Music for December 17, 2017 + The Third Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• Rejoice in the Lord Alway – Anon. 16th C.

Instrumental Music

• Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, BWV 648 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Magnificat V (no. 14 from "Vêpres du commun des fêtes de la Sainte Vierge", op. 18)- Marcel Dupré (1886-1971).
• Fuga super: Meine Seele erhebet den Herrn (Magnificat), BWV 733 - J. S. Bach (J. L. Krebs?)

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

• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn 59 - Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding (MERTON)
• Hymn R128 - Blessed be the God of Israel (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn R152 - I want to walk as a child of the light (HOUSTON)
• Hymn R278 - Wait for the Lord (Taizé)
• Hymn 76 - On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry (WINCHESTER NEW)
• Psalm 126 - In convertendo – Tone VIIIg

Mary's song of praise, called the Magnificat, is one of the traditional songs of Advent. It derives its
name from the first work of the Latin text

Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
My soul doth magnify the Lord.

The text of the canticle is taken directly from the Gospel of Luke (1:46–55) where it is spoken by Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. Found only in Luke's Gospel, is one of four hymns, distilled from a collection of early Jewish-Christian canticles, which complement the promise-fulfillment theme of Luke's infancy narrative. The other songs are Zechariah's Benedictus (1:67–79); the angels' Gloria in Excelsis Deo (2:13–14); and Simeon's Nunc dimittis (2:28–32).
(The presentation hymn this morning is a metrical setting of the Benedictus.)

Though we are not singing a setting of the Magnificat this morning, I am playing organ music based on the Canticle of Mary.

In Germany, Martin Luther translated the Latin text to German and gave us what is now called "The German Magnificat." Originally sung to the chant Tonus peregrinus, (Latin: ‘wandering tone’), the chant was soon "straightened out" into what we recognized today as a metrical hymn tune, or chorale. Bach used this chorale melody in his cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10, and today's opening voluntary is his organ transcription of the fifth movement of that work.

German Magnificat set to the Tonus Peregrinus

The Chorale tune used by Bach and Krebs.

In the fifth movement, "Er denket der Barmherzigkeit" (He remembers his mercy), the piece begins with a bass line of "emphatic downward semitone intervals" which Klaus Hofmann interprets as "sighs of divine mercy". [1] The melody is played by oboes and trumpet while accompanied by alto and tenor singing in imitation. The voices often sing in parallel thirds and sixths, which expressed mildness and compassion according to the Baroque idea that certain rhythmic and melodic motifs could express particular "affects."

The opening phrase of that hymn was also used as the subject (theme) of the Fugue I am playing for the closing voluntary. Once thought to be by Bach, prevailing scholarship suggests that the fugue is not actually by Bach, but by one of his students, Johann Ludwig Krebs. Discoveries of manuscripts from the time established the composer of the piece as Krebs.

While not up to the artistry usually displayed in the fugues of Bach, it is still an fine work.  Krebs presents the stately chorale theme in a somewhat dry fashion in the opening, but afterwards his subtle contrapuntal voicing enlivens the music, drawing in the listener. When he finally makes use of the pedal just past the midpoint of the work, the music suddenly takes on an epic air, a greater sense of religious grandeur. Throughout the piece, Krebs subtly employs a motif, as well as its inversion, which it derives from the work's countermelody, in the end demonstrating his mastery in development and contrapuntal writing.

This communion voluntary comes from a set of Assumption Day vesper improvisations that Marcel Dupré later committed to paper. He would play an improvisation on the Canticle between the singing of the verses. This slow, mysterious movement is based on the following verse:

- He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel; as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed foreve

[1] J.S. Bach - Cantatas, Vol.23 (BWV 10, 93, 178, 107) (CD). Åkersberga, Sweden: BIS. 2003. BIS-1331. Retrieved 31 May 2017. With English liner notes by Klaus Hofmann (p7)