Music for April 5, 2020 + Palm Sunday

Vocal Music

• The Holy City – Stephen Adams (Michael Maybrick) (1841-1913)
• Via Dolorosa - Billy Sprague (b. 1952) /Niles Borop (b. 1956)

Instrumental Music

• All Glory, Laud, and Honor - Malcolm Archer (b. 1952)
• O Sacred Head, Now Wounded - Rudy Davenport (b. 1948)

Congregational Music (from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 154 - All glory, laud, and honor (VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN)

Two completely different vocal solos will be featured in the services this Sunday, plus the hymn that many of us think of when we think of Palm Sunday.

First, we will hear Amy Bogan sing what we refer to as a chestnut, a musical piece that has oft been repeated to the point of staleness. The Holy City is a song that, much like the service on Palm Sunday, includes not only the triumphal entry but the crucifixion. The third stanza, however, goes on to detail the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. This will literally be heaven on earth. It is referred to in the Bible in several places (Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:10; 12:22–24; and 13:14), but it is most fully described in Revelation 21. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate fulfillment of all God’s promises.

The song was written by Michael Maybrick, an English musician, best known today under his pseudonym Stephen Adams as the composer of The Holy City. He studied keyboard and harmony in Germany, but later decided to train as a baritone  in Milan. After gaining experience in Italian theaters, he appeared with great success at all the leading concert venues in London and the provinces, as well as in English opera. He even toured America to great success. The Holy City was his biggest hit. He sang it in concert much like Michael Crawford sang On Eagle's Wings when he concertized.

Now, here comes the fun part of today's story. Maybrick was a keen amateur sportsman, being a cricketer, a yachtsman and a cyclist, and a Captain in the Artists Rifles. His friends spoke of his charming personality, but others thought him arrogant and vain. In 1893 he married his forty-year-old housekeeper, Laura Withers, and retired with her on the Isle of Wight. They were joined there by the two children of his brother, James Maybrick, later a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, and whose wife Florence was convicted of his murder in 1889. (A re-examination of her case resulted in her release in 1904.) He died in 1913.

In October of 2015, screen writer Bruce Robinson published a huge tome called They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper. It was a culmination of 15 years of research in the study of the Jack the Ripper case. Based on his research (which some experts dispute), he points the accusing finger at Michael Maybrick (not his brother James) as detailed in this report.

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After the reading of the Passion Story, Bidkar Cajina will sing a song from a genre that doesn't often make it into our services. From the realm of contemporary Gospel Music (whatever that means) comes the song Via Dolorosa.

For many Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, one of the most meaningful things they will do while in the city is walk the Via Dolorosa, the route that Jesus took between his condemnation by Pilate and his crucifixion and burial. This "way of sadness" was the inspiration for the 1986 Dove Award winning song made famous by Sandi Patti. It was composed by Billy Sprague, an Oklahoma native who grew up in the Amarillo, Texas area. He earned a degree in English from Texas Christian University, did graduate work for two years in literature at the University of Texas, Austin, followed by twenty-five years of making music in Nashville, Tn. He is currently Worship Pastor (what we call a director of music) at Edgewater Alliance Church in Edgewater, Florida.