikTok duet feature - which lets you record a video alongside another TikTok user - users are layering their harmonies over Nathan’s original video, including the renowned composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. To date, over 17.5 million people have watched the original video.

Taking that same song, “Soon May the Wellerman Come,” some Episcopal church musicians in California have rewritten the words to fit this Sunday’s Gospel lesson.

One day our Lord, his sermon over, said, “Let’s go off to the other shore.”
So each disciple took an oar and they began their voyage.
The boat set out for the other side and for an hour did gently ride,
but then the watchman loud did cry, “A storm is coming in!”
Then how the wind did blow, the waves did over the gunwales flow,
strong as the crew did row, the ship was close to found’rin’.

I have to admit, it’s a fun song to sing, and I hope it will help cement the lesson in our hearts as well as our minds.

All of the hymns reinforce the theme that Jesus calms our troubled seas. The opening hymn is Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners by the great Presbyterian evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman. The hymn includes these two stanzas:

Jesus! what a help in sorrow!

While the billows o'er me roll,

even when my heart is breaking,

he, my comfort, helps my soul.

    Refrain:

Hallelujah! what a Savior!

Hallelujah, what a Friend!

Saving, helping, keeping, loving,

he is with me to the end.

Jesus! what a guide and keeper!

While the tempest still is high,

storms about me, night o'ertakes me,

he, my pilot, hears my cry. [Refrain]

The opening and closing voluntaries are works by two Belgian organist who live at the same time, César Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck, who was based in Paris most of his adult life, and Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, who studied in Paris and Germany before returning to Belgium. 

Music for May 2n 2021 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• Unto Thee, O Lord – Virgil T. Ford (1922-2005)

Instrumental Music

• Variations on Gaudeamus Pariter – Jayson A. Snipes (b. 1983)
• Hymn 200: Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
• I. Theme
• II. Cantabile
• III. Allegro
• IV. Toccata
• Rhosymedre – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
• Sortie – Jâcques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “*” which is from Wonder, Love, and Praise.)

• Canticle* Christ our Passover (Pascha nostrum) (SINE NOMINE)
• Hymn 379 God is love: let heaven adore him (ABBOTT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn 529 In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Psalm 22:24-30 simplified Anglican chant by Jerome W. Meachen

Virgil Ford

Today’s anthem is a quiet, acapella setting of verses from the 25th Psalm: Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee. Show me thy ways, lead me in thy truth. Teach me thy paths, for thou are the God of my salvation. This setting, from 1960, is by American church musician Virgil T. Ford. An ordained minister of music in the United Methodist Church, he was active as a church organist/choirmaster for over 40 years at churches in Norfolk, Virginia and Eastern Massachusetts.

Ford was born in Norfolk, Virginia and started taking piano lessons at the age of 9. He attended The College of William & Mary and earned a B.A. Degree in 1943, and University Extension Conservatory of Chicago and earned a B. Music Degree (Composition) in 1955. He had over 250 published compositions that include anthems, cantatas, youth music collections and new hymn tunes.

The opening voluntary is a set of variations on the Easter hymn Come, ye faithful, raise the strain (Hymn 200), set to the tune GAUDEAMUS PARITER. It is by the contemporary American composer Jayson Snipes. He is a native of Winston-Salem, NC, and received a B.M. in Music Education, and M.M. in Choral Conducting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he studied organ, voice, and conducting. Currently, he serves as Director of Traditional Music at Maple Springs United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, and is Artistic Director of Piedmont Chamber Singers.

The communion voluntary is Ralph Vaughan William’s luscious setting of the Welsh tune RHOSYMEDRE. This hymn tune was written by the 19th-century Welsh Anglican priest John David Edwards who named the tune after the village of Rhosymedre in the County Borough of Wrexham, Wales, where he was the vicar from 1843 until his death in 1885.

The hymn tune appears in a number of hymnals and is sung to a variety of texts. In our hymnal, it is set to a lovely text about the Christian family (“Our Father, by whose name”, hymn 587). However, I first associated the tune with the text “My song is Love Unknown, my Savior’s love to me,” and that’s the text I still associate with it. So, when reading the Epistle lesson for today about the love of God, this immediately came to mind.

This piece was originally written for pipe organ in 1920. As usual, in his arrangements of British folk music, Vaughan Williams succeeds here in turning an apparently simple tune into a work of profound emotional impact. In this short but sweet work Vaughan Williams crafts a wistful piece of great beauty. It has since been arranged for string orchestra, concert band, and other various instruments.

This prelude was played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at the request of Lady Sarah McCorquodale. It was also played at the weddings of her two sons: Prince William (in April 2011) and Prince Harry (in May 2018). It is such a favorite of mine that I want it played at my memorial service, as well. (But not soon.)

Music for May 29, 2016 + The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• I Love You, O My God Most High – David Hogan (1949-1996)

Instrumental Music

• Aria – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Andante in D Major (Variations on a Theme) – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
• Fanfare– Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881)

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

• Hymn 372 - Praise to the living God! (Leoni)
• Hymn 421 - All glory be to God on high (Allein Gott in der Hoh)
• Hymn R74 - Cantad al Señor (Cantad al Señor)
• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise! (Lyons)
• Hymn 408 - Sing praise to God who reigns above (Mit Freuden zart)
• Hymn R191 - O Christ, the healer (Erhalt uns, herr)
• Hymn 522 - Glorious things of thee are spoken (Austria)

H. David Hogan and his baby daughter
Hilary taken in the early '80s

I’m always moved by stories of talented people who are cut down in the prime of life. Such is the story of David Hogan, the composer of today’s anthem. Hogan was an American composer, teacher, and performer with ties to both the East and West Coasts. He had moved to France to teach at the American Conservatory at the Palace of Fontainebleau in Paris, and was flying back to Paris on July 17, 1996 on TWA Flight 800, when it suddenly crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York. Thus ended a life dedicated to music.

A native of Virginia, Hogan graduated from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor's degree in 1971, and would go on to earn a master's degree in voice in 1975. He enjoyed enormous success both as a composer and teacher and still found time to perform internationally as a concert tenor and pianist. For three years in a row, his students won first place in the Student Composers Competition of the Music Teachers National Association.

Dedicated to God as well as his craft, he had the distinction of being one of the two composers chosen to write new works for the Consecration of the Washington National Cathedral in 1989. Our kids choir learned his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis a few years ago for the Diocesan Youth Choral Festival. But he also wrote simple sacred music too, such as today’s anthem, written for his small choir at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco.  It’s a simple setting of a traditional Irish melody, Daniel, arranged for two-part mixed choir. Simple but elegant, it uses the text by St Ignatius of Loyola, as translated by Edward Caswall.

I love you, O my Lord most high,
for first your love has captured me;
I seek no other liberty:
bound by your love, I shall be free.

May memory no thought suggest
but shall to your pure glory tend,
may understanding find no rest,
except in you, its only end.

All mine is yours: say but the word,
say what you will, it shall be done;
I know your love, most gracious Lord,
I know you seek my good alone.

Apart from you, nothing can be,
so grant me this, my only wish,
to love you, Lord, eternally,
you give me all in giving this.

The closing voluntary is by Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, a Belgian organist and composer who renewed the organ-player's art in Belgium. He went to Germany to learn Johann Sebastian Bach's tradition, (at the time Bach's organ works were not at all well known in France) and in 1852 he gave organ recitals in Saint Vincent de Paul, La Madeleine and Saint Eustache churches in Paris, where he stunned audiences with his technique. Particularly notable was his brilliant pedal-playing, which owed a good deal to his studies of Bach's music .

He had been appointed organ teacher at the Royal Brussels Conservatoire at the young age of 26, where he trained numerous young musicians, including two eminent Frenchmen, Alexandre Guilmant and Charles-Marie Widor. He wrote several volumes of organ music, including a two-volume set called École d'orgue basée sur le plain-chant romain (Organ Method based on the Roman Chant), published in 1862 (and still in print!). It includes this Fanfare.

Music for January 25, 2015 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• I Will Arise – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker (1916-1999/b. 1925)

Instrumental Music

• Choral – Joseph Jongen (1883-1953)
• Fanfare - Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881)
• Suite on the Chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott (In God, My Faithful God) – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

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

• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise (LYONS)
• Hymn 469 - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER)
• Hymn - I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM)
• Hymn 473 - Lift high the cross (CRUCIFER)

In response to the Gospel reading where Jesus calls his first disciples, the offertory anthem today is a great setting of the old hymn, "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus." The refrain comes from Joseph Hart's 1759 hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched" but today it is combined with stanzas from the hymn "Come, thou fount of every blessing." The tune the choir sings was arranged by Alice Parker with Robert Shaw, and it comes from William Walker's Southern Harmony of 1834. Since I wrote about another anthem that these two collaborated on which came from the same hymnal, I suggest you head over to that post for more information.

N. Jacques Lemmens

The organ music today features works of two Belgian organists of the 19th and  20th centuries. Belgian organ music had been very closely aligned with French organ music during the 19th century, but it was Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens who turned from the overly sentimental and trite Parisian style of organ playing to that which was more idiomatic to the instrument. I'll be playing one of his best known works, his Fanfare, as the closing voluntary. It's a showy toccata, which was included in his École d'Orgue (1862), an organ method book which became the leading method book at the Conservatories in Paris and Brussels.

Joseph Jongen

The other Belgian is Joseph Jongen, who, at the tender age of seven, was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire and spent the next sixteen years there. He began composing at the age of 13, and immediately exhibited exceptional talent in that field. Jongen composed a great deal, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and songs, but today, the only part of his music performed with any regularity is his output for organ, much of it solo, but one work, with orchestra, shines above them all. His monumental Symphonie Concertante of 1926 is a tour de force, considered by many to be among the greatest works ever written for organ and orchestra.

The opening voluntary is a very popular work by Jongen from his Opus No. 37, Choral. Just like the chorals of his fellow countryman César Franck, Jongen's Choral is not based on a hymn tune like the German Chorales of Bach and Buxtehude, but is a free-composed work. In it, the organ begins softly, building throughout the three pages of music until it ends with full organ roaring away. If you listen closely, you'll hear the melody in the soprano line played in canon by the feet in the bass line.

And speaking of a chorale based work, the communion voluntary is a odd little work by the celebrated German Dietrich Buxtehude. A common musical form among baroque composers was the keyboard suite, a collection of pieces for harpsichord or clavichord using various dance forms as basis for each movement, with the separate movements often thematically and tonally linked. Buxtehude did a strange thing by using the German chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott (In God, My Faithful God) as the unifying element. It's strange in that these dance suites were typically secular in nature. After all, who would expect to hear a jig (gigue) in church?
The movements you will hear this Sunday as I play the piano will be

1. Prelude
2. Double
3. Sarabande
4. Courante
5. Gigue

HYMNS

• How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise (LYONS) This hymn is by Henry Ustick Onderdonk, Bishop of Pennsylvania from 1827 to 1844, when his fondness for alcohol necessitated his resignation. He turned his life around, and from then on was changed that he was restored to his bishopric two years before his death on December 6, 1858. We sing this text to the tune LYONS, named for the French city Lyons.
• There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER) I'm not so crazy about this tune that our hymnal sets the text to, but it is well known by our congregation and has a strong tune with clean rhythms that are easily sung. Most hymnals use this tune for Love divine, all loves excelling.
• I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM) I've always thought this was a Negro Spiritual, but it in fact comes from India! (Hence the tune name, Assam, named after a region in northeastern India.) There are a variety of different stories about the origin of this hymn, but all of them agree that it was written in India by someone facing persecution for his or her faith. One of the more dramatic and widespread stories comes from the book Why God, Why? by Dr. P. P. Job, in which a Christian missionary first sang this song to an Indian folk song, probably from the Garo tribe, as he and his family were being murdered for their faith.
• Lift high the cross (CRUCIFER) We sing this grand hymn of the Anglican tradition in honor of the Daughters of the King, as this weekend we mark the anniversary of the founding of our local chapter. This is their official hymn.