Music for October 6, 2019

Vocal Music

• O Lord, Increase My Faith – Henry Loosemore (c.1600-1670)

Instrumental Music

• By the Water of Babylon, BWV 653 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Amazing Grace – George Shearing (1919-2011)
• Chaconne – Louis Couperin (1626-1661)

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 671 - Amazing grace, how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 380 - Praise God from whom all blessings flow (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
• Hymn 535 - Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)

George Michael, who has nothing to do with this Sunday's music, but got your attention.

As George Michael said, "You Gotta Have Faith."

In Sunday's Gospel, the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. (Luke 17:5-6)

The Good Shepherd Choir asks the same thing in this Sunday’s anthem.

O Lord, increase my faith,
strengthen me and confirm me in Thy true faith;
endue me with wisdom, charity, and patience,
in all my adversity, Sweet Jesu, say Amen.

Attributed for many years to the English composer Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), modern scholarly research reveals the composer as Henry Loosemore, an English composer and organist. His father, John Loosemore, built the organ at Exeter Cathedral.  Henry Loosemore served as the organist at King's College, Cambridge.  In 1640, Loosemore was granted the degree of B.Mus by the University, on the supplication of King's College avowing that 'he had studied the art of musical composition for seven years, together with its practice, and has achieved approval of those skilled in the art.'

Psalm 137 is an alternate Psalm for the day. (We will be singing Psalm 37). The text,

1. By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
2. On the willows there we hung up our harps.
3. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

describes the desperate situation of the Israelites in exile.

In 1525, Wolfgang Dachstein wrote a German Chorale based on the psalm, and many 17th century organists used the chorale in both organ and choral settings. J. S. Bach was one of those. In his collection known as the 18 Choräle or Leipziger Choräle, Bach included two different versions. One of them, BWV 653b, has five voices, and the melody sounds ethereally in the upper voice, against a sombre double pedal part. In the other version, BWV 653a, the ornamented melody in the middle voice is wedged between two upper voices and pedal. This is the version I will play as the opening voluntary.

This latter version was clearly Bach’s favourite, as he revised the material in his later years in Leipzig, by adding even more ornamentation to the melody and further accentuating the drawn-out rhythm as a slow sarabande (a slow, stately Spanish dance in triple time). In this way, he emphasised the point of this chorale, which is expressed in the later verses of the text, where the Israelites are forced to sing a song of praise. But how are they to sing in such hopeless circumstances? That is precisely what Bach conveys in this chorale prelude. Although the oppressors have got the exiles right where they want them, the timid middle voice keeps going courageously, and with all the ornamentation displays faith in a good outcome.(1)

The closing voluntary is also in an ancient dance form, this time the chaconne, a composition in a series of varying sections in slow triple time, typically over a short repeated bass theme. Originally a stately dance performed to a chaconne, popular in the 18th century, here we have an organ arrangement of a harpsichord piece by French composer Louis Couperin. Couperin moved to Paris in 1650–1651, where he worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court.

This arrangement is by the early 20th century French organist, Joseph Bonnet.

(1) A Somber Sarabande, Netherlands Bach Society, https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-653/