Music for Sunday, February 2, 2020 + The Presentation of Our Lord

Vocal Music

• When to the Temple Mary Went – Johannes Eccard (1553–1611)

Instrumental Music

• Improvisation on the hymntune “Rustington” – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Lord God, Now Unlock Your Heaven, BWV 617 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Epiphany Suite: III. Postlude (based on “Ratisbon”) – Charles Callahan

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

• Hymn 436 - Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO)
• Hymn 497 - How bright appears the Morning Star (WIE SCHON LEUCHTET)
• Hymn 278 - Sing we of the blessed Mother (RUSTINGTON)
• Hymn R 229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R 295 - Lord, bid your servant go in peace (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Psalm 84 – setting by Hal Hopson

This Sunday is Candelmas, or the Feast of the Presentation, when we remember the presentation of the infant Christ in the Temple when the priest Simeon saw him and exclaimed, “My eyes have seen thy salvation.”  The anthem is a German Renaissance setting of a text telling that story, written in 6 parts by Johannes Eccard. It is in two verses, with the same music on for each stanza. The German title was Maria wallt zum Heiligtum from the Erster Theil der preussischen Fest-Lieder, first published in 1642. In the 1800s, John Troutbeck, an English clergyman, wrote this translation which has been used ever since.

Johannes Eccard

Johannes Eccard was born in Mühlhausen, Thuringia in 1553, and died in Berlin in 1611. Like most musicians of the time, he started his musical life as a chorister. He sang in the chapel of the Weimar court from age 14 until the chapel was disbanded four years later, when he went to the Bavarian Hofkapelle in Munich. In Munich he was lucky enough to be taken as a pupil by the great Orlando di Lassus, whose influence is clearly heard in Eccard’s music. At 26, Eccard entered the Hofkapelle of the Margrave Georg Friedrich of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and there he rose through the ranks, from singer to vice-Kapellmeister and finally Kapellmeister. I

Eccard was one of the most significant Protestant composers of chorale motets (motets using German hymn tunes, or chorales) of his day. Eccard composed both pieces that used the Lutheran chorale in the top part and a simple harmonization below it and elaborate polyphonic pieces that freely incorporated the chorale within the texture. Today's anthem is of the last set, clearly showing the influence of his teacher Lassus, as well as Eccard's ability to realize the full implications of his text through the relationship of words to music and in terms of texture.

In the 19th century Eccard’s music was regarded as the epitome of the a cappella ideal, and in an age of Protestant revival, he was seen as the counterpart to Palestrina. Brahms is said to have prized Eccard’s music

The communion voluntary is Bach’s setting from his Orgelbuchlein on the German Chorale based on that Canticle from Luke. It is the second of the chorales based on the Song of Simeon. The texture of this work is reminiscent of paintings that depict Heaven and earth in separate "layers" of activity. The right hand plays the melody in two voices, similar to a soprano and alto singing together, in 4/4. or common time, while the left hand plays a meandering 16th note line in 12/8 time. The pedal part almost dances as both feet play large, jumping intervals.