Music for February 26, 2017 + The Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Transfiguration of Christ

Vocal Music

• The Lord is My Light and Salvation – Fred Gramman (contemporary)
• The Lord Bless You and Keep You – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude and Fugatoon “St. Elizabeth” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)
• Christ Upon the Mountain Peak – Joyce Moon Stroble (contemporary)
• Shine, Jesus, Shine – David Blackwell, arr. (b. 1961)

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

• Hymn 427 - When morning gilds the skies (LAUDES DOMINI)
• Hymn 383 - Fairest Lord Jesus (St. ELIZABETH)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn 328 - Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord (SONG 46)
• Hymn R247 - Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE JESUS SHINE)
• Psalm 99 - Dominus regnavit (Tone V)

This Sunday we focus on the story of Jesus' Transfiguration - that time when Jesus, Peter, James and John went to the Mount of Transfiguration to pray, and Jesus began to shine with bright rays of light. The prophets Moses and Elijah appeared next to him and he spoke with them. The actual feast day is August 6, but the Revised Common Lectionary chooses to end the season after Epiphany with the telling of the Transfiguration story.

If we look at the collect for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in our prayer book, we can see reasons why the Transfiguration of Our Lord is celebrated when it is:

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Episcopal Church, 1979, page 217.)

We celebrate the revelation of Christ's glory "before the passion" so that we may "be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness." The focus of the Lenten season is renewed discipline in walking in the way of the cross and rediscovery of the baptismal renunciation of evil and sin and our daily adherence to Christ. At Easter, which reveals the fullness of Christ’s glory (foreshadowed in the Transfiguration), Christians give themselves anew to the gospel at the Easter Vigil where they share the dying and rising of Christ.

In the biblical context, the synoptic gospels narrate the Transfiguration as a bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.

The key words in the story of the transfiguration and, indeed, the entire season of Epiphany are light and glory. Much of the music today references those themes.

One of the few hymns specifically for Transfiguration is Christ, upon the mountain peak, written by contemporary English poet Brian Wren in 1962. Peter Cutts wrote the tune SHILLINGFORD specifically for that text, and both text and tune are in our hymnal (hymn 130). But it is not really the kind of tune that easily catches on, as most hymnals which have included this text use another tune. (In fact, even our hymnal includes another tune as an alternate.) It looks innocent enough on paper, but upon hearing it you become aware of a tonal ambiguity that frankly freaks out the average congregation singer.

But the recent publication, Bayoubuchlein*, published for the 2016 American Guild of Organist convention here in Houston, includes a setting of this hymn which I think works well during communion. 

Joyce Moon Strobel's arrangement begins with an undulating eighth note accompaniment in the right hand, with the melody coming in quietly in the left hand. Taking a cue from the adventuresome tonality of the melody, Strobel also ventures into new keys for each of the three times she presents the tune. A graduate of the Conservatory at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joyce Strobel has served as Organist/Choir Director at St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Scott Township, in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 1986.

* Bayoubüchlein: New Choral Preludes for AGO Houston 2016

This distinctive new collection of organ music for the liturgical year was commissioned for the 2016 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Houston. The title refers to J. S. Bach’s volume of chorale-based organ works and Houston’s Gulf Coast waterways. Realizing that newer hymn tunes often lacked chorale preludes, the convention’s new music committee decided that each piece in this collection would be based on a hymn tune composed since 1960. The works chosen are a combination of pieces commissioned by the convention and pieces selected from an open “call for scores.” 

Music for February 19, 2017 + The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

10:15 service

Instrumental Music

• These are the Holy Ten Commandments, BWV 678 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Prelude on “Chereponi” - Ann Krentz Organ (b. 1960)
• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein (21st C.)
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn 518 - Christ is made the sure foundation (WESTMINISTER ABBEY)
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn R148 - Brother, let me be your servant (THE SERVANT SONG)
• Hymn R289 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Bishop Andy Doyle Visitation at 5 PM

Vocal Music

• Teach Me, O Lord – Thomas Attwood (1765-1838)
• The Servant Song – Richard Gilliard, arr. David Haas

Instrumental Music

• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn R185 - Lord, prepare me (SANCTUARY)
• Hymn R5 - God is here, as we your people (ABBOT’S LEIGH)     
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn R 266 - Give thanks with a grateful heart (GIVE THANKS)
• Hymn 602 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Charlton Heston (not Moses) 

Two services this Sunday! Same scriptures, but different feel. The choir will not be singing at the 10:15 service but will be at the 5 PM service with Bishop Doyle.

At the 10:15 service, I am starting with a chorale prelude by Bach based on an old chorale by Martin Luther. Luther wrote an entire hymn setting the 10 commandments in verse. Once very popular, appearing in over 100 hymns when it was first written, it has not appeared in any hymnals published since 1900. Bach's setting of the hymn, however, is still a classic.

Two things are going on in this chorale prelude. First, the tune is played by the left hand on a trumpet-like sound, in canon. A canon is a compositional technique that presents the melody with the same melody starting after a given duration (in this case, two measures.) Think of how you sing “Three Blind Mice” or a similar round. That’s what’s happening here. It is also what we call a strict canon, where the notes and rhythm of the second part is exactly the same as the leader. Most musicologists think Bach used this strict technique to emphasize the strictness of the law. (I find it interesting that the musical term for the imitative technique “canon” is also used to describe any church's or religion's laws, rules, and regulations, i.e. “canon law.”)

The other thing going on in this prelude is that the right hand is playing a lovely, lyrical melody full of chromaticism that could stand quite well on its own without the addition of the chorale melody. This lilting accompaniment is the perfect foil for the inflexible canonic entrance of the hymn-tune. Hermann Schroeder, in his book on the music of Bach, suggests that Bach purposely chose 

to bring warmth to the inflexible, inexorable cantus firmus in the Christian thought, "God is love." Serene faith and imploring sighs are the two poles of this feeling, as Bach expresses it here.

In other words, grace.

At the 5 PM service, the choir continues the Law theme with Thomas Attwood's short anthem, Teach Me, O Lord (the way of thy statutes). 

At first a chorister in the Chapel Royal, Thomas Attwood, in 1781, became a Page in the household of the Prince of Wales, who sent him to study in Naples and then in Vienna as a pupil of Mozart. Returning to London in 1787, he continued his connection with the court and was appointed organist at St Paul's Cathedral and composer of the Chapel Royal, eventually to take the position of organist. In the last decade of the eighteenth century he wrote a quantity of music for the theater, but his principal contribution in the end turned out to be to church music.

Music for February 12, 2017 + The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• O For a Closer Walk With God – Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
• If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)

Instrumental Music

• Air from Orchestral Suite in D – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Saraband on “Land of Rest” – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• Allegro, Op. 105, No. 6 - C. V. Stanford 

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

• Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
• Hymn 674 -“Forgive our sins as we forgive” (DETROIT)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn R231 - How blessed are you (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 344 - Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)

Sometimes you just need to hear (or perform) a beautiful melody. That's the reason I am playing an organ transcription of J. S. Bach's lovely Air. Often called "Air on the G String," it was part of Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, written for Prince Leopold, Bach's employer in the little principality of Anhalt-Cothen between 1717 and 1723. This movement became popular over 100 year later, when German violinist August Wilhelm arranged the piece for violin and piano to be played on the evocative G-string of the violin .

The melody is typical of a melody from the Baroque period, as it winds its way all over the musical scale, leaping up and down the keyboard before wriggling back to whence it came. In my music appreciation class, this never fails to be the piece that captures the attention of people who may have never heard of Bach. One of the more unusual performances (and most striking) is this performance by Bobby McFerrin (a good Episcopalian, btw).

Bobby McFerrin Sings Bach

The offertory anthem is a setting of a of a hymn by the poet William Cowper. From the handbook to the Psalter Hymnal we learn that he wrote this text on December 9, 1769, during the illness of his long-time friend and housekeeper, Mrs. Unwin. "In a letter written the next day Cowper voiced his anxieties about her condition and about what might happen to him if she died. Saying that he composed the text "to surrender up to the Lord" all his "dearest comforts," Cowper added,

Her illness has been a sharp trial to me. Oh, that it may have a sanctifying effect!. . . I began to compose the verses yesterday morning before daybreak, but fell asleep at the end of the first two lines; when I awoke again, the third and fourth were whispered to my heart in a way which I have often experienced.

"Although Cowper frequently battled depression, doubt, and melancholy, this text speaks of a very intimate walk with the Lord. That walk is rooted in Scripture (st. 1), rejoices in conversion (st. 2-3), and denounces all idols that would usurp God's sovereignty (st. 4). The text concludes with a return to the prayer of the first stanza, but now that prayer is sung with increased confidence and serenity." -Psalter Hymnal Handbook

The tune, CAITHNESS, is Scottish, as was the arranger, Charles Villiers Stanford.

Music for February 5, 2017 + The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Give Almes of Thy Goods – Christopher Tye (1505-1572)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on Slane – Healey Willan (1880-1968)
• Let Us Break Bread Together – Dale Wood (1934-2003)
• Trumpet Tune in D – David N. Johnson (1922-1988)

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 488 - Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart (SLANE)
• Hymn 380 - From all that dwell below the skies (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn 325 - Let us break bread together (LET US BREAK BREAD)
• Hymn R306 - We are marching in the light of the Lord (SIYAHAMBA)

The anthem this morning is by the 16th century composer Christopher Tye. Tye was the choirmaster at Ely Cathedral during the reign of Henry the VIII, and as such contributed new music for the Anglican church, including this anthem, Give Almes of thy Goods. (The word almes being an Middle English spelling and pronunciation of alms, or charitable gifts.)

Give Almes of thy Goods is a short setting of an offertory sentence which appeared in both the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer. This is an Tudor creation in every way. Constructed in the ABB form of the early English anthem, this four-voice piece is entirely syllabic, exactly as Thomas Cramner, the architect of the Book of Common Prayer, required: "to every syllable a note."

Northeast aspect of Ely Cathedral
by John Buckler

And, yes, the closing voluntary is the Trumpet Tune in D by David Johnson which was heard every Sunday for years on KUHF(KUHA) as the theme music for the Sunday morning program "With Heart and Voice" until the station was taken off the air. It was a sad day for music and the arts in Houston. 

Music for January 29, 2017 + The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Servants of Peace – K. Lee Scott (b. 1950)

Instrumental Music

• Praise Ye the Triune God – Friedrich F. Fleming
• You Are My Hiding Place – Michael Ledner, arr. Mark Hayes (b. 1952)
• Praise Him With the Sound of the Trumpet – Carl Simone (1918-2003)

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 WALDVÖGELEIN)
• Hymn 605 - What does the Lord require (SHARPTHORNE)
• Hymn 441 - In the cross of Christ I glory (RATHBUN)
• Hymn R243 - You shall cross the barren desert (BE NOT AFRAID)
• Hymn R305 - Lord, you give the great commission (ABBOT’S LEIGH)

A contemporary setting of the traditional prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi is the text of the anthem this Sunday, which is a perfect match for the readings this week. (Micah 6:1-8 and the Beatitudes.) The  Prayer of St. Francis is a famous prayer which first appeared around the year 1915 A.D., and which embodies the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi's simplicity and poverty.

According to Father Kajetan Esser, OFM, the author of the critical edition of St. Francis's Writings, the Peace Prayer of St. Francis is most certainly not one of the writings of St. Francis. According to Father Schulz, this prayer first appeared during the First World War. It was found written on the back of a holy card of St. Francis. The prayer bore no name; but in the English speaking world, on account of this holy card, it came to be called the Peace Prayer of St. Francis.

The music is by Alabama native K. Lee Scott. He is widely known throughout the United States as a conductor and composer of choral music. His more than 250 published compositions, arrangements, and editions are represented in the catalogues of 15 publishing companies. In addition to many choral works, he has written an opera and has published works for organ, solo voice, and brass.

A graduate of the University of Alabama School of Music with two degrees in choral music under the tutelage of Frederick Prentice, Scott has served as an adjunct faculty member at both the University of Alabama School of Music and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Music. His appearances as guest conductor and clinician have taken him throughout the United States, to Canada, and Africa. 

The closing voluntary is by one of the many musicians of the past century who wrote music which filled a need for the the many organists, often un-trained or with minimal training, who played at the various churches across the country at a time when the organ was THE instrument for worship. Carl Simone was a native of Los Angeles, and having been an "early bloomer", became organist in a Lutheran church in his early teens. He later studied theory and composition with Arnold Schoenberg at the University of California before World War II altered his plans and he became an army cryptographer, assisting the chaplains from time to time as an organist. After his army stint, it was back to school to earn a master's degree at USC, followed by a period of public school teaching, where one of his students was Debbie Reynolds. He also played club engagements (at one time he played organ intermissions for the Harry James Orchestra in Santa Monica, California), a TV program called "Inspirational Hour", and Sunday worship services. 

Music for January 22, 2017 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – C. H. H. Parry (1848-1918)

Instrumental Music

• O God, Thou Faithful God– Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• How Brightly Shines the Morningstar – Andreas Armsdorff (1670–1699)
• Improvisation on “Praise to the Lord” – Paul Manz (1919-2009)

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

• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)
• Hymn 381 - Thy strong word did cleave the darkness (TONY-Y-BOTEL)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn 321 - My God, thy table now is spread (ROCKINGHAM)
• Hymn R102 - The Lord is my light (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 530 - Spread, O spread, thou mighty word (GOTT SEI DANK)
• Psalm 27:1, 5-13 - Dominus illuminatio (simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome Meachem)

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.

John Greenleaf Whittier

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.

It will also be sung as a congregational hymn at the Hymn Festival this Sunday night. Make plans to come!

Music for January 15, 2017 + The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Wondrous Love – Steve Pilkington

Instrumental Music

• Ritournello on “Liebster Jesu, Wir sind Her” – Aaron David Miller (b. 1962)
• Soul, Adorn Yourself With Gladness – Ann Krentz Organ (b. 1960)
• Poco Vivace, Opus 9, No. 6  –Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984)

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

• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works (LYONS)
• Hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (LIEBSTER JESU)
• Hymn - I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM)
• Hymn 550 - Jesus calls us; o’er the tumult (GALILEE)
• Psalm 40:1-11 - Expectans, expectavi

Sometimes nothing can beat a simple, plaintive melody for its beauty. Such is my opinion of the Southern folk hymn, What wondrous Love Is This? In the version the choir sings this week, you never hear the voices in more than two-part harmony, and that is when they are singing in canon (The men echoing the women four beats later.) Their singing is accompanied on the piano with a flowing, eighth-note piano part, with the addition of handbells playing growing chord clusters or ringing randomly during the last stanza. The text in the hymnal does not match exactly the text in our music, so here is the text for the solo stanza (stanza two) which will be sung by Bidkar Cajina.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of life
to lay aside his crown for my soul?

As we read the Gospel lesson about Jesus beginning his ministry, I thought this anthem raised some valid questions to stimulate thought about why Jesus  would "lay aside his crown for (our) soul."

The arranger, Steve Pilkington, serves on the faculty of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. as Associate Professor of Sacred Music. He also oversees all the music ministries at Christ Church United Methodist in  New York City, where he has been Director of Music and Organist since 1994. 

Aaron David Miller

Aaron David Miller serves as the Director of Music and Organist at House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota and maintains an active recital schedule. He has been a featured performer at four National Conventions for the American Guild of Organists since 1996, the most recent being the 2016 convention here in Houston. He also is a prolific composer, and Dr. Miller’s many solo organ, choral, and orchestral compositions are published by Augsburg Fortress, Oxford University Press, Paraclete Press, ECS, Morning Star and Kjos Publishing House. 

One of his shorter compositions is the opening voluntary. It is a setting of our hymn before the Gospel, hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (tune name: LIEBSTER JESU). A Ritournello (more commonly spelled Ritornello) is a Baroque form where a repeated section of music, the ritornello (literally, "the little thing that returns") alternates with freer episodes. You'll actually hear several fragments of melody returning in the organ prelude which alternates meters in a dance-like way.

Speaking of alternating meters, the closing voluntary is full of changing time signatures. If you are trying to clap along, have fun finding a steady beat!) This piece by German composer Hermann Schroeder, the only composer of those featured this morning to be neither American or living. He was born in Bernkastel and spent the greatest part of his life’s work in the Rheinland. His activity as composer was supplemental to his career in education. 

Schroeder's main accomplishments as a composer were in Catholic church music, where he attempted to break free of the lingering monopoly held by Romantic music. His works are characterized by the employment of medieval elements such as Gregorian chant, modal scales, and fauxbourdon which he combined with quintal and quartal harmonies and 20th-century polyphonic linear, sometimes atonal writing. In the work played this week, the last number in a collection of short preludes and intermezzi, you'll hear an initial Fanfare-like flourish characterized by octave leaps in the manuals and pedals.  In the middle section, linear, angular melodies are heard in each hand before returning to the initial fanfare section.