Music for February 19, 2017 + The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

10:15 service

Instrumental Music

• These are the Holy Ten Commandments, BWV 678 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Prelude on “Chereponi” - Ann Krentz Organ (b. 1960)
• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein (21st C.)
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn 518 - Christ is made the sure foundation (WESTMINISTER ABBEY)
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn R148 - Brother, let me be your servant (THE SERVANT SONG)
• Hymn R289 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Bishop Andy Doyle Visitation at 5 PM

Vocal Music

• Teach Me, O Lord – Thomas Attwood (1765-1838)
• The Servant Song – Richard Gilliard, arr. David Haas

Instrumental Music

• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn R185 - Lord, prepare me (SANCTUARY)
• Hymn R5 - God is here, as we your people (ABBOT’S LEIGH)     
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn R 266 - Give thanks with a grateful heart (GIVE THANKS)
• Hymn 602 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Charlton Heston (not Moses) 

Two services this Sunday! Same scriptures, but different feel. The choir will not be singing at the 10:15 service but will be at the 5 PM service with Bishop Doyle.

At the 10:15 service, I am starting with a chorale prelude by Bach based on an old chorale by Martin Luther. Luther wrote an entire hymn setting the 10 commandments in verse. Once very popular, appearing in over 100 hymns when it was first written, it has not appeared in any hymnals published since 1900. Bach's setting of the hymn, however, is still a classic.

Two things are going on in this chorale prelude. First, the tune is played by the left hand on a trumpet-like sound, in canon. A canon is a compositional technique that presents the melody with the same melody starting after a given duration (in this case, two measures.) Think of how you sing “Three Blind Mice” or a similar round. That’s what’s happening here. It is also what we call a strict canon, where the notes and rhythm of the second part is exactly the same as the leader. Most musicologists think Bach used this strict technique to emphasize the strictness of the law. (I find it interesting that the musical term for the imitative technique “canon” is also used to describe any church's or religion's laws, rules, and regulations, i.e. “canon law.”)

The other thing going on in this prelude is that the right hand is playing a lovely, lyrical melody full of chromaticism that could stand quite well on its own without the addition of the chorale melody. This lilting accompaniment is the perfect foil for the inflexible canonic entrance of the hymn-tune. Hermann Schroeder, in his book on the music of Bach, suggests that Bach purposely chose 

to bring warmth to the inflexible, inexorable cantus firmus in the Christian thought, "God is love." Serene faith and imploring sighs are the two poles of this feeling, as Bach expresses it here.

In other words, grace.

At the 5 PM service, the choir continues the Law theme with Thomas Attwood's short anthem, Teach Me, O Lord (the way of thy statutes). 

At first a chorister in the Chapel Royal, Thomas Attwood, in 1781, became a Page in the household of the Prince of Wales, who sent him to study in Naples and then in Vienna as a pupil of Mozart. Returning to London in 1787, he continued his connection with the court and was appointed organist at St Paul's Cathedral and composer of the Chapel Royal, eventually to take the position of organist. In the last decade of the eighteenth century he wrote a quantity of music for the theater, but his principal contribution in the end turned out to be to church music.