Music for April 16, 2020 + The Third Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• Rise Up, My Heart, With Gladness, BWV 441 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750), Harrison Boyd, baritone

Instrumental Music

• Abide With Me – Timothy Shaw (b. 1976)
• Erschienen ist der Herrliche Tag, BWV 529 – J. S. Bach
• Sunday Morning Fire - Jackson Berkey (b. 1942)

Congregational Music (from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 182 - Christ is alive! Let Christians sing (DUKE STREET)
• Sanctus – (LAND OF REST)

Harrison Boyd sings one of the hymns from J. S. Bach's collection Geistliche Lieder und Arien. It is a harmonization of an Easter hymn by Paul Gerhardt (1647) set to a melody of Johann Crüger in 1648. There is little scholarly evidence, however, that Bach had anything to do with this chorale.

Our congregational hymn, sung by Camryn Creech, is the hymn Christ is alive, set to the tune DUKE STREET. Brian A. Wren, (born 1936 in Romford, Essex, England), an internationally published hymn-poet and writer, wrote the text during April of 1968. Wren writes:

It was written for Easter Sunday, two weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I could not let Easter go by without speaking of this tragic event which was on all our minds. . . . The hymn tries to see God's love winning over tragedy and suffering in the world. . . . There is tension and tragedy in these words, not just Easter rejoicing.

"Christ Is Alive" is a joyful celebration of Christ's resurrection and of his personal rule in a human world in which pain, war, and injustice abound. Christ’s transcendent and immanent reign is empowered by the Holy Spirit and will ultimately bring about a new creation. I can't let an Easter season pass without singing this hymn, which is especially poignant this year during isolation and pandemic.

Timothy Shaw

The Opening voluntary is an arrangement of the old hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, Abide With Me. I wanted to play this beautiful setting by Timothy Shaw today for two reasons. First, its opening line is linked to Luke 24:29, today's Gospel reading, in which the disciples asked Jesus to abide with them "for it is toward evening and the day is spent". Second, the hymn is a prayer for God to remain present with us throughout life, through trials, and through death. The penultimate verse draws on text from 1 Corinthians 15:55, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?":

Born and raised in Keene, New Hampshire, Timothy Shaw is a contemporary pianist, composer, and educator. Like J. S. Bach, he has studied both theology and music. As a composer, he is the recipient of the 2019 ALCM Raabe Prize for Excellence in Sacred Composition. He has written extensively for the church and is published by nine different publishers. 

The closing voluntary, "Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag" (The day hath dawned—-the day of days), is a German Easter carol with text and tune written by Nikolaus Herman and published in 1561. It has inspired musical settings by composers from the 17th to the 20th century. It appears in several hymnals, including the German Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch. Other hymns, especially Easter hymns, are sung to the same melody.

The melody is in Dorian mode, a triple metre, and shows dotted rhythms. Its character is dance-like. Musicologists have suggested an origin in Gregorian chant, and Easter plays that may have contained "liturgical dance". In his Orgelbüchlein, Bach composed this chorale prelude on the hymn  in which he uses the melody as a cantus firmus in soprano and bass in canon, with joyful motifs in the middle voices.