November 3, 2019 + All Saints Sunday

Vocal Music

• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

• Hymn 287 - For all the saints (SINE NOMINE)
• Hymn 293 - I sing a song of the saints of God (GRAND ISLE)
• Hymn 286 - Who are these like stars appearing (ZEUCH MICH, ZEUCH MICH)
• Hymn R 243 - You shall cross the barren desert (BE NOT AFRAID)
• Hymn R 151 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
• Hymn 556 - Rejoice, ye pure in heart (MARION)
• Psalm 149 – Tone VIIb

The composer of this morning's anthem, Ralph Vaughan Williams, was a 20th Century English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also very interested in the music of the church, for, though he identified as an agnostic, he was editor of the Anglican English Hymnal in 1906, in which he included many of his own tunes and arrangements of folk songs.

Ralph Vaughan Williams and
an unknown cat.

One such hymn-tune is the tune SINE NOMINE, which Vaughan Williams composed for the text "for All the Saints" and published in the English Hymnal. The tune's title means "without name" and follows the Renaissance tradition of naming certain compositions "Sine Nomine" if they were not settings for preexisting tunes. Equipped with a "walking" bass, SINE NOMINE is a glorious marching tune for this great text. Many consider this tune to be among the finest of twentieth-century hymn tunes (it is, perhaps, the church's equivalent to “When the Saints Go Marching In”). It is the opening hymn this Sunday.

Our anthem is Vaughan Williams’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Composed in 1923, it, along with SINE NOMINE,  captures the essence of English pomp and circumstance, with its inexorable forward marching movement.

The text is drawn the book Ecclesiasticus, commonly called The Wisdom of Sirach, a work from the early 2nd century B.C. written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach. It contrasts the tribute paid to famous people of accomplishment with those whose lives may have been anonymous, but nonetheless contributed to the welfare of mankind and thus are as deserving of memorial. Inspiring as are his words, Ben Sira could not have known how, in our age today, leaders and heroes span not just generations, but also genders.