Music for October 7, 2018

Vocal Music

• For the Beauty of the Earth – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Instrumental Music

• Benediction – Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
• Suite Liturgique: III. Communion– Denis Bédard (b. 1950)
• Now Thank We All Our God – Sigfrid Karg-Elert

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew and "L" which is from Lift Every Voice and Sing II.)

• Hymn 376 - Joyful, joyful, we adore thee (HYMN TO JOY)
• Hymn R250 - O Lord, my God (O STOR GUD)
• Hymn 480 - When Jesus left his Father’s throne (KINGSFOLD)
• Hymn L218 - Jesus loves me, this I know (JESUS LOVES ME)
• Hymn R173 - O Lord, hear my prayer (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 397 - Now thank we all our God (NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT)
• Psalm 8 – Tone VII

John Rutter (right), looking startled to be caught
standing next to your organist in 2017. We have
same haircut.

That John Rutter became one of the world’s most well-known composers of church music should surprise no one. He sang as a boy chorister at London’s prestigious Highgate School, and proceeded to study at Clare College, Cambridge, where he later became director of music. Rutter leapt to prominence in 1970, as co-editor of the second volume in Oxford University Press’s Carols for Choirs series. Since then, his name has become synonymous with English church music, especially for the Christmas season. He now lives near Cambridge, and conducts a professional choir, the Cambridge Singers.

This Sunday the choir sings one of his anthems with a Texas connection. Rutter wrote his setting of the nineteenth-century hymn, For the beauty of the earth, for Rosemary Heffley and the Texas Choral Directors Association in 1980. Foregoing the tune found in most hymnals (though not the Hymnal 1980!), Rutter crafted a lyrical, rising melody that joyfully concludes with an off-kilter rhythm and flamboyant turn. It has since become a standard in choir libraries, sung by choirs the world over. It's been  arranged for women's voices and men's voices in addition to the regular mixed voice choir, in addition to arrangements for concert band!

The author of the text is the otherwise neglected nineteenth-century English poet Folliott Pierpoint, who taught classics at Somersetshire College in southwest England. Much of Pierpoint’s poems deals with nature, and For the beauty of the earth is believed to have been a rhapsodic response to a springtime vista in the Somerset countryside when he was 29.

Two pieces by Sigfrid Karg-Elert open and close our 10:15 service. Karg-Elert was a German composer of considerable fame in the early twentieth century, best known for his compositions for organ and harmonium (reed organ). He was born as Sigfried Karg, but his concert-agent suggested early in his career that he add  a variant of his mother's maiden name (Ehlert) to his surname, and adopt the Swedish spelling of his first name.

Karg-Elert regarded himself as a musical outsider. Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (Germany), Edvard Grieg (Norway), Claude Debussy (France), Alexander Scriabin (Russia), and early Arnold Schoenberg (Austria). In general terms, his musical style can be characterized as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies.

I was interested to discover that, though Karg-Elert was well received and appreciated outside of Germany (especially in the US and the UK, where the Organ Music Society of London held a ten-day festival in his honor in 1930), the cultural climate in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was very hostile to the internationally oriented, French-influenced Karg-Elert. This is during the time that Adolph Hitler was on the rise, promoting his "Mach Deutschland wieder groß" (Make Germany Great Again) campaign.

Karg-Elert died in Liepzig in 1933 of complications from diabetes, at age 55.

Music for October 2, 2016 + The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• For Everyone Born – Brian Mann, arr. Tom Trenney
• Locus Iste – Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Instrumental Music

• Benediction, Op. 33, No. 4B – Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
• Sarabande from Suite No 7 in G minor - HWV 432– George Friderick Handel (1685-1759)
• Allegro in G Major – Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770-1846)

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

• Hymn R49 - Let the whole creation cry (Llanfair)
• Hymn 704 - O thou who camest from above (Hereford)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (East Acklam)
• Hymn R173 - O Lord, hear my prayer (Jean Berthier)
• Hymn 551 - Rise up, ye saints of God! (Festal Song)
• Psalm 37 - Noli aemulari

I was asked to lead a reading session of new choral music for a meeting of Chorister's Guild last May, and one of the pieces was an anthem based on a new hymn in the recent Presbyterian hymnal, Glory to God. I immediately fell in love with it, because the beautiful, lilting melody was paired with a strong text about justice. The hymn, by noted New Zealand hymnwriter Shirley Erena Murray, affirms that God’s hospitality transcends the barriers erected by human society and that we who have been created in God’s image are called to live in ways that reflect our Creator’s values: justice and joy, compassion and peace.

For everyone born, a place at the table,
for everyone born, clean water and bread,
a shelter, a space, a safe place for growing,
for everyone born, a star overhead,

Refrain: and God will delight when we are creators
of justice and joy, compassion and peace:
yes, God will delight when we are creators
of justice, justice and joy!

For woman and man, a place at the table,
revising the roles, deciding the share,
with wisdom and grace, dividing the power,
for woman and man, a system that’s fair, Refrain

For young and for old, a place at the table,
a voice to be heard, a part in the song,
the hands of a child in hands that are wrinkled,
for young and for old, the right to belong, Refrain

For everyone born, a place at the table,
to live without fear, and simply to be,
to work, to speak out, to witness and worship
for everyone born, the right to be free, Refrain

text: Shirley Erena Murray, © 1998 Hope Publishing Company

 I include the whole text because I think we, as Christians, need to be reminded of our duty to create peace. Martin Luther King said “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” Too often justice is seen as a liberal concept. It is not; it is a Christian concept.

The music is by a Mann named Brian (see what I did there?), of whom I know nothing about. Hard to believe in this day and age of instantaneous electronic information I couldn't find anything. But the arrangement, which is stunning, is by Tom Trenney, Minister of Music at First-Plymouth Church (United Church of Christ) in Lincoln, Nebraska.  There he directs four adult choirs, plays the organ,

Tom Trenney

preaches sermons, (the congregation is not ready for one of MY sermons) and directs a Concert Series. In 2006, Trenney became the first organist to be awarded First Prize and Audience Prize in the American Guild of Organists’ National Competition in Organ Improvisation. Since that time he has performed all across the continent. This coming year he will serve as choral clinician at Montreat Worship and Music, Lutheridge Worship and Music, the National Convocation of The Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts, and Atlanta’s midwinter Choristers Guild Festival.


His creative touch is heard in the second stanza about gender equality when he gets to the line "dividing the power."  The choir has been singing in unison, but when he gets to "dividing," he separates the men (tenors and basses) and the women (sopranos and altos) before dividing the two parts into four. Finally, the four parts come together again on a strong, fortissimo "system that's fair!"

J.C.H.Rinck

The postlude is by a composer who is new to me, but certainly not "new." Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck was a noted composer for organ in his day, but the sad fact is he came along after the time of Bach, and the glory of the instrument had begun to wane. He was a part of the Classical Period (roughly 1750-1825), which began to eschew the organ and harpsichord in favor of the piano. Think of it - none of the Big Names of the Classical period (Haydn, Mozart, Clementi, Beethoven or Schubert) wrote anything of merit for the organ, if at all. But churches still needed organist, and for the organ student of the time, Rinck was a big contributor with his 'Practical Organ School,' a standard work in six volumes  and numerous Chorale Preludes.

Music for October 4, 2015 + The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• For the Beauty of the Earth – John Rutter (b. 1945)
• O Kind Jesus - Robert Hunter, arr. (1929-2001)

Instrumental Music

• Air - Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Jesus Loves Me- Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Now Thank We All Our God - Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

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

• Hymn 376 - Joyful, joyful, we adore thee (HYMN TO JOY)
• Hymn 480 - When Jesus left his Father’s throne (KINGSFOLD)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus, stanzas 1-3 (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn - Jesus loves me, this I know (JESUS LOVES ME)
• Hymn 397 - Now thank we all our God (NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT)

Of the two choral offerings this Sunday, John Rutter's For the Beauty of the Earth is by far the best known. It's joyous text and infectious melody have made it a favorite among choirs throughout the world since it was first published in 1980, after he wrote it for The Texas Choral Director's Association. It incorporates several of Rutter's distinctive musical trademarks: an interesting, singable melody, several changes in key, and syncopated rhythms used in conjunction with smooth, straight legato lines. The accompaniment, which I will be playing on the piano, stands alone, supporting but not doubling what the choral parts do.


The other anthem, based on a simple Latvian folk tune, is arranged by Ralph Hunter. A choral conductor, educator, and arranger, Hunter was born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1921. He began his musical career as a church organist at Newark, New Jersey’s First Reformed Church. He served in the Army during World War II and then attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1955, he became the conductor of New York’s Collegiate Chorale, the second conductor after founder Robert Shaw, and held that position until 1959. In the late 1950s, he was an arranger for Harry Belafonte, conducted the Radio City Music Hall Chorus, and formed his own group, the Ralph Hunter Choir, with whom he recorded five albums. In the 1960’s, he conducted a variety of groups, including a campaign chorus for Richard Nixon, called Voices for Nixon, as well as a chorus that performed on NBC television under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. From 1969-1987, he was a music professor at New York’s Hunter College, where he taught choral literature, conducting, and arranging. He conducted and arranged a wide variety of choral music, including the temperance songs we sing today. He is known for his arrangements and conducting of classical choral works by such early music composers as Thomas Tallis and Nicholas Porpora.

Sunday's Gospel lessons is about Jesus and divorce and and Jesus and the children. I've decided to focus on Jesus and the children. That's why we are singing these two anthems and today's hymns, especially Jesus Loves Me. Preceding the singing of Jesus Loves Me (in a rocking 6/8 setting by Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer as found in Lift Every Voice and Sing II, An African American Hymnal for the Episcopal Church), I will play an very improvisatory piano piece by Charles Callahan which quotes snippets of the tune while never playing the melody outright. \

Just this past week I watched an episode of "Call the Midwife" on Netflix (watch it, if you haven't yet!) where one of the characters dies tragically. His girlfriend laments that she cannot see God in this tragedy, and the head nun responds that God is not in the tragedy, God is in the response. That could be said about Martin Rinkart, the writer of our closing hymn.

Rinkart was a minister in the city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years War. Apart from battles, lives were lost in great number during this time due to illnesses and disease spreading quickly throughout impoverished cities. In the Epidemic of 1637, Rinkart officiated at over four thousand funerals, sometimes fifty per day. In the midst of these horrors, it’s difficult to imagine maintaining faith and praising God, and yet, that’s exactly what Rinkart did. Sometime in the next twenty years, he wrote the hymn, Now Thank We All Our God, originally meant to be a prayer said before meals. Rinkart could recognize that our God is faithful, and even when the world looks bleak, He is “bounteous” and is full of blessings, if only we look for them. Blessings as seemingly small as a dinner meal, or as large as the end of a brutal war and unnecessary bloodshed are all reasons to lift up our thanks to God, with our hearts, our hands, and our voices.

The closing voluntary is Sigfrid Karg-Elert's setting of that tune, but the melody is hidden even more than in the piano piece of Callahan's on Jesus Loves Me. I've put up a diagram showing how fragment of the opening line is used as a basis for the main theme of this organ masterpiece.