Music for June 14, 2020 + The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music:

• Simple Song from “Mass” – Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Christine Marku, soprano

Instrumental Music

• There Is a Spirit That Delights to Do No Evil – Ned Rorem (b. 1923)
• Intrada on “Abbot’s Leigh” – Rebecca Groom te Velde (b. 1956)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of hymn 780, which is from Wonder, Love and Praise, the supplement to the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 780 Lord, you give the great commission (ABBOT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn S-280 - Glory to God in the highest - Robert Powell (b. 1932)

We continue this week using music with texts or tunes by Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz. Last week we heard his text set to his own music (When You Believe, from Prince of Egypt). This week we hear his set to music by Leonard Bernstein. The song is Simple Song, from Bernstein's Mass.

Bernstein with the 23-year old Schwartz

Stephen Schwartz was only 23 years old when he was approached to write the lyrics for Mass. He had just finished Godspell, and had acquired an agent, Shirley Bernstein, who was the older sister of Leonard Bernstein. When Bernstein wanted a lyricist for his Mass, Shirley brought the two men together. Stephen and Lenny became personal friends, closing the circle that began when Schwartz heard Candide on WQXR as a schoolboy.

“He had a commission to do a piece for the opening of the Kennedy Center in September of 1971, and it was May, and he was getting increasingly desperate. It was a mammoth, major, gigantic piece and Lenny had nothing done. There were all these little shreds and starts of pieces, and two lines here, and a bit of a tune there, and three months to go to do a piece with 200 singers and dancers. Needless to say, Lenny was relatively panicky at that point. I wrote lyrics to music that he had, and reworked lyrics that he had written.” (1)

Some of the words haven’t aged well — phrases like “I’m so freaky-minded” — while others are clever, like “They can fashion a rebuttal that’s as subtle as a sword / But they’re never gonna scuttle the Word of the Lord.” But the text for Simple Song is timeless, for parts come straight from the Psalms of the Hebrew Testament:

I will sing the Lord a new song
To praise Him, to bless Him, to bless the Lord.
I will sing His praises while I live
All of my days.

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord,
Blessed is the man who praises Him.
Lauda, Lauda, Laudē
And walks in His ways.

I will lift up my eyes
To the hills from whence comes my help
I will lift up my voice to the Lord
Singing Lauda, Laudē.

For the Lord is my shade,
Is the shade upon my right hand
And the sun shall not smite me by day
Nor the moon by night

I wrote more on this fascinating work two years ago, when it was sung during one of our services, and you can read that here.

The organ opening voluntary is also another stunningly simple (at first glance) musical work. Ned Rorem, the American composer, wrote an large scale organ work called A Quaker Reader. Rorem, who was raised a Quaker, wrote organ works based on lines from the works of various Quaker writers. This work, "There is a Spirit Who Delights to Do No Evil," comes from the writings of James Nayler, an English Quaker leader from the 17th century who was part of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries who preached against enclosure and the slave trade.

There is a Spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatsoever is of nature contrary to itself; it sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed it bears it,b for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. (2)

Rebecca Te Velde

The wistful melody is first heard with simple chords as accompaniment. After a key change, it is heard in canon, with the left hand echoing the tune. Another key change, and the pedal part is added, ascending almost to the top of the pedal board.

The closing voluntary is a brief "intrada" (introduction) to the hymn-tune "Abbot's Leigh" which is used as our hymn of the day. It is arranged by Rebecca Groom Te Velde, a third generation professional organist who serves as organist of First Presbyterian Church in Stillwater, OK. She is an active performer, composer, clinician, and adjunct instructor of music at Oklahoma State University where her husband, John, is associate professor of German.

1. https://theculturalcritic.com/stephen-schwartz-at-mid-career/, accessed June 11, 2020.
2. Several Papers of Confessions, Prayer, and Praise; by James Nayler, London, 1659.