Music for Easter + March 27, 2016

Vocal Music

• Now Glad of Heart - K. Lee Scott (b. 1950)
• This Joyful Eastertide – Alice Parker (b. 1925)
• Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Instrumental Music

• A Prelude for Easter – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands – Georg Böhm (1661-1733)
• Symphony V: Toccata – Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)

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

• Hymn 207 - Jesus Christ is risen today (Easter Hymn)
• Hymn 417 - This is the feast of victory (Festival Canticle)
• Hymn 210 - The day of resurrection! (Ellacombe)
• Hymn 174 - At the Lamb’s high feast we sing (Salzburg)
• Hymns R29 - He is Lord, he is Lord (He Is Lord)
• Hymn 179 - “Welcome, happy morning!” (Fortunatus)

Three different styles of anthems encompass the varied emotions we experience at Easter. The anthem by K. Lee. Scott, Now Glad of Heart, is the typical barn-burner, a bright, rhythmic anthem employing full organ, starting with repeated Alleluias that are reminiscent of the Mission: Impossible theme,  a rollicking melody (which always reminded me of riding in a speed boat over a bounding main), a big choral fanfare in the middle, and more alleluias, this time tumbling down from Soprano to Bass like a cascading water fall.

The first communion motet is a short setting of the Dutch Easter Carol, VERUCHTEN, which was originally a seventeenth-century love song "De liefde Voortgebracht." It became a hymn tune in 1685 as a setting for "Hoe groot de vruchten zijn." The tune is distinguished by the melismas that mark the end of stanza lines and by the rising sequences in the refrain, which provide a fitting word painting for "arisen." 

Alice Parker arranged this in the early 1950s for Robert Shaw's choral group which was making a series of commercially successful recordings of hymns, carols and folk songs. She only set the first stanza. I was tempted to have us repeat this setting, singing the second stanza:

My flesh in hope shall rest,
And for a season slumber;
Till trump from east to west,
Shall wake the dead in number.

Can you guess why I was tempted to include it? God has a sense of humor, but I decided to go against my inclinations.*

The final anthem is J. S. Bach's setting of the Lutheran chorale, Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands. It is an adaptation of a medieval chant Victimae Paschali laudes arranged in 1524 as a four-part chorale by Johann Walther for the hymn text by Martin Luther. One of the earliest and best-known Lutheran chorales, CHRIST LAG IN TODESBANDEN is a magnificent tune in rounded bar form (AABA).Bach incorporated it extensively in his cantatas 4 and 158. It is the closing movement of Cantata 4 that we sing this morning.

Many organ compositions are based on this tune; I am playing a highly ornamented setting by Georg Böhm, a German Baroque organist and composer who is known for his development of the chorale partita (variation) and for his influence on the young J. S. Bach. 

The opening voluntary is a beautiful improvisatory organ work by former Dallas composer Gerald Near. Starting out quietly, Near incorporates the  the ancient chant Haec dies, the Gradual for Easter day, with those beloved words so familiar to us: This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! (Psalm 118: 24).  As the piece builds in tempo and volume, another Easter chant, O filii et filiae, appears, first in just subtle hints, then triumphantly in the form we recognize from the hymnal (it's hymn 203; we'll sing its cousin, hymn 206, next Sunday for the Second Sunday of Easter.)

*One hymnal has translated this verse to 

My being shall rejoice, 

secure within God’s keeping,

until the trumpet voice 

shall wake us from our sleeping