Music for July 21, 2019

Vocal Music

• Be Thou My Vision – arr. Richard Walters, Harrison Boyd, baritone

Instrumental Music

• All Glory Be to God on High – Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718 – 1795)
• Jesus, All My Gladness – Friedrich Marpurg
• All Glory Be to God on High – Johann Pachelbel

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 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (LIEBSTER JESU)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus! (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn 711 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn R201 - Be still, for the Spirit of the Lord (BE STILL)
• Hymn R 10 - Be still and know that I am God (BE STILL AND KNOW)
• Hymn 344 - Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)
• Psalm 15 - tone VIIIa

Hymns are the backbone of our worship. Next to the word of God, music deserves the highest praise. That's not original to me, unfortunately - I wish I could say something that deep. (Martin Luther gets the credit.) But it does echo my own feelings. Our hymnal is equal in importance to our prayer book. So it's fitting that everything we are doing this week is derived from our body of hymnody.

Look at the offertory solo that Harrison Boyd will be singing. It is an arrangement of the beloved Celtic hymn Be Thou My Vision by Richard (Rick) Walters. With a bachelor’s degree in piano from Simpson College and graduate study in composition at the University of Minnesota with Dominick Argento, Rick Walters is now vice president of classical and vocal publications at Hal Leonard Corporation, the world’s largest source for printed music. In addition to his duties as an editor and publisher, he also finds time to compose and arrange music for singers.

Harrison Boyd with your organist

This will be Harrison's last Sunday singing with us before he heads off to Mississippi to start college at the University of Mississippi. As I said on Senior Sunday, he has been an asset to our choir, helping to the lead the basses with his mellow voice and excellent musicianship. We will miss him terribly, and wish him the best.

All the organ music is also based on hymns. The opening and closing voluntaries are settings of the hymn-tune we have been singing as the Song of Praise  at the 10:15 service all summer. Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr (All glory be to God on high) is a Lutheran hymn from the 1500s,which was intended as a German version of the Gloria part of the Latin mass. As a hymn usually sung every Sunday, it was often the basis for chorale preludes. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote six settings alone! Other composers from the 18th century include Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Georg Böhm.

In the Pachelbel setting that I am using for the closing voluntary, the melody does not come in right away. It begins with a small fughetta employing a chipper, 16th-note melodic subject. After two pages, the melody enters in the pedal with a flourish in the manual parts. It is played in a slow duple meter, as opposed to the quick triple meter setting we sing on Sundays. For that reason the tune may appear only vaguely familiar.

The same may be said about the opening voluntary using the same tune. Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg begins with a triple meter setting, but only outlining the usual harmonies of the hymn. There is no out-right presentation of the cantus firmus (melody) until the second half,  when he presents the full chorale - but, like Pachelbel, in a duple meter: 4/4 time instead of 3/4. Even at a typical hymn tempo it sounds different than what we are accustomed to.

Marpurg was German musicologist just after Bach in the Age of Enlightenment. Best known for his treatises on music theory and as a music critic, he still found time to write a collection of choral preludes, including today's opening voluntary as well as the communion voluntary, based on another German Chorale, Jesu, Meine Freude. You can find that hymn in our hymnal at 701, Jesus, all my gladness.