Music for May 10, 2020 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• So Art Thou to Me – K. Lee Scott, (b. 1950) Bruce Bailey, baritone

Instrumental Music

• I Know that My Redeemer Lives – arr. Timothy Shaw (b. 1976)
• Rejoice, Beloved Christians, BWV 734 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (This hymn is from the Renew Hymnal.)

• Hymn R258 - To God be the Glory (TO GOD BE THE GLORY)

Johannes Tauler, one of the most celebrated of the Mediaeval Mystics, is said to have written the hymn which is the basis of today's solo. Born in Strassburg around 1300 C.E., he entered the Dominican convent at Strassburg in his late teens. He soon came into note as an eloquent and practical preacher.

In the text, Tauler describes God's relationship to us through a series of metaphors comparing different objects to each other. Some of them are

As the bridegroom to his chosen,
as the king unto his realm,
as the light within the lantern,
as the father in the home,

No one metaphor or image is adequate to describe the relationship of God to His people. We need all of them to describe Yahweh's various dimensions. Moreover, each one expands in scope and vision with each passing day as we walk with God in the fullness of the knowledge of our God's love and faithfulness; “for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away…. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13: 9, 12).

Composer K. Lee Scott plays lightly with this poetic accumulation of biblical imagery in the solo's artful but tender melody. He has emerged as one of America’s foremost composers of music for the church during the past two decades. His 300 published compositions include anthems, hymns, works for solo voice, organ, brass, and major works including a Christmas cantata and a Te Deum.

Scott received two degrees in choral music from The University of Alabama School of Music under the tutelage of Frederick Prentice. In addition to Prentice, he also studied composition with Paul Hedwall and Gail Kubik. Scott has served as adjunct faculty for The University of Alabama School of Music, The University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Music, and Samford University School of Music. He has traveled extensively as guest conductor and clinician throughout the United States, as well as to Canada and Africa.

The opening voluntary is an arrangement of the tune we often use for "Jesus Shall Reign," but some hymnals also use this tune, DUKE STREET, for the text "Christ Is Alive! Let Christians Sing." It is in that context that I use it this morning.

Our hymn this morning is not one of our usual Anglican hymns. Prodigious writer of hymn texts, Fanny J. Crosby (b. Putnam County, NY, 1820; d. Bridgeport, CT, 1915) wrote "To God Be the Glory", which was first published with William Doane's tune in Songs of Devotion (1870). This text and "Blessed Assurance" (490) are among the best-known and most-loved hymn texts of the thousands Crosby produced. Initially ignored in the United States, the hymn was sung in British churches after its inclusion in Ira D. Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos (1903). Because of its use in the Billy Graham Crusades beginning in 1954, the hymn gained great popularity in Britain and Australia as well as in the United States.

In contrast to many gospel hymns (including the majority of Crosby's texts), “To God Be the Glory” directs our attention away from personal experience to the glory of God. God so loved the world that he gave us his Son to make atonement for sin (st. 1); all who believe in Christ will receive pardon (st. 2) and will rejoice now and through all eternity because of the "great things he has done" (st. 3). The refrain borrows its praise in part from the Old Testament psalms. The phrase "when Jesus we see" (st. 3) must have meant something special to Crosby, who was blinded when she was seven weeks old.

Fanny (Francis) Jane Crosby attended the New York City School for the Blind, where she later became a teacher. She began writing poetry when she was eight and publishing several volumes, such as A Blind Girl, and Other Poems (1844). Married to musician Alexander Van Alstyne, who was also blind, Crosby began writing hymn texts when she was in her forties. She published at least eight thousand hymns (some under various pseudonyms); at times she was under contract to her publisher to write three hymns a week and often wrote six or seven a day. Crosby's texts were set to music by prominent gospel song composers such as William B. Bradbury, William H. Doane, Robert S. Lowry, Ira D. Sankey, and William J. Kirkpatrick. Her hymns were distributed widely and popularized at evangelistic services in both America and Great Britain. Crosby was one of the most respected women of her era and the friend of many prominent persons, including presidents of the United States.

As a devout Lutheran, Bach took very seriously Martin Luther’s call for a music (and a language) available to all members of the congregation. The music of the Lutheran service was built not on the Latin of the Roman Catholic Church–chanted by the priest–but on the simple and sturdy hymn-tunes of Germany (some of them by Martin Luther himself), which could be sung by all the members of a congregation. Bach was drawn to these old German chorale melodies throughout his career: he wrote cantatas based on chorale tunes, he included chorales in his passions, he composed about thirty new chorale tunes of his own, and he also made about 400 reharmonizations of existing chorale tunes, usually for solo organ. The closing voluntary is one of Bach's independent chorale-based preludes, based on the tune NUN FREUT EUCH, LIEBER CHRISTIAN G'MEIN, which is traditionally translated as "Rejoice, beloved Christians." You can hear the rejoicing in the running sixteenth-note line in the right hand, accompanied by the jumping eight-note bass line. The melody itself is played on the trumpet in the pedal.

My first recording of Bach (organ or otherwise) was Virgil Fox's "On Top Of Bach." This is where I was introduced to this chorale prelude, played faster than it had an reason to be. My 16-year old mind could not conceive that the melody would ever be played by anything but the hands. The pedal was always reserved for the bass line. I listened to Fox's impossibly fast recording and marvelled at how fast his feet moved! (I later learned that, no, his feet were playing the melody at a manageable clip. The left hand had the bouncing bass.)

Here is the cover to that ground-breaking (for me) album. WQXR Classical Radio Station in New York lists this album cover among the worst Bach Album covers ever.