Music for April 29, 2018 + The Fifth Sunday after Easter

Vocal Music

• O Lord, I will Praise Thee – Gordon Jacob (1895–1984)
• Ave Verum - W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)
• The Light of God’s Love – Mark Burrows (b. 1971)

Instrumental Music

• Partita 1 from “O God, Thou Faithful God", BWV 767 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Land of Rest – George Shearing (1919-2011)
• Fugue in G Minor, BWV 578 – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn 379 - God is love: let heaven adore him (ABBOT'S LEIGH)
• Hymn R18 - Come, let us with our Lord arise (SUSSEX CAROL)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 610 - Lord, whose love through humble service (BLAENHAFREN)
• Psalm 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32 – setting by Jeff Ostrowski

The offertory anthem this Sunday is one that we have been rehearsing off and on since late January. Originally planned for a Sunday in Lent, we have had to push it back on the calendar as it just didn't fall together like we planned. That is ironic, as it is from the Oxford Easy Anthem series from Oxford University Press. But as many church musicians (and most choir members) know, "easy" is a relative term to OUP, and this piece is not without its challenges.

Gordon Jacob

Written in 1951, it is a setting of the first six verses of Isaiah 12, a hymn of praise, set to music by English musician Gordon Jacob. Though there is a lot of unison writing, and the organ doubles the voices quite a bit, there are just enough syncopated rhythms, harmonic shifts, and wide, angular melodic motives that make it challenging for a choir such as ours that is used to square, predictable harmonies of Bach and Handel or the flowing melodies of Mendelssohn or Brahms.

A native of London, Jacob studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where his teachers included Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Sir Hubert Parry and Herbert Howells. He taught briefly at other schools before returning to the Royal College as a lecturer in 1926; he was to remain there until his retirement in 1966.

Gordon Jacob is remembered for his achievement in a number of fields, including education, composition and arranging, but unlike many of the British composers we regularly hear at Good Shepherd, church music was not an important part of his output. He wrote much instrumental music for orchestra, symphonic band, and chamber and vocal ensembles, but just a handful of pieces for church choir or organ.

The other anthem is the lovely Ave Verum Corpus (Hail, true body) of W. A. Mozart. We have sung it quite a bit, the last time being 3 years ago. It is a setting of the 14th century Eucharistic hymn in Latin "Ave verum corpus". Mozart wrote it in 1791 for Anton Stoll, the musical coordinator in the parish of Baden bei Wien while in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflöte, and while visiting his wife Constanze, who was pregnant with their sixth child and staying in a spa near Baden. It was fewer than six months before Mozart's death.

Mark Burrows

The choristers of the Coventry Choir will sing an anthem by Mark Burrows, who just directed our choir with 100 children at the Houston Choristers Guild Children's Choir festival this month at Atascocita United Methodist Church. Burrows received his undergraduate degree in music education from Southern Methodist University and his graduate degree in conducting from Texas Christian University. Mark is currently the Director of Children's Ministries at First United Methodist Church – Fort Worth. He directs choral ensembles of all ages and oversees programs in visual arts and theater. Prior to his work in Fort Worth, Mark was a music teacher at Stephen C. Foster Elementary School in Dallas, Texas.

Mark resides in Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife, Nina, and daughters, Emma and Grace