Music for November 19, 2017 + The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Draw Us In the Spirit’s Tether – Harold Friedell (1905-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Pastorale on St. Anne  (Partita on St. Anne, Op. 6) – Paul Manz (1919-2009)
• Devotion – Jim Brickman (b. 1961)
• O God, Our Help in Ages Past – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)

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

• Hymn 680 - O God, our help in ages past (ST. ANNE)
• Hymn 9 - Not here for high and holy things (MORNING SONG)
• Hymn 551 - Rise up, ye saints of God (FESTAL SONG)
• Hymn R201 - Be still, for the spirit of the Lord (BE STILL)
• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn 423 - Immortal, invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO)
• Psalm 90:1-8, 12 - Tone VIIIa

Today's anthem was chosen not for its appropriateness to today's scriptures (that would be the hymns and the organ voluntaries), but for the fact that it has been in our folders since Hurricane Harvey and we just really needed to get it sung before the new (liturgical) year.  So it's now or never.

Not that I mind. It's long been one of the favorite anthems of mine and every choir with which I have worked. The melody is beautiful and the harmonies pleasing to sing, with just enough challenge and movement to make it interesting. The text is by Percy Dearmer, one of the most influential leaders in twentieth-century English hymnody who was a professor of ecclesiastical art at King’s College, London, and later served as canon of Westminster Abbey.

Percy Dearmer, c. 1890. Photograph by Frederick Hollyer
(From the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

He distinguished himself in the field of hymnology as the editor, with composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, of The English Hymnal (1906). He also co-edited Songs of Praise (1925), The Oxford Book of Carols (1928) and Songs of Praise Enlarged (1931). Editions of each of these works can still be found today in English churches.

This text of this anthem is full of imagery which captures the interest of the singer and links the singer with the disciples who gathered with Christ at the table (Matthew 18:20). We are joined by a “tether”—an archaic word but an appropriate image of the work of the Holy Spirit that links Christians of every time and place at the table.

In the final stanza, Dearmer makes a beautiful and powerful statement that “All our meals and all our living make as sacraments of thee.” Through “caring, helping, giving, we may true disciples be.”

Thus, the hymn begins in the upper room with the disciples and comes full circle as we join them around the table and are nourished to serve others in the world. Beautiful thoughts as many of us gather with our families around the Thanksgiving board.

This music was written 60 years ago by Harold Friedell, organist at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, and a professor at the School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary, New York City.

The opening and closing voluntaries are based on the tune ST. ANNE which also serves as our processional hymn. The Psalm appointed for today is Psalm 90, and this is a splendid paraphrase of that Psalm by Isaac Watts, written around 1714 and first published the text in his Psalms of David (1719). "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" expresses a strong note of assurance, promise, and hope in the LORD as recorded in the first part of Psalm 90, even though the entire psalm has a recurring theme of lament.

Though no firm documentation exists, ST. ANNE was probably composed by William Croft, possibly when he was organist from 1700-1711 at St. Anne's Church in Soho, London, England. (According to tradition, St. Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary.) The tune was first published in 1708 as a setting for Psalm 42. It was not until 1861 that ST. ANNE became a setting for "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" in Hymns Ancient and Modern, and the two have been inseparable ever since.