Music for February 26, 2017 + The Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Transfiguration of Christ

Vocal Music

• The Lord is My Light and Salvation – Fred Gramman (contemporary)
• The Lord Bless You and Keep You – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude and Fugatoon “St. Elizabeth” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)
• Christ Upon the Mountain Peak – Joyce Moon Stroble (contemporary)
• Shine, Jesus, Shine – David Blackwell, arr. (b. 1961)

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

• Hymn 427 - When morning gilds the skies (LAUDES DOMINI)
• Hymn 383 - Fairest Lord Jesus (St. ELIZABETH)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn 328 - Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord (SONG 46)
• Hymn R247 - Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE JESUS SHINE)
• Psalm 99 - Dominus regnavit (Tone V)

This Sunday we focus on the story of Jesus' Transfiguration - that time when Jesus, Peter, James and John went to the Mount of Transfiguration to pray, and Jesus began to shine with bright rays of light. The prophets Moses and Elijah appeared next to him and he spoke with them. The actual feast day is August 6, but the Revised Common Lectionary chooses to end the season after Epiphany with the telling of the Transfiguration story.

If we look at the collect for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in our prayer book, we can see reasons why the Transfiguration of Our Lord is celebrated when it is:

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Episcopal Church, 1979, page 217.)

We celebrate the revelation of Christ's glory "before the passion" so that we may "be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness." The focus of the Lenten season is renewed discipline in walking in the way of the cross and rediscovery of the baptismal renunciation of evil and sin and our daily adherence to Christ. At Easter, which reveals the fullness of Christ’s glory (foreshadowed in the Transfiguration), Christians give themselves anew to the gospel at the Easter Vigil where they share the dying and rising of Christ.

In the biblical context, the synoptic gospels narrate the Transfiguration as a bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.

The key words in the story of the transfiguration and, indeed, the entire season of Epiphany are light and glory. Much of the music today references those themes.

One of the few hymns specifically for Transfiguration is Christ, upon the mountain peak, written by contemporary English poet Brian Wren in 1962. Peter Cutts wrote the tune SHILLINGFORD specifically for that text, and both text and tune are in our hymnal (hymn 130). But it is not really the kind of tune that easily catches on, as most hymnals which have included this text use another tune. (In fact, even our hymnal includes another tune as an alternate.) It looks innocent enough on paper, but upon hearing it you become aware of a tonal ambiguity that frankly freaks out the average congregation singer.

But the recent publication, Bayoubuchlein*, published for the 2016 American Guild of Organist convention here in Houston, includes a setting of this hymn which I think works well during communion. 

Joyce Moon Strobel's arrangement begins with an undulating eighth note accompaniment in the right hand, with the melody coming in quietly in the left hand. Taking a cue from the adventuresome tonality of the melody, Strobel also ventures into new keys for each of the three times she presents the tune. A graduate of the Conservatory at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joyce Strobel has served as Organist/Choir Director at St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Scott Township, in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 1986.

* Bayoubüchlein: New Choral Preludes for AGO Houston 2016

This distinctive new collection of organ music for the liturgical year was commissioned for the 2016 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Houston. The title refers to J. S. Bach’s volume of chorale-based organ works and Houston’s Gulf Coast waterways. Realizing that newer hymn tunes often lacked chorale preludes, the convention’s new music committee decided that each piece in this collection would be based on a hymn tune composed since 1960. The works chosen are a combination of pieces commissioned by the convention and pieces selected from an open “call for scores.”