Music for May 12, 2019 + The Fourth Sunday after Easter

Good Shepherd Sunday
Vocal Music

• I am His Child – Moses Hogan (1957-2003)
• And Still the Bread Is Broken – David Ashley White (b. 1944)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Brother James’s Air” – Searle Wright (1918-2004)
• In Green Pastures – Harold Darke (1888-1976)
• Trumpet Tune in D – David N. Johnson (1922-1987)

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

• Hymn 182  - Christ is alive! Let Christians sing (TRURO)
• Hymn 208 - Alleluia! The strife is o’er, the battle done (VICTORY)
• Hymn 708 - Savior, like a shepherd lead us (SICILIAN MARINERS)
• Hymn 297 - Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 645 - The King of love my shepherd is (ST. COLUMBA)
• Hymn 343 - Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST. AGNES)
• Hymn 366 - Holy God, we praise thy Name (GROSSER GOTT)
• Psalm 23 - Simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome W. Meachen

This Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is called the Good Shepherd Sunday, because of the scripture readings (John 10:11 - “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep") and the use of the 23rd Psalm, so it is the closest thing our congregation has to a Patronal Feast Day.

The Coventry Choir, our younger elementary children's choir, will sing this Sunday for the last time this choir year. They are singing a song by New Orleans native Moses Hogan. Until his untimely death in 2003, Hogan was one of the most celebrated contemporary directors and arrangers of classic spirituals. In addition to spirituals, he also wrote some original numbers, such as today's anthem, I Am His Child.

A graduate of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, Moses Hogan also studied at New York's Juilliard School of Music and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. His many accomplishments as a concert pianist included winning first place in the prestigious 28th annual Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in New York. Hogan was Artist In Residence at Loyola University in New Orleans.


Moses Hogan

In keeping with the Good Shepherd theme, I am opening the service with Searle Wright's setting of the tune BROTHER JAMES' AIR, which is most often used for the text, "The Lord's my shepherd." It was composed by James Leith Macbeth Bain, a Scottish healer, mystic, and poet known simply as Brother James. This well-loved tune is in bar form (AAB) with an unusual final phrase that ends on a high tonic note instead of a low note.

Wright has arranged this folk-like melody in three stanzas. For the first stanza he uses manuals only, with the melody in the soprano. The string stops on the organ are used. For the next stanza, he keeps the strings for the accompaniment, but puts the melody in the pedal on the English Horn. After a developmental section that goes through several minor keys before coming back to A Major, he presents the tune very much like the beginning, adding the bass notes in the pedal for the first A section of the tune, then putting the cantus firmus (the melody)in the tenor ranger with the crommorne for last half of the stanza.

M. Searle Wright was a composer, teacher and master of both classic and theater pipe organ. He died in his hometown of Binghamton, N.Y. when he was 86.

The Organ voluntary at communion is a quiet little piece by the English composer Harold Darke. He is best known among church musicians for his 1911 setting of Christina Rosetti's poem "In the Bleak Mid-Winter", which has become one of the most widely performed and recorded Christmas carols ever written. In fact, this short work, with its haunting melody, has appeared on more than 100 recordings over the years, in performances given by some of the leading singers: Roberto Alagna, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Hampson, Jessye Norman, Kiri Te Kanawa, and many others.

Darke was perhaps better known in his lifetime as an organist than composer. He was regarded as one of the greatest organists of his time, and as such appeared regularly in concert, often performing his own works, works that were tonal, conservative but imaginative, and well-crafted.