Music for February 24, 2019 + The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• O Lord, I Will Praise Thee – Gordon Jacob (1895-1984)
• We Are Not Alone – Pepper Choplin (b. 1957)
• Praise the Lord – Natalie Sleeth (1930-1992)

Instrumental Music

• Do Not I Love Thee, O My Lord? – Gardner Read (1913-2005)
• Hymne – Evángelos Papathanassíou (b. 1943)
• Toccata on “Lobe den Herren” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)

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

• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)
• Hymn 576 - God is love, and where true love is (MANDATUM)
• Hymn 295 - Sing Praise to Our Creator (CHRISTE, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)

Natalie Sleeth

The Coventry Choir will sing this Sunday. Our first through fourth grade choir has been working on two anthems that they will sing today. The first is an anthem by Natalie Sleeth, an American composer of sacred songs and anthems. She wrote both text and tune of this fine praise hymn in 1975 when she worked with church school children and a junior choir at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Similar to Psalm 150 and Francis of Assisi's "All Creatures of Our God and King" (hymn 600), this text is a wonderful catalog of things, times, and places. All instruments and all occasions can be used to sing our praise to the Lord. Note that God's praise is warranted not only in the good times but also in "the time of sorrow" or in "the peace and quiet" (st. 2).

Pepper Choplin

The second anthem, which they will sing with the Good Shepherd Choir, is the song We Are Not Alone, an a cappella anthem that captures that confident thought and presents it in a straightforward, honest way.  The adult choir sings a gentle, rhythmic choral ostinati ("We are not alone, God is with us") that supports the smooth, sustained melody, sung by the Coventry Choir.

It was written Pepper Choplin, a full-time composer, conductor and humorist (with a name like "Pepper" I guess it's natural he should have a sense of humor!) who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. With a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Choplin went on to earn a Master of Music degree in composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Good Shepherd Choir will also sing an anthem with a text based on Isaiah 12:1-6, 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.

The opening voluntary is an organ arrangement of a tune that first appeared in A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony in1820. The tune, DETROIT, is found in our hymnal at no. 674, Forgive Our Sins As We Forgive. The composer of the organ prelude is Gardner Read. Professor emeritus of composition at Boston University, Read was a prolific composer of orchestral, choral, and chamber works and pieces for piano, organ, and solo voice. In addition, he authored a number of texts on musical notation and composition.

Gardner Read

Between 1941 to 1948, Read headed the composition departments at the St. Louis Institute of Music, the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1948, he was appointed composer-in-residence and professor of composition at the School of Music, Boston University, retiring in 1978. In addition, Read served as principal conductor with the St. Louis Philharmonic Orchestra in 1943 and 1944, and put in guest conducting appearances over the years with the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic, and various university orchestras in performances of his own works.