Music for March 17, 2019

Vocal Music

• Forgive Our Sins As We Forgive – 19th C. American Hymn

Instrumental Music

• Erbarm' Dich mein, o Herre Gott! BWV 721  (Be Merciful to Me, O Lord God) – J. S. Bach
• Londonderry Air – Noel Rawsthorne (1929-1919)

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

• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 455 - O love of God, how strong and true (DUNEDIN)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn R243 - You shall cross the barren desert (BE NOT AFRAID)
• Hymn 598 - Lord Christ, when first thou cam’st to earth (MIT FREUDEN ZART)
• Psalm 27– Psalm tone IIa

Every five or six years St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday. Now I recognize that this is not an official Holy Day in the Episcopal Church, but I have always loved the Irish tune, Londonderry Air, played on the organ. (Probably because as a teenage I had two recordings of the melody played on Theatre organs by none other than Virgil Fox and Billy Nalle.) So I use this as an excuse every time St. Patrick's Day and Sunday occur together to play an arrangement.

This year the arrangement is by the English organist Noel Rawsthorne, who died just two months ago at the age of 89. Rawsthorne became organist of Liverpool Cathedral when he succeeded his teacher, Harry Goss-Custard, in 1955. He stayed at Liverpool until his retirement in 1980. The Liverpool organ is the largest pipe organ in the UK. You can read about it here. (Notice that the cathedral has only had four organists since the organ was installed in 1923!

The communion voluntary is an early work (perhaps 1703?) by Johann Sebastian Bach. The stately melody, in long, slow half notes, rises from a heavy, mournful bass line with repeated four and five-voice chords in quarter notes in the left hand. The melody is what is called a cantus firmus, a well known Lutheran choral theme. The title means "Be Merciful to Me, O Lord God" in German, and you can feel the pain and the guilt of the penitent through the cantus firmus, as he (or she) ascends and seeks pardon from God.

We see no models of this simple form in the complex North-German style of Buxtehude and his circle, although its somewhat archaic style is reminiscent of Johann Kuhnau.

In addition to the unusual texture of this work, it also has unusual harmonies. There are more minor 7th and 9th chords than usual; more chord progressions a 3rd apart than usual; and more untied suspensions than usual.  It truly is an oddity among the organ works of Bach, but one that has become a favorite of organists the world over.

An early printing of the Hymntune DETROIT, in shaped-notes, with the melody in the tenor.

The choir is singing a sparse acapella setting of the 19th century American tune, DETROIT. The text is from the 20th century. Rosamond E. Herklots wrote these words in 1966 after digging out weeds in her garden and thinking how bitterness, hatred, and resentment are like poisonous weeds growing in the Christian garden of life. "Forgive Our Sins" is a hymn about being ready to forgive others again and again-as Jesus said, seventy-times-seven times! We have many hymns about God's forgiveness of our sins, but this one adds a most helpful guide in forgiving others' sins. Herklots revised her own text into the second-person singular ("you") in 1967.

The hymn tune was very popular among Primitive Baptists, and in 1933, George Pullen Jackson included it among the "Eighty Most Popular Tunes" in his White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. It was only in the last half of the 20th century that it was included in mainline hymnals. Both The Hymnal 1982 and the RENEW hymnal include this pairing of text and tune.