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.