Music for October 23, 2016 + The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Fight On, My Soul” – Robert J. Powell (b. 1932)
• Ubi Caritas and Adoro Te Devote - Michael Larkin
• Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)

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

• Hymn 557 Rejoice, ye pure in heart (Marion)
• Hymn 552 Fight the good fight with all thy might (Pentecost)
• Hymn 429 I'll praise my maker while I've breath (Old 113th)
• Hymn R122 Surely it is God who saves me (First Song of Isaiah)
• Hymn R188 Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord (Bob Hudson)
• Hymn 637 How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (Lyons)
• Psalm 65 (Tone 5a)

I'm adding two new pieces to my organ repertoire this week, and both by living, American composers. And one of them (GASP!) is a woman! At this rate, no telling where gender equality goes. We might even have a woman run for president!

Let's talk about the closing voluntary first. It's an organ setting of the old hymn-tune EBENEZER, used for the Southern hymn Come thou Fount of Every Blessing. The composer, Emma Lou Diemer, has put the melody in the pedal for the first exposition of the melody, with the manuals accompanying with rippling 16th note broken chords. After one presentation of the hymn, the whole piece transposes to the key of F (from D), but a new element is added: the melody is now in a canon at the fourth, meaning the pedal plays the melody in F, and the top of note of the accompaniment is playing the melody in B-flat. What fun!

Emma Lou Diemer

Emma Lou Diemer is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. She studied piano from an early age, wrote little piano pieces as a child, and began to play the organ in church at age 13. She determined to be a composer about that time with a strong interest also in piano. Her degrees in composition are from the Yale School of Music (BM,1949; MM, 1950) and from the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.,1960), and she studied composition further in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at the Berkshire Music Center.

From 1954-1965 she taught in several schools and was organist in area churches. In 1965 she joined the faculty of the University of Maryland as an assistant professor of theory and composition. In 1971 she was appointed to a similar position at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and subsequently became a full professor and, since 1991, professor emeritus. Her present position as organist is at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara.

The opening voluntary is an organ setting of an old Southern Harmony hymn by J. P Reese from 1859, Fight on, my soul.

Fight on, my soul, till death
Shall bring thee to thy God

Robert Powell

Even if you knew this old tune, you might not recognize the melody as it is hidden in the left hand of the manual parts. It is not until the quieter B section that you can clearly hear the melody played by the oboe stop of the organ against a flute accompaniment. The rollicking open theme returns, but this time the melody is clearly stated in the pedal part with the trumpet. On the fourth repetition of the tune, the melody is a again heard in the top line as the full organ declaims the tune.

Robert J. Powell retired in 2003 as organist and choirmaster at Christ Church in Greenville, S.C., a position he had held since 1968. Previously he served as director of music at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H.; organist and choir director at St. Paul's Church in Meridian, Miss.; and associate organist at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in N.Y.C. Powell's music was first published in 1959, and he has written over 200 works for chorus, solo voice, organ and brass.

The life of Thomas Tallis is a mirror of the musical effects of the Anglican Reformation in England. He served in the Chapel Royal for some 40 years, composing under four Monarchs with widely differing religious practices. Tallis was among the first to set English words to music for the rites of the Church of England, although most of his vocal music was written in Latin. A composer of great contrapuntal skill, his works show intense expressivity and are cast in a bewildering variety of styles.

During the reign of King Edward VI (1547-1553) it was mandated that the services be sung in English, and that the choral music be brief and succinct "to each syllable a plain and distinct note." If Ye Love Me is the classic example of these new English anthems: mainly homophonic, but with brief moments of imitation. Like many early Anglican anthems, it is cast in ABB form, the second section repeated twice.