Music for Sunday, July 2, 2017 + The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

There will  be one service at 10:15 AM

Vocal Music

• Hear My Prayer – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
• Pie Jesu – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Brooke Vance, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Eternal Father, Strong to Save – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• O Beautiful for Spacious Skies – Charles Callahan
• Marche nuptiale. No. 1, based on God Save the Queen – Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

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

• Hymn 718 - God of our fathers (NATIONAL HYMN)
• Hymn R128 - Blessed be the God of Israel (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn 713 - God bless our native land (AMERICA)
• Hymn 325 - Let us break bread together on our knees (LET US BREAK BREAD)
• Hymn 608 - Eternal Father, strong to save (MELITA)

Brooke Vance

This Sunday we warmly welcome Brooke Vance to our service today. Brooke grew up in Good Shepherd, singing in the choirs from kindergarten through High School. She just graduated in May from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with a degree in vocal performance. This is her first time back to Kingwood for a Sunday Service since her family moved to New Braunfels after her graduation from Atascocita High School. 

She will also treat us to a short, mini-recital in the nave at 1 PM, following the picnic. 

In church she will sing two dramatic solos from Mendelssohn’s Hear my Prayer, a miniature cantata with three distinct, contrasting movements and a recitative. The piece begins with the simple pleading of the soprano, “Hear my prayer, O God.” Mendelssohn’s subtle changes of harmony and melody indicate alternating moments of optimism and loneliness. There is a middle movement and recitative where the fear and the despair rise to a climax. The work ends with the great final movement, “O for the wings of a dove!” This exceptionally beautiful music evokes a far-away place of peace and rest.

The other piece during communion is from John Rutter’s most popular Requiem. Since its debute in 1985 at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas, it has become one of the most popular classical compositions of the last thirty years. Brook will sing the Pie Jesu (pee-eh yeh-zoo), a prayer to Jesus for rest for the departed. It begins with the soprano soloist singing with a very light accompaniment, with only slight involvement of a chorus echoing the words "Dona eis requiem, Dona eis sempiternam requiem" (Grant them rest, grant them rest eternal.)

Since it is the Sunday before Independence Day, the day of our annual Independence Day (indoors) picnic, and our priest has confided in me that he will deviate from the lectionary to acknowledge the holiday, I’m playing some organ music with a national slant. One piece, however, has an odd connection to our patriotic musical theme. 

The closing voluntary was written as a wedding march for H.R.H. The Duke of Albany, to  H.R.H. The Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, was the youngest son of Queen Victoria, who, at the suggestion of his mother, met Princess Helena and fell in love. The two were married in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on April 27, 1882, The wedding march included the national anthem, God Save the Queen. What I really find curious is that it was a Frenchman, not an Englishman, who wrote this processional. Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, best known today for his Ave Maria, based on Bach's Prelude in C from The Well-tempered Clavier, as well as his Funeral March of a Marionette, used as the theme of the Alfred Hitchcock TV program. His opera Faust is still oft performed, as is his opera Roméo et Juliette.