Music for January 6, 2019 + The Feast of the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• The Provençal Carol – Donald Busarow (b. 1934)

Instrumental Music

• How Brightly Shines the Morning Star – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• What Star Is This – Jean-François Dandrieu (1682 - 1738)
• Fugue in C– Dietrich Buxtehude

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 127 - Earth has many a noble city (STUTTGART)
• Hymn 124 - What star is this, with beams so bright? (PUER NOBIS)
• Hymn 132 - When Christ's appearing was made known (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 128 - We three kings of Orient are (THREE KINGS OF ORIENT)
• Hymn 119 - As with gladness men of old (DIX)

Cecil Frances Alexander was an Irish poet and hymn-writer who wrote over 400 poems and hymns, with many of her most popular aimed at children. Her highly descriptive texts include such hymns as "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in Royal David's city," "There is a green hill far away," and "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult," to name but a few. Nine of her hymns can be found in our hymnal alone, yet the text to this Sunday's anthem is not one of them. "Saw you never, in the twilight" tells the story of the star of Bethlehem, and the journey of the wise men in following that star to find the infant Jesus, the "bright and morning star."

Cecil Frances Alexander
(No, she is not a man).

Saw you never, in the twilight,
when the sun had left the skies,
up in heav'n the clear stars shining
through the gloom, like silver eyes?
So of old the wise men, watching,
saw a little stranger star,
and they knew the King was given,
and they followed it from far.

Heard you never of the story
how they crossed the desert wild,
journeyed on by plain and mountain
till they found the holy child?
How they opened all their treasure,
kneeling to that infant King;
gave the gold and fragrant incense,
gave the myrrh in offering?

Know ye not that lowly baby
was the bright and morning Star?
He who came to light the Gentiles
and the darkened isles afar?
And we, too, may seek his cradle;
there our hearts' best treasures bring;
love and faith and true devotion
for our Savior, God, and King.

Jesus is often referred to as "the Morning Star." He even said, in Revelation 22:16, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." Therefore, I chose Dietrich Buxtehude's chorale fantasia on ‘Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern’, BuxWV223, (How bright appears the morning star, hymn 497 in The Hymnal 1982 ) as my prelude for the Sunday of Epiphany.

It begins with a section in which the first part of the melody is given in long notes first to the pedals and then to the uppermost voice. The melody’s subsequent notes are the subject of the deceptively free-sounding passage which immediately follows. Then begins a section based on the descending scale with which the melody concludes. The second verse  is a wonderfully exuberant jig fugue in AAB form (the form of the melody) whose initial subject is based on the melody’s first few notes (note how in the B section the momentum created by Buxtehude’s rhythms effortlessly sweeps up the repetitive phrases with which the melody’s last section begins).

The communion voluntary is another setting of an Epiphany hymn, this time from Eighteenth Century France. Jean-François Dandrieu was born in Paris into a family of artists and musicians. A gifted and precocious child, he gave his first public performances when he was 5 years old, playing the harpsichord for King Louis XIV of France, and his court. These concerts marked the beginning of Dandrieu's very successful career as harpsichordist and organist. In 1700, at age 18, he started playing the organ at the Saint-Merri church in Paris (a post previously occupied by Nicolas Lebègue) and became its titular organist in 1705. In 1721 he was appointed one of the four organists of the Chapelle royale of France. In 1733, he succeeded his uncle, the organist and priest Pierre Dandrieu to become the organist of the church of St Barthélémy in the Île de la Cité. When he died in 1739, he was succeeded at the organ of St Barthélemy by his sister, Jeanne-Françoise.

The organ piece this morning comes from a volume of organ noëls, which was a revised and enlarged version of a similar book published by his uncle, Pierre Dandrieu in 1714 and published posthumously by his sister, Jeanne-Françoise, in 1759.