September 20, 2020 + The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Hear My Prayer – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Instrumental Music

• Processional – William Mathias (1934-1992)
• Sunday Morning Fire - Jackson Berkey (b. 1942)
• Come, Labor On – Michael Burkhardt (b. 1957)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “W” which are from Wonder, Love, and Praise.)

• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Song of Praise S-280 Glory to God – Robert Powell
• Sanctus W-858 (LAND OF REST)

This Sunday we warmly welcome Brooke Vance to our service today. Brooke grew up in Good Shepherd, singing in the choirs from kindergarten through High School. She is a graduate of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with a degree in vocal performance. She'll be singing  part of Felix Mendelssohn’s Hear my Prayer, a miniature cantata with three distinct, contrasting movements. She will sing the first section, “Hear my prayer, O God.” Mendelssohn’s subtle changes of harmony and melody indicate alternating moments of optimism and loneliness. 

From The Musical Times, Feb. 1, 1891 by F. G. Edwards:

"Hear my Prayer" – "a trifle", as he modestly calls it – is one of Mendelssohn's most popular and widely-known choral works. It was written at the request of Mr. William Bartholomew for a series of Concerts given at Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate Street, in the "forties", by Miss Mounsey, who afterwards became Mrs. Bartholomew. The work was first performed at Crosby Hall on January 8, 1845, with Miss Mounsey at the organ, and was published in the same year by Messrs. Ewer and Co…

In 1843, William Bartholomew wrote to Mendelssohn requesting "one or two sacred solos with an organ accompaniment for some concerts we are to give at Crosby Hall, a renovated Gothic Structure which was once the palace of Richard the Third". The texts submitted were Judges 16: 23–31 (the ‘Death Prayer of Samson’) and a version of the opening of Psalm 55, which was accepted by Mendelssohn, and became Hear my prayer.

The first performance was in January of 1845, with Ann Mounsey playing the organ accompaniment on the new organ by Henry Cephas Lincoln, and the soprano solo by Elizabeth Rainforth, a well-known stage singer; according to a review of the performance published in Musical World, neither the soloist nor the chorus were ‘thoroughly at home’ and the new organ also met with little enthusiasm. The modern-day popularity of the work stems from the recording made in 1927 by boy soprano Ernest Lough which became EMI’s first million-selling classical recording.