Music for May 24, 2015 + The Day of Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Veni Creator Spiritus – Stephen Sturk (b. 1950)
• Gracious Spirit, Dwell With Me – K. Lee Scott (b.1950)

Instrumental Music

• Choral varié sur le thème du 'Veni Creator', Op 4 – Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)

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

• Hymn 225 - Hail thee, festival day (SALVE FESTA DIES)
• Hymn 20 - Now Holy Spirit, ever One (WAREHAM)
• Hymn R90 - Spirit of the Living God (Daniel Iverson)
• Hymn R168 - If You believe and I believe (Traditional Zimbabwe)
• Hymn 511 - Holy Spirit, ever living (ABBOT’S LEIGH)

This Sunday is Pentecost, the Sunday commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ (120 in all), as described in the Acts of the Apostles 2:1–31. For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described by some Christians today as the "Birthday of the Church".  (You can read more about the origins of Pentecost here.)

Stephen Sturk with the San Clemente
Choral Society

Therefore, there will be a lot of singing about the Holy Spirit at church this Sunday. The first anthem the choir sings incorporates one of the earliest hymns of the church with its original Gregorian Chant. Veni Creator Spiritus has taken deeper hold of the Western Church than any other medieval hymn, with the exception maybe of the Te Deum. The choir will start the anthem singing in unison, in Latin, accompanied only by bells. Then a metrical version of the tune is used to sing parts of the Psalm, accompanied by the organ. This arrangement is by Stephen Sturk, director of music at St. Thomas of Canterbury, San Diego, composer-in-residence at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego, and conductor of Cappella Gloriana, San Diego’s professional chamber choir. A professional singer, he's also the only composer of anthems in our library who is on the soundtrack of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. (I don't know which part, though I highly suspect it was not Beauty.)

 Maurice Duruflé and his wife
Marie Madeleine Chevalier Durufle 

The organ voluntaries also use the Veni Creator plainchant. It is a set of variations on the chant by the great French Organist, Maurice Duruflé. Like Olivier Messiaen (whose music I played last week), Maurice Duruflé was a 20th century French organ virtuoso and composer trained at the Paris Conservatory, but unlike Messiaen, Duruflé united the church's unique language of plainsong  with the secular harmonies of the modern French school (as typified by Debussy, Ravel, and Dukas). He was not an innovator, but, like Bach, was a master at his craft.

The Prélude, Adagio et Choral varié sur le thème du 'Veni Creator' was the first of his three major organ works. I will be playing the last part of the work, the theme and four variations. First you hear the theme (Allegro religioso) presented in full organ. Next comes Variation 1. Poco meno mosso. Written in four parts, the theme appears in the pedals whilst the right hand plays an elaboration of the theme. Variation 2. Allegretto is for manuals only, while Variation 3. Andante espressivo is a canon at the interval of the fourth.

I will play the final variation for the closing voluntary. Variation 4 'Final'. Allegro, is a brilliant toccata, introducing the theme in canon between right hand and pedals. The music winds up to a glorious climax; Duruflé saves his master-stroke for the coda marked ‘tempo poco più vivo’ when he presents the plainsong ‘Amen’ (only hinted at in the organ music until that point) in the pedals on full organ.

Sunday's hymns

• Hail thee, festival day (SALVE FESTA DIES) - This is the tune we have been singing each Sunday since Easter, but now we are singing the words that are specific to Pentecost. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed SALVE FESTA DIES as a setting for Venantius H. Fortunatus's famous text "Hail Thee, Festival Day." The tune, whose title comes from the opening words of that text, was published in The English Hymnal of 1906.
• Now Holy Spirit, ever One (WAREHAM) Here's another Pentecost hymn written by an founding father of the church (St. Ambrose) that has been translated into English for modern usage. The first two stanzas of this hymn were translated especially for use in our Hymnal, the Hymnal 1982, and then picked for inclusion in our other song book, Renew.
• Spirit of the Living God (Daniel Iverson) This composite hymn text is a prayer for the Holy Spirit to work renewal in the individual heart (st. 1) and to make these renewed people one in love and service (st. 2). Daniel Iverson wrote the first stanza and tune of this hymn after hearing a sermon on the Holy Spirit during an evangelism crusade in Florida in 1926. Michael Baughen, retired Bishop of Chester (Great Britain) added a second stanza in 1980. That stanza's emphasis on the Spirit moving “among us all,” provides a necessary complement to the first stanza's focus on the Spirit's work in the individual ("fall afresh on me"). 
• If You believe and I believe (Traditional Zimbabwe) The tune for this traditional Zimbabwe song is an English folksong which was taken by British colonizers to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where it was taken up by the local people and re-fitted with these words which were sung as an anti-colonial protest. The words which we today sing "...and set God's people free" would have been sung as "set Zimbabwe (or Namibia, or Africa) free."
• Holy Spirit, ever living (ABBOT’S LEIGH) This two stanza hymn is by Timothy Rees, a monk born in 1874 in Wales who became the first monastic in over 300 years to become a Bishop in the Anglican church in 1931. He has written two hymns in our hymnal (God is love, let heaven adore him and this one) and both of them are set to the same tune, ABBOT'S LEIGH.