Music for March 22, 2015 + The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• City Called Heaven - Josephine Poelinitz (1942?)
• Pange Linqua Glorioso – plainsong, mode 3

Instrumental Music

• Wondrous Love – Gordon Young (1919-1998)
• Largo from Trio Sonata in C Minor BWV 526 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn 439 - What wondrous love is this (WONDROUS LOVE)
• Hymn 479 - Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pain (WEM IN LEIDENSTAGEN)
• Hymn 473 - Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim (CRUCIFER)

Josephine Poelinitz is an Elementary Music Specialist in the Chicago Public Schools. Her arrangement of City Called Heaven, a “sorrow song” performed in the style of “surge-singing,” has become a favorite of choirs of all ages. In it, Poelinitz salutes the American gospel heritage evident in the vocal spacing and piano accompaniment. While our soloist (the lovely and talented Simone McQuitty from Lone Star Kingwood) laments about life’s troubles, the choir and piano accompany with short, sighing pulses. These aspects in the context of the F minor sonority create a weary hopelessness overcome only by the hope to “make heaven my home.”

The organ prelude is on the Southern Hymn "What Wondrous Love Is This" that has been the focus of the Lenten Wednesday Night Study. Michigan composer Gordon Young used the hymn as inspiration, but did not make a literal arrangement of the tune. Fragments of the tune and/or harmonies from the chorale are use to create an 'impression' of the hymn.

The communion voluntary is a movement from one of the six trio sonatas Bach wrote for the organ during his first few years in Leipzig, where he lived from 1723 until his death in 1750. Written for the organ or pedal clavichord (a practice instrument for organists), these sonatas require the right and left hands to play independently melodic lines on separate keyboards, while the feet play the basso continuo. According to Paul Jacobs, organ professor at Julliard, “The organ sonatas are disarmingly attractive and immediately appealing to the listener, though they pose ferocious interpretive and technical demands for the player.” A significant challenge of performing these works is one of sheer coordination: playing three lines of music on two keyboards and pedal with all four limbs. “There isn't much for the performer to cling on to,” Jacobs said. “It’s a little like walking on eggshells.”  By contrast, in other weightier organ and keyboard works, Bach sometimes employs thicker four- or five-part counterpoint, offering a more idiomatically conceived keyboard texture. In other words, there is nothing for the organist to hide behind!

(I am delighted to be playing this on the day after J.S.Bach's 330th birthday, though, according to Wikipedia, Bach's birth date of March 21 is in the Old Style, which is March 31 in the New Style. This discrepancy corresponds to the difference between the Julian calendar [which was in use in Bach's time] and the newer Gregorian calendar. So I can celebrate for TEN WHOLE DAYS!)

Hymns for Sunday

• Hail, thou once despised Jesus (IN BABILONE) The author, John Bakewell, lived to be 98,  and was an English Methodist minister in whose home Thomas Olivers wrote "The God of Abraham praise." To the original two stanzas, others were added by Martin Madan, who became chaplain to the Lock Hospital (an institution for the "restoration of unhappy females.") It can best be described as rhymed theology.
• What wondrous love is this (WONDROUS LOVE) - The melody for this hymn shows signs of Celtic influences, and the unusual meter of the text is that of an old sea chantey about Captain Kidd! The tune first appeared in the valleys of the Southern Appalachians, where William Walker wrote it down and included it in his historic hymnbook Southern Harmony. Each stanza has a single thought which is  underscored by repetition, but it is the haunting melody which has made this hymn so popular. 
• Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pain (WEM IN LEIDENSTAGEN) This devotional hymn on the crucified Christ is thought to be eighteenth-century Italian in origin. It appears in the Hymnal in a much altered form, matched with a very accessible German tune from the 19th century. The tune's name comes from the funeral text that was first associated with the tune in 1874. ("O let him whose sorrow no relief can find")
• Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim (CRUCIFER) Here is another hymn which owes its popularity to its tune (with its stirring refrain) than to any great merit of the text-- which is a revision of original lines by George Kitchin, an Anglican who published works in the history, biography, and archaeology. It is related to "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "For all the saints" in its symbolism of marching in the ranks of the soldiers of the crucified. It is the crucified Christ and his cross which we follow, and his love e proclaim to the world.