Music for November 24, 2019 + Christ the King Sunday

Vocal Music

• My Eternal King – Jane Marshall (1924-2019)

Instrumental Music

• Duo (Glorificamus Te) Livre d'orgue  – Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703)
• Thou Man of Grief, Remember Me – Gardner Read (1913-2005)
• Crown Imperial – William Walton (1902-1983)

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

• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn 421- All glory be to God on high (ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HÖH)
• Hymn R 128 - Blessed be the God of Israel (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn R 268 - King of kings and Lord of lords (KING OF KINGS)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus! (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn R 229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R 227 - Jesus, remember me (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 477 - All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGLEBERG)

In 1952, Jane Marshall was a 28-year old housewife and mom in Dallas. (A real Dallas housewife!) She had a undergraduate degree in music, but her only musical outlet was singing in Highland Park Methodist Church choir. So she decided to write an piece of music for that choir, resulting in the anthem which we will sing this Sunday, My Eternal King. The piece proved to be a hit.

Published in 1954 by Carl Fischer Music, it became one of that venerable music publisher's all-time bestselling anthems and remains popular with choirs across denominations.

Jane Marshall, 2014

Using a text which began as a Spanish sonnet, translated into Latin by St. Francis Xavier, then translated in English by Anglican clergyman and later Roman Catholic convert-priest Edward Caswall in 1849, it is an anthem which has been referred to as the American equivalent of an English Cathedral anthem. Meditative at the start, soaring to triple fortissimo at the end, encompassing a range of tone colors and sumptuous harmonies, My Eternal King is a masterful match of text and music.

Jane went on to write another anthem, Awake, My Heart, which won the 1957 American Guild of Organist Anthem competition, and He Comes to Us, a setting of a text from Albert Schweitzer. Lloyd Pfautsch, director of choral activities and church music, encouraged her to return for her Master of Music degree in choral conducting and composition.

Jane Marshall was a much-published composer of choral music, a skilled choral conductor and clinician, and a gifted hymn writer of both texts and tunes. (Three of her hymn-tunes are in our Hymnal 1982.) Important as any of these accomplishments, she gave herself to pedagogy and mentorship both in the classroom setting with graduate students (she was one of my professors at SMU in 1981), in myriad workshop settings with novices in the field, and with individual consultations.