Music for August 4, 2019

Vocal Music

• O Be Joyful – Philip Stopford (b. 1977), Bruce Bailey, baritone

Instrumental Music

• Aria – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Prelude on Michael – Charles Callahan
• Prelude and Fugue in C – attr. J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

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

• Hymn R 49 - Let the whole creation cry (LLANFAIR)
• Hymn 529 - In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn 302 - Father, we thank thee who hast planted (RENDEZ A DIEU)
• Hymn - One bread, one body (ONE BREAD ONE BODY)
• Hymn R 136 - Alleluia (ALLELUIA)
• Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
• Psalm 49:1-11 - Tone VIIIa

Bruce Bailey is singing the offertory this Sunday, using an anthem that the choir sang back in June. Click here to read about the piece composed by the English composer Philip Stopford who now lives and works in New Jersey.

Stopford

Two of the organ works come from the pen of Charles Callahan, an extremely prolific American composer of sacred music for organ and choir. He has a way of writing a piece that sounds as if it is being improvised at the spot. The piece for communion is based on the hymn-tune MICHAEL by Herbert Howells. It's a tune (and text!) that I want our congregation to learn and embrace.

Callahan

The tune was written in 1930 by Howells in response to a request from his friend, Dr Thomas Percival (TP) Fielden, looking for a new tune for the text "All my hope on God is founded." In 1935, Howell's son, Michael, died unexpectedly at age nine from spinal meningitis. When Felden published the hymnal The Clarendon Hymn Book in 1936, he chose to include the hymn with Howells' tune. In tribute Howells rechristened the tune MICHAEL. The hymn's popularity increased in consequence as it became more widely known, and it is now found in over 60 hymnals, including ours.

Here are the first two lines of the hymn by Joachim Neander in 1680 and translated from German by Robert Bridges in 1899.

1 All my hope on God is founded;
he doth still my trust renew,
me through change and chance he guideth,
only good and only true.
God unknown, he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

2 Mortal pride and earthly glory,
sword and crown betray our trust;
though with care and toil we build them,
tower and temple fall to dust.
But God's power, hour by hour,
is my temple and my tower.

The closing voluntary is a short prelude and fugue which has for centuries been attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, but are now believed to have been composed by one of Bach's pupils, possibly Johann Tobias Krebs or his son Johann Ludwig Krebs. Since we don't know for sure, I'm just going to leave it as attributed to...

Bach