Music for October 4, 2020 + The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Lord, for thy Tender Mercy’s Sake – Richard Farrant (c. 1525 –1580) or John Hilton (the elder) (1565 – 1609(?))

Instrumental Music

• All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name – Lani Smith (1934 - 2015)
• How Firm a Foundation – Lani Smith

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus (IN BABILONE)
• Song of Praise S-280 - Canticle 20: Glory to God – Robert Powell

Pardon Me, Your Roots are Showing

I have a confession to make.

Well, actually, two confessions.

(1) From where I sit in the choir gallery, I have a clear view of the tops of people's heads. And from that perch, it is easy to see who dyes their hair, and who needs to have their roots touched up. I'm just saying...

Your roots don't lie. They tell you just who (or what color) you (or your hairs) really are.

(2) Back where I come from (both geographically and generationally), the epitome of classy church music was a well played piano and organ duet. I grew up in rural West Tennessee, in what was considered a "high-church" Methodist. Our congregation had a really beautiful building built in 1924, with the only pipe organ in our town. We were justifiably proud of our 13-rank Möller pipe organ. I was enamored with it from a young age. 

Yours truly at the console of the 1924 Moller

Back in 1927 or '28, the organist, Mrs. Mae Peacock started subscribing to a bi-monthly organ magazine published by The Lorenz Publishing Company. Lorenz was to church music as Ford or Chevrolet was to the automobile. (The same could be said about Möller.) And, like Möller and Chevrolet, Lorenz was all I knew when it came to published music. So in 1975, when I was just a Junior in high school, I ordered a book of piano and organ duets which I played with my piano teacher in church. And it's that same volume of music that I have pulled out of mothballs for this Sunday's service! Only this time I am playing the organ with my friend (and Good Shepherd's usual substitute organist) Rob Carty on the piano.

Lani Smith

They were arranged by Lani Smith, a man whose musical pedigree belied his position in what most modern day church musicians would label a rather pedestrian publishing house.  Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was educated at the College‑Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (BM and MM), and in 1958 he was a co‑winner of the Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music from Columbia University, an award that honors America's most promising young composers. At age twenty‑five, Smith published his first piece with Lorenz, thus beginning a long career at the company. From 1967–82, Smith was a member of the editorial and composition staff at Lorenz, where he had responsibility for a number of publications and organ magazines, just like the one Mrs Mae subscribed to in the 20s and 30s.

So now you know my true colors. I'm just a rural church organist at heart, pretending to be one of the big boys!

The choir's anthem is a choral setting of a sixteenth century prayer by Henry Bull, set to music by either Richard Farrant or John Hilton, both English composers of sacred music. Farrant was organist at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the middle of the sixteenth century, while Hilton was known as a counter-tenor and organist, most notably at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the beginning, the music is in a simple, a capella, hymn-like style which befits the reflective and restful mood of the text, but at the words "that we may walk in a perfect heart" the choir has a chance to play around with the rhythms of the words and sing much more independently of each other, finally ending with a contrapuntal "amen." This was a challenge for the choir to sing as a virtual group, but they rose to the occasion!