Music for May 19, 2019 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Senior Sunday

Vocal Music

• I Give You a New Commandment – Peter Aston (b. 1938-2013)

Instrumental Music

• Air – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Ubi Caritas – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• When in Our Music God Is Glorified – Robert A. Hobby (b. 1962)

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

• Hymn 492 - Come, ye faithful, sing with gladness (FINNIAN)
• Hymn 529 - In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn 295 - Sing praise to our creator (CHRISTUS, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn 297 - Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 576 - God is love, and where true love is (MANDATUM)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 296 - We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (ENGLEBERG)
• Psalm 148 - Simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome W. Meachen

In the Gospel this Sunday, we will hear the first of a collection of passages known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is preparing the disciples for a life without his physical presence. More than offering comfort, Jesus is trying to reorient them toward their mission. He tells them

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." - John 13:34,35

Peter Aston

The anthem this morning is a simple setting of that very text, by the English composer Peter Aston
Aston's published compositions include chamber music, choral and orchestral works and a children’s opera, but he is best known as a composer of church music, much of which is performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world. As a conductor and lecturer, he directed many courses and workshops for composers in the UK and overseas, especially in the USA.  He was also a musicologist and baroque-music scholar.

Gerre Hancock

 The world lost an exceptional musician and gentleman with the death of Gerre Hancock in 2012 who, from 1971 to 2004, was master of the choristers at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City and, more recently, professor of organ and sacred music at the University of Texas-Austin. He was renowned for his improvisatory skills at the organ, his work with the St. Thomas Boy Choir, and his compositions. The Air that is this morning's opening voluntary is one of his first published organ works, written in 1960 and dedicated to his future wife, Judith Eckerman.

Robert Hobby

The closing voluntary is an organ work based on the same tune as the closing hymn. "When in Our Music God Is Glorified," by American organist Robert Hobby,  is bright, rollicking setting of the tune we sing quite frequently. The melody will be heard in the bass clef, played by the left hand, while the right hand plays an infectious rhythm and the pedals punctuate the accompaniment with octave leaps on the weak beats.