Music for April 8, 2019 + The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• Let Nothing Ever Grieve Thee – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Ave Verum – Stephanie Martin (b. 1965)

Instrumental Music

• Herzlich tut mich verlangen, BWV 727 – Johann Sebastian Bach
• O Welt, ich muß dich lassen – Johannes Brahms, Op. 122, #10

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

• Hymn 398 - I sing the almighty power of God (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn 474 - When I survey the wondrous cross (ROCKINGHAM)
• Hymn 678 - Surely it is God who saves me (THOMAS MERTON)
• Hymn 479 - Glory be to Jesus (WEM IN LEIDENSTAGEN)
• Hymn 344 - Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)
• Hymn 610 - Lord, whose love through humble service (BLAENHAFREN)
• Psalm 126  - Tone IIa

Today the choir sings two lovely works which fit the solemn Lenten season.

First is Johannes Brahms' lovely anthem, Geistliches Lied (Sacred Song), often called by the first line of the text by Paul Flemming, "Lass dich nur nichts nicht dauren," or "Let nothing ever grieve thee." It was one of Brahms' earlier works, written when he was only 23 years old. What began as an exercise became one of his most loved shorter choral works.

What is fascinating to me about this work is the marriage of a hopeful Christian message with Brahms' masterful handling of the compositional technique known as the canon. A canon is a melody with one or more imitations of that melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.). "Row, row, row your boat is a simple canon (or 'round.')  Here though we have not one melody but two different melodies, sung not in the same key, but in two different keys at the same time. with the tenor part imitating the soprano part four beats later at the unusual interval of a ninth, and then the bass doing the same with the alto using a different melody that fits in with the first. The imaginative organ interludes also incorporate quasi-canons at the ninth.  While accompanying the voices, the organ moves to a secondary role, but becomes active in the middle section.  All of the compositional complexities somehow come together in a piece of exceptional beauty, most notably in the final “Amen,” where the basses lead the altos instead of following them.

The other anthem is a new setting of the ancient communion hymn Ave Verum Corpus (Hail, true body) by the Canadian composer Stephanie Martin. We have sung settings of this same text by Mozart, Elgar, and Saint-Saens, so we are happy to have this acapella setting by Martin.

Stephanie Martin

She is one of the leaders in vocal music in Canada today, and deserves a bigger place internationally. At present she is associate professor of music at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design; director of Schola Magdalena (a women’s ensemble for chant, medieval and modern polyphony,) conductor emeritus of Pax Christi Chorale; and past director of music at the historic church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Toronto.

In addition to many shorter works for choir, she has written a Requiem for All Souls, which premiered in San Diego in November, 2017 and Missa Chicagoensis for St. John Cantius parish in Chicago, in June 2017. Her choral symphony Babel premièred at Wilfrid Laurier University in April 2016, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the WLU Faculty of Music. Martin’s current project with librettist Paul Ciufo is Llandovery Castle, an opera about the Canadian hospital ship torpedoed in the Atlantic in June 1918.