Music for January 5, 2020 + The Second Sunday after Christmas Day

Vocal Music

• Falan Tidings – Donald Pearson (b. 1953)

Instrumental Music

• How Bright Appears the Morning Star – Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
• Impression on “We Three Kings” – Alfred V. Fedak (b. 1951)
• Gigue on “Stuttgart” – David Schelat (b. 1955)

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

• Hymn 109 - The first Nowell the angel did say (THE FIRST NOWELL)
• Hymn 421 - All glory be to God on high (ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HÖH)
• Hymn 127 - Earth has many a noble city (STUTTGART)
• Hymn 480 - When Jesus left his Father’s throne (KINGSFOLD)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 119 - As with gladness men of old (DIX)

Twelve days after Christmas is the day marked as the Epiphany, generally thought of as the day that the God-Son was revealed as a human being in Christ Jesus. As the Epiphany is on a Monday this year, we will take the opportunity to focus this Sunday morning on the visit of the Magi as told in the Gospel of Matthew.

That being the case, much of the music for this Sunday features the Wise Men who followed that star. That includes the opening hymn, The First Nowell, which details the entire Christmas Story, focusing on the star which led both shepherds and magi to the infant King.

The offertory anthem is the same anthem sung at the 6:30 PM Service on Christmas Eve. Since the majority of our congregation was either at 4 or 10 PM,  we decided we'd do a follow-up singing of it on this Epiphany Sunday. Donald Pearson takes the text of a 17th century carol and sets it in a deceptively simple sounding anthem  It is, in fact, a work of subtlety and great depth. The three voice parts are as sweet and pleasant, but the harmonies are more challenging and the phrase shapes carry us right along with the surging melody.

According to the Oxford Book of Carols, the text dates from about 1610. Interestingly, the original carol starts with Matthew’s wise men and ends with Luke’s shepherds, which is truer to the narrative, since the Magi would have had to have left their homes weeks if not months before the birth, given the distance between their countries and Jerusalem. The title, Falan Tidings, comes from the original carol, which includes "the shepherds there about", who only had to leave their tents and flocks on Bethlehem Down and run down the hillside, ‘singing all even in a rout, “Falan-tiding-dido!”

I found it interesting that all of the composers today were born in the 50s, (except Pachelbel was born in 1653, while the others were 1950s babies!)