December 8, 2019 + Advent II

Vocal Music

• A Shoot Shall Come Forth – Richard Horn (1938-2004)

Instrumental Music

• Partita on Comfort, Comfort Ye, My People – Georg Böhm (1661 – 1733)

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

• Hymn 616 - Hail to the Lord’s Anointed (Es flog ein kleines Walvögelein)
• Hymn 67  - Comfort, comfort ye, my people (Psalm 42)
• Hymn R 92 - Prepare the way of the Lord (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 307 - Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor (Bryn Calfaria)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (Land of Rest)
• Hymn 65 - Prepare the way, O Zion (Bereden vag for Herran)
• Psalm 72:1-8 – Tone Ig

By now, church musicians, like many other American consumers, are experiencing the "Christmas Crush (or, as we'd rather call it, "Advent Angst.") As of this writing, I have yet to complete the first full week of December, but already I'm worn out. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on these music notes this week.

Except to say - all the organ music (the opening, closing, and communion voluntaries) is from one large set of variations on the tune we use for Hymn 67 - our Gospel hymn this week. I'll be using four segments of the partita during the service.

Our hymnal calls the tune Psalm 42, because this form of the tune, with its highly rhythmic, dance-like meter, was first used with a French version of Psalm 42. It first appeared in 1551 toward the end of the Renaissance, in a Psalter edited by Louis Bourgeois. It was he who probably wrote this tune.

In the German Lutheran tradition, those sprightly rhythms were toned down to a staid quarter-note melody in 4/4 time. (One of my church-musician friends calls it "death by quarter-note.") It is the Lutheran version that Georg Böhm used as the theme for his partita.

Georg Böhm  was a German Baroque organist and composer who is best known today for his keyboard works, particularly the chorale partita. A partita is a large-scale composition consisting of several variations on a particular chorale melody. He effectively invented the genre, writing several partitas of varying lengths and on diverse tunes.  Böhm's chorale partitas feature sophisticated figuration in several voices over the harmonic structure of the chorale. His partitas generally have a rustic character and can be successfully performed on either the organ or the harpsichord. Later composers also took up the genre, most notably Johann Sebastian Bach, who was influenced by Böhm  as a young musician.

Bach's son,  Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, wrote that his father loved and studied Böhm's music, and a correction in his note shows that his first thought was to say that Böhm was Johann Sebastian's teacher. In 2006,  the earliest known Bach autographs were discovered, including one signed "Il Fine â Dom. Georg: Böhme descriptum ao. 1700 Lunaburgi". The "Dom." bit may suggest either "domus" (house) or "Dominus" (master), but in any case it proves that Bach knew Böhm personally. This connection must have become a close friendship that lasted for many years, for in 1727 Bach named none other than Böhm as his northern agent for the sale of keyboard partitas nos. 2 and 3

Music for December 1, 2019 + Advent I

Vocal Music

• Zion Hears the Watchman Singing – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)

Instrumental Music

• “Sleepers, wake!” A voice astounds us – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Ecce Dominus Veniet – Marcel Dupre (1886-1971)
• Fugue in A Major – Johann Sebastian Bach

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

• Hymn 57 - Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 73 - The King shall come when morning comes (ST. STEPHEN)
• Hymn 74 - Blest be the King whose coming (VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN)
• Hymn R 152 - I want to walk as a child of the light (HOUSTON)
• Hymn R 92 - Prepare the way of the Lord (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 68 - Rejoice! rejoice, believers (LLANGLOFFAN)
• Psalm 122 – Tone 1f

One of my Facebook colleagues posted this week that if it’s Thanksgiving, Advent can’t be far behind. And it’s true this year, for many of us won’t be sick of turkey yet when we light the first candle on the Advent wreath this Sunday. And since this is year A of the lectionary cycle, we’ll hear these words from Romans13:11

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers… 

It just makes it easy when choosing music. One of the great Advent hymns is the German chorale, WACHET AUF, which you’ll find in our hymnal at hymn 61. It’s not that well known in our congregation, but so many composers from Bach’s time to today have arranged this hymn for choir or organ that I can use it several times, which is what I’m doing this Sunday.

First, you’ll hear it at the opening voluntary when I play J. S. Bach’s own organ transcription of his tenor solo from Cantata 140. It’s one of Bach’s most inspired melodies, and that’s just in the accompaniment! This casual, lyrical melody just goes alone, minding its own business, when suddenly, the watchman enters with his solemn warning, in the form of the chorale melody played on the trumpet stop. The two tunes don’t have anything to do with each other, yet they form to join a beautiful duet.

 The same chorale tune is used in the offertory anthem by a contemporary of Bach’s, Johann Gottfried Walther. Like Bach, Walther was an organist and composer of the Baroque era. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that of J.S. Bach, he was the famous composer's cousin. He also studied organ with Bach’s second cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach.

In 1707 he was appointed organist at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Weimar.  Bach had been appointed to the Duke of Weimar’s ‘Capelle und Kammermusik’in 1708. In 1712 Bach was godfather to J.G. Walther’s son. In his biography of Bach, J. N. Forkel told a story of how J. G. Walther played a trick on Bach, to cure him of boasting that there was nothing he could not read at sight.

Johann Gottfried Walther wrote sacred vocal works and numerous organ pieces, consisting mostly of chorale preludes. In fact, today’s anthem is one of his organ preludes which Mark Schweitzer arranged for choir. (It must be noted that Schweitzer, a fine singer and composer in his own right, died this past November in North Carolina. His passing will be a great loss to church musicians.)

The communion voluntary is an organ work by the brilliant French organist Marcel Dupré. Dupré’s international fame developed soon after the First World War as the direct result of his skill as an improviser, specifically on plainsong themes. The Six Antiennes pour les temps de Noël, Op.48, written in 1952, take as their basis the plainsongs of the Christmas antiphons. The first is for Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent;

Ecce Dominus veniet, et omnes sancti ejus cum eo: et erit in die illa lux magna, alleluia.

"Behold the Lord will come, and all his saints with him, and there will be a great light in that day, Alleluia."

Music for November 24, 2019 + Christ the King Sunday

Vocal Music

• My Eternal King – Jane Marshall (1924-2019)

Instrumental Music

• Duo (Glorificamus Te) Livre d'orgue  – Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703)
• Thou Man of Grief, Remember Me – Gardner Read (1913-2005)
• Crown Imperial – William Walton (1902-1983)

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

• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn 421- All glory be to God on high (ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HÖH)
• Hymn R 128 - Blessed be the God of Israel (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn R 268 - King of kings and Lord of lords (KING OF KINGS)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus! (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn R 229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R 227 - Jesus, remember me (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 477 - All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGLEBERG)

In 1952, Jane Marshall was a 28-year old housewife and mom in Dallas. (A real Dallas housewife!) She had a undergraduate degree in music, but her only musical outlet was singing in Highland Park Methodist Church choir. So she decided to write an piece of music for that choir, resulting in the anthem which we will sing this Sunday, My Eternal King. The piece proved to be a hit.

Published in 1954 by Carl Fischer Music, it became one of that venerable music publisher's all-time bestselling anthems and remains popular with choirs across denominations.

Jane Marshall, 2014

Using a text which began as a Spanish sonnet, translated into Latin by St. Francis Xavier, then translated in English by Anglican clergyman and later Roman Catholic convert-priest Edward Caswall in 1849, it is an anthem which has been referred to as the American equivalent of an English Cathedral anthem. Meditative at the start, soaring to triple fortissimo at the end, encompassing a range of tone colors and sumptuous harmonies, My Eternal King is a masterful match of text and music.

Jane went on to write another anthem, Awake, My Heart, which won the 1957 American Guild of Organist Anthem competition, and He Comes to Us, a setting of a text from Albert Schweitzer. Lloyd Pfautsch, director of choral activities and church music, encouraged her to return for her Master of Music degree in choral conducting and composition.

Jane Marshall was a much-published composer of choral music, a skilled choral conductor and clinician, and a gifted hymn writer of both texts and tunes. (Three of her hymn-tunes are in our Hymnal 1982.) Important as any of these accomplishments, she gave herself to pedagogy and mentorship both in the classroom setting with graduate students (she was one of my professors at SMU in 1981), in myriad workshop settings with novices in the field, and with individual consultations.

Music for November 17, 2019

Vocal Music

• The First Song of Isaiah – Jack Noble White (1938-2019)
• Praise the Lord who Reigns Above – Jody Lindh (b. 1944)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude in A Major, BWV 536 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Auf Meinen Lieben Gott – Dietrich Buxtehude
• Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott – Johann Pachelbel

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 482 - Lord of all hopefulness (SLANE)
• Hymn R 172 - In my life, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn - Steal away to Jesus (SPIRITUAL)
• Hymn 620 - Jerusalem, my happy home (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 598 - Lord Christ, when first thou cam’st to earth (MIT FREUDEN ZART)

The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is well represented by the choral music this Sunday. The Canticle is a setting of the First Song of Isaiah by Jack Noble White, an Episcopal musician who passed away this month in Fort Worth at the age of 81. The offertory is an anthem by Jody Lindh, a retired Methodist musician living in Dallas. Both anthems will be sung by our children's choir.

Since it was first published in 1976, White's FIRST SONG OF ISAIAH has been sung by millions of people worldwide. White was organist/choirmaster at the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Mobile, Alabama in 1975 when a group of 90 youth from California, Nevada, Nassau in the Bahamas, and Alabama gathered for a music conference near Mobile. White composed this setting for that group, including keyboard, guitar, drums, bass guitar, and handbells to accompany the choir. Today we will sing with just the piano as the Coventry Choir leads the congregation of the singing of this Canticle found in the Book of Common Prayer (which was in experimental use at the time.)

Jack Noble White

Jack Noble White spent most of his career in Texas, of which he is a sixth generation native. He divided his time between music and education. White served as Secretary of the Episcopal Church’s National Music Commission from 1962-1977. He began writing and publishing during that time and now has many works in print. In 1977 he became the Executive Director of The Texas Boys Choir, leading them into a continuous international limelight with numerous tours. He and his wife, Johanna, founded the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, still housing the 70-year-old choir. Retiring from that position in 1995, he devoted his attention to writing and other projects, including the Dorothy Shaw Bell Choir, and their annual Fort Worth play-pageant of the Nativity, The Littlest Wiseman, now in its 59th year.

Jody Lindh

Jody Lindh had an unusually long tenure as director of Music at University Park United Methodist in Dallas, beginning as organist while still a student at Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation, he was named director of music, where he served for 45 years until his retirement in 2013. He is married to Jonell Lindh, a semi-retired United Methodist Minister on staff of First United Methodist in Dallas.

A little known fact about Lindh: He’s a Lutheran. He's an associate member of University Park, but remains a member of Elim Lutheran Church in Marquette, Kansas, the church he grew up in. "My great-grandfather was a founder of Elim in the 1880s, and my whole family is there," he said. "I couldn't possibly leave it!"

Music for November 10, 2019 + Kirkin o' the Tartans

Vocal Music

• Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs – Paul Ritchie
• I Know that My Redeemer Liveth – G. F. Handel, Amy Bogan, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Highland Cathedral - James D. Wetherald, arr., Richard Kean, pip
  er 
• Traditional Piping Tunes – Richard Keen, piper

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

• Hymn R 5 - God is here, and we his people (ABBOTT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn 295 - Sing praise to our Creator (CHRISTUS, DER IS MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn - I know that my Redeemer lives (DUKE STREET)
• Hymn R 90 - Spirit of the Living God (LIVING GOD)
• Hymn R 36 - I love you, Lord (I LOVE YOU, LORD)
• Hymn 671 - Amazing grace! how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 625 - Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)
• Psalm 17:1-9 - Tone Vc, Refrain by Jane Marshall

This is a favorite Sunday for many parishioners at Good Shepherd when we “Kirk (or bless) the Tartans.” Though we have been doing this for over 20 years, it is still a relatively new thing, beginning in the early 1940s, when Peter Marshall (the Presbyterian minister who was chaplain of the Senate - not the game show host) held prayer services at New York Avenue Presbyterian in D.C to raise funds for War Relief. At one of the services, he preached a sermon called “Kirking of the Tartans,” and thus a legend was born. You can read a more detailed history here at the Scottish Tartans Museum website. (Side note: the Scottish Tartan Museum is in Franklin, North Carolina, NOT Scotland)

Samuel Seabury

The reason we "kirk the tartans" is to remember our Anglican history,  specifically Samuel Seabury, the first American Anglican bishop who was consecrated by the Scottish Bishops of the Anglican church during the Revolutionary War. (England was a bit upset with the Americans, so they would have no part of that!) Thus we commemorate his consecration on the Sunday nearest his feast daym which is the anniversary of his consecration as a bishop, November 14, 1784. We wear our tartans, hang them in the church, and hear the bagpipe play. For twelve years now we have begun the service with the piper playing Highland Cathedral and end with him playing traditional piping tunes.

Amy Bogan, our soprano section leader, is singing one of the favorite arias from Handel's Messiah, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.  It's the opening movement of the third part of the oratorio, which is considered to be the Easter section, but the text is not New Testament, but is mainly from the Old Testament book of Job. As our first lesson this Sunday is that passage from Job, it is only fitting that Amy sing it during communion.

November 3, 2019 + All Saints Sunday

Vocal Music

• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – Ralph Vaughan Williams

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 (SINE NOMINE)
• Hymn 293 - I sing a song of the saints of God (GRAND ISLE)
• Hymn 286 - Who are these like stars appearing (ZEUCH MICH, ZEUCH MICH)
• Hymn R 243 - You shall cross the barren desert (BE NOT AFRAID)
• Hymn R 151 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
• Hymn 556 - Rejoice, ye pure in heart (MARION)
• Psalm 149 – Tone VIIb

The composer of this morning's anthem, Ralph Vaughan Williams, was a 20th Century English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also very interested in the music of the church, for, though he identified as an agnostic, he was editor of the Anglican English Hymnal in 1906, in which he included many of his own tunes and arrangements of folk songs.

Ralph Vaughan Williams and
an unknown cat.

One such hymn-tune is the tune SINE NOMINE, which Vaughan Williams composed for the text "for All the Saints" and published in the English Hymnal. 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. Equipped with a "walking" bass, SINE NOMINE is a glorious marching tune for this great text. Many consider this tune to be among the finest of twentieth-century hymn tunes (it is, perhaps, the church's equivalent to “When the Saints Go Marching In”). It is the opening hymn this Sunday.

Our anthem is Vaughan Williams’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Composed in 1923, it, along with SINE NOMINE,  captures the essence of English pomp and circumstance, with its inexorable forward marching movement.

The text is drawn the book Ecclesiasticus, commonly called The Wisdom of Sirach, a work from the early 2nd century B.C. written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach. It contrasts the tribute paid to famous people of accomplishment with those whose lives may have been anonymous, but nonetheless contributed to the welfare of mankind and thus are as deserving of memorial. Inspiring as are his words, Ben Sira could not have known how, in our age today, leaders and heroes span not just generations, but also genders.

Music for October 27. 2019

Vocal Music

• There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy – Maurice Bevan (1921-2006)
• Prayer – Lloyd Pfautsch (1921-2003)

Instrumental Music

• The Sixty-Fifth Psalm – Alec Rowley (1892-1958)
• Chromhorne sur la taille (Messe pour les Convents) - Francois Couperin (1668-1733)
• Offertoire sur les grands jeux (Messe pour les Convents) - Francois Couperin 

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 506 - Praise the Spirit in creation (FINNIAN)
• Hymn 552 - Fight the good fight with all thy might (PENTECOST)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn 314 - Humbly I adore thee (ADORO DEVOTE)
• Hymn 680 - O God, our help in ages past (ST. ANNE)
• Psalm 65 – Tone V 

I've sung the hymn, "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy," for years - all my life, really - using the tune BEECHER which our hymnal uses. But several years ago, Maurice Bevan, a British bass-baritone who sang with The Deller Consort, St Paul's Cathedral in London, and the BBC, wrote a beautiful new tune which has since gained popularity. One of the things that won my heart in this arrangement was the inclusion of a couple of couplets that are left out of most hymnals:

But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he would not own.

There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.

If our love were but more simple,
We should take him at his word;
And our lives would be all gladness
In the joy of Christ our Lord.

Maurice Bevan

The hymn was written  by the Catholic priest and poet, Frederick William Faber. Raised in the church of England, and ordained an Anglican priest, he was influenced by the teaching of John Henry Newman. In 1845 Faber followed Newman into the Roman Catholic Church and served in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Because he believed that Roman Catholics should sing hymns like those written by John Newton, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper, Faber wrote 150 hymns himself. One of his best known, "Faith of Our Fathers."

Dag Hammarskjold

Our communion anthem also has a beautiful text. It is by Dag Hammarskjold, who was  Secretary-General of the United Nations until his death in a plane crash in 1961. He  gave the impression of being an agnostic humanist while he was serving at the UN, but after his death, his private papers were discovered which contained some notes entitled “negotiations with myself – and with God”. His prayers have a naked honesty which is deeply moving. This text is one of those.

Hammarskjold's words were set to a haunting, chant-like melody by Lloyd Pfautsch, composer and one-time Director of Choral Activities at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He was one of my teachers, and from him I learned much, including these two things.

Lloyd Pfautsch

1. WORDS MATTER -- Lloyd considered it important for those who sing great words of faith to consider, and carefully articulate them while singing them. For him, the choir’s diction was essential

in prompting the hearers’ informed response.

2. MUSIC MATTERS -- Lloyd taught all of us that when choosing worship music --- congregational, choral, instrumental or keyboard --- the liturgy should inform the appropriateness of the music, and, the music, particularly the music of hymns, should compliment the words. I try to do that every Sunday.

That's why I chose this week's opening voluntary, a Tone Poem by English composer Alec Rowley on Psalm 65, which is the Psalm of the day. It's a longer work than usual (almost 8 minutes), so I want you to listen for these themes found in the music: (The text is from the Coverdale translation of the Bible, which had been used as the Psalter in all Books of Common Prayer, back to the first in 1549, until 1979.

Verse 1: Thou, O God, art Praised in Zion - Majestic 3/4 time
Verse 3: My misdeeds prevail against me - Softer, lyrical section, melody in the oboe (a plaintive sound).
Verse 7: Who stilleth the raging of the sea and the madness of the peoples. -  The organ becomes more agitated, growing in volume, tempo, and intensity, until it relaxes into a feeling of peace.
Verse 9: Thou Visiteth the earth, and blessest it. -  A broad, sweeping, descending melody modulating downward through three different keys as it "visits the earth" (descending)
Verse 14: The Valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing. - The music growing in volume and breadth, "thick"