Music for March 10, 2019 + The First Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• Lord Jesus Christ, We Humbly Pray – Gilbert M. Martin (b. 1941)

Instrumental Music

• Ach, was soll ich Sunder machen – Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)

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

• The Great Litany S-67
• Hymn 147 - Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON)
• Hymn 150 - Forty days and forty nights (AUS DER TIEFE RUFE ICJ)
• Hymn R112 - You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord (ON EAGLES WINGS)
• Hymn R114 - Bless the Lord, my soul (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 142 - Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN)
• Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 - Tone IIa

It's the First Sunday in Lent this week, so you will notice some changes in the service.

1. There will be no prelude or opening hymn this week as we sing The Great Litany. 
1. The Great Litany in the Book of Common Prayer derives from the first English litany, compiled by Thomas Cranmer in 1544, drawing from the Sarum rite, the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, and a Latin litany composed by Martin Luther. Because of its penitential tone, it is especially appropriate during Lent. The Great Litany includes an invocation of the Trinity; a series of deprecations which seek deliverance from evil, spiritual harm, and natural calamities; a series of supplications which plead the power of Christ's Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection for deliverance; and prayers of general intercession.
2. The Psalms will be sung to the unaccompanied plainsong chant tones.
3. The service music will be the setting by Franz Schubert, and will include the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.
4. There will be no closing voluntary. You are encouraged to leave quietly.

The choir's anthem is a chant-like setting of the communion hymn  by the American composer Gilbert M. Martin. Currently a free lance composer, he has composed more than 300 published pieces of sacred and secular choral, piano, organ, instrumental and ballet music. 

A native of Southbridge, Massachusetts, Martin now lives in Dayton, Ohio. He received a B. Mus. from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, N.J., where he studied with Alexander McCurdy and George Lynn. He was recently honored at Westminster as a distinguished composer and graduate.

The communion voluntary is a partita based on the German chorale, O how great is Thy compassion. Written by Johann Pachelbel (of the famed Canon in D used in many weddings), the partita is a set of variations of the chorale tune, beginning simply with a four-part statement of the melody, with the variations getting more intricate as they progress.

Pachelbel was a German composer known for his works for organ and one of the great organ masters of the generation before Johann Sebastian Bach.

Pachelbel studied music at Altdorf and Regensburg and held posts as organist in Vienna, Stuttgart, and other cities, before being appointed organist at the St. Sebalduskirche in Nürnberg in 1695, where he remained until his death. He also taught organ, and one of his pupils was Johann Christoph Bach, who in turn gave his younger brother Johann Sebastian Bach his first formal keyboard lessons.

Of special importance are his chorale preludes, which did much to establish the chorale melodies of Protestant northern Germany in the more lyrical musical atmosphere of the Catholic south. His popular Pachelbel’s Canon was written for three violins and continuo and was followed by a gigue in the same key. His son, Wilhelm Hieronymous Pachelbel, was also an organist and composer.