Music for July 30, 2017 + The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• The Holy City – Stephen Adams (Michael Maybrick) (1841 – 1913)
• Give Me Jesus – Moses Hogan, arr.
• Mitchell Hutchins, tenor

Instrumental Music

• Sonata – Ignazio Cirri (1711-1787)
• If Thou but Trust in God to Guide Thee, BWV 642 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

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

• Hymn 388 - O worship the King, all glorious above! (HANOVER)
• Hymn 615 - “Thy kingdom come!” (ST. FLAVIAN)
• Hymn 302 - Father, we thank thee who hast planted (RENDEZ A DIEU)
• Hymn 711 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn R145 - Lord, I want to be a Christian (I WANT TO BE A CHRISTIAN)
• Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
• Psalm 119:129-136 Mirabilia – Tone VIII.a

Mitchell Hutchins singing with
The Kingwood Chorale, 2016

This Sunday we welcome back to Good Shepherd Mitchell Hutchins, a former choral Scholar and Staff Singer of Good Shepherd. Mitchell, who graduated from LoneStar College Kingwood and Stephen F. Austin, has been teaching choir in the Nacogdoches ISD. This fall he will have the opportunity to start his own Choir Program at Cleveland Middle School in Cleveland, Texas.

He will be singing two favorites of the congregation. The Holy City is often sung on Palm Sunday, but it is actually more appropriate at other times of the year. While it includes not only the triumphal entry but the crucifixion, the third stanza goes on to detail the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. This will literally be heaven on earth. It is referred to in the Bible in several places (Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:10; 12:22–24; and 13:14), but it is most fully described in Revelation 21. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate fulfillment of all God’s promises.

(I wrote an interesting "rest of the story" article about the composer in March 2016, which I won't repeat now, but you can access it by clicking here.)

The other solo is a repeat of the solo he sang last year, which was a huge favorite of the congregation. It is Moses Hogan's setting of the spiritual, "Give Me Jesus." Using the piano as accompaniment, it repeats the refrain, "you may have all the world, give me Jesus."

The opening voluntary is a Sonata by Italian organist and composer Giacomo Matteo Ignazio Cirri He lived his entire life in Forlì (current Emilia-Romagna), Italy. He was a friend of Giovanni Battista Martini, who had a portrait of Ignazio Cirri among his valuable men's portraits. In 1759, Cirri became Maestro di cappella in the Cathedral of Forlì and he was admitted in the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna.

In 1770 he published his first works, Twelve Sonatas for Organ. As typical of the early Italian Baroque, these sonatas were in two parts, a slow movement followed by a faster second movement. Also typical of the Italian organ of the day, there is no pedal part, as the Italian organ was rather primitive compared to the German organ of the same time period.