Music for April 24, 2016 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• I Give You a New Commandment – Peter Nardone (b. 1965)
• The Call – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Adagio – Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
• Allegro marziale e ben marcato – Frank Bridge

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 205 - Good Christians all, rejoice and sing (Gelobt sei Gott)
• Hymn R276 - Soon and very soon (Soon and Very Soon)
• Hymn 296 - We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (Engleberg)
• Hymn 576 - God is love and where true love is (Mandatum)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (Land of Rest)

Peter Nardone

The Gospel this week should be familiar - after all, we just heard it four weeks ago at Maundy Thursday. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." We sing this verse in an anthem by Scottish composer, organist, conductor, and singer Peter Nardone. In addition to being Organist & Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral, he is conductor of the Worcester Festival Choral Society and is Artistic Director of the Worcester Three Choirs Festival. In this anthem, an original melody for the Gospel text is juxtaposed with the ancient chant Ubi Caritas, pairing these two traditional Maundy Thursday texts. We are past Holy Week, obviously, but any Maundy Thursday text dealing with a new commandment would be super appropriate today. That is also why we are singing the hymn God is love and where true love is during communion this week. Heck, even the tune name of that hymn is super appropriate! ( Mandatum = mandate = commandment).

The communion solo is that beautiful, classic song, The Call, with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams based on a text by George Herbert.  Anyone who grew up with the hymnody of the Anglican Church will have grown up with George Herbert. ‘Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing’, ‘Teach me, my God and King’, ‘King of Glory, King of Peace’—these all helped to teach us, little though we might have been aware of it at the time, that good hymns could also be good verse. Vaughan Williams recognized this, and used five of Herbert's poems for his Five Mystical Songs, written in 1911 for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester (see Peter Nardone, above!) The simple setting by Vaughan Williams reflects the hymnic stance and metre of the poem. It has, in fact, been used as a hymn in many modern hymnals, including ours. (see hymn 487).