Music for January 24, 2021 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• They Cast Their Nets in Galilee – Michael McCabe (b. 1941)
• You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore –
  Cesáreo Gabaraín (1936-1991)
• Hymn 660: O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee (MARYTON)

Instrumental Music

• Suite on Auf meinen lieben Gott – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707)
• Rigaudon – André Campra (1660-1744)

This Sunday two of our sopranos, Amy Bogan and Ana Zhang, will come together to sing three hymns from our hymnals which are appropriate to the readings for this Sunday, the miracle of the great catch at Galilee. It is a poem by poet, lawyer, and farmer William Alexander Percy, from Greenville, Mississippi. 

Michael McCabe

The tune for They Cast Their Nets was written for this text for the Hymnal 1940, the predecessor of our current hymnal. David McK. Williams was the organist/Choirmaster at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City. He named the tune GEORGETOWN, for the church of his friend, F. Bland Tucker, who was rector of St. John's, Georgetown Parish in Washington, D.C. 

This arrangement is by Michael McCabe, an American composer with a 20 year career in the military, which provided McCabe with unique learning opportunities, such as study with such notable musicians as Leo Sowerby, David McK. Williams, Thomas Matthews, and Dale Wood. He has served numerous churches, including Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The communion anthem is the Spanish hymn, Tú has venido a la orilla. Written by the Spanish priest Cesáreo Gabaraín, it is one of the most popular songs to emerge from the 1970s revival of religious song in Spain. It asks singers to become like the fishermen who left boats and nets to follow Jesus, first as disciples learning his way of love, then as apostles carrying that love to others. Various translations have appeared in over forty hymnals since it first was published in 1979. It is included in Wonder, Love, and Praise, the supplement to the Episcopal hymnal published in 1997.

Dietrich Buxtehude wrote a set of variations based on the hymn Auf meinen lieben Gott: 

Auf meinen lieben Gott                            In my beloved God

Trau' ich in Angst und Not,                     I trust in anxiety and trouble;

Der kann mich allzeit retten                    He can always deliver me

Aus Trübsal, Angst und Nöten,              from sorrow, anxiety, and troubles;

Mein Unglück kann er wenden,              he can change my misfortune,

Steht all's in seinen Händen.                   everything is in his hands.

I am playing this for the opening voluntary. What is so weird to me is that he wrote these variations in the form of a dance suite. An important musical form of in the Baroque period, the Suite was a collection of pieces for keyboard or instrumental ensemble consisting of a number of smaller movements, each in the character of a dance and all in the same key. What is perplexing is the combination of a hymn with dance rhythms. The Church was strongly opposed to dancing, connecting it to heathen rituals and lasciviousness. Nevertheless, here we have a hymn set in various dance forms: 

I. Chorale (not part of Buxtehude's original work. I'll just play the 4-part hymn setting to give you an idea of the melody.)
II. Prelude - Buxtehude's original opening movement, is a stylized setting of the chorale.
III. Double - A French term for a simple type of variation (of the prelude.)
IV. Sarabande - a dance in a slow triple meter in a dignified style, usually (as here) with an accent on the second beat of the measure.
V. Courante - This one is in the French style, which is much more refined than the Italian. It is also in a triple meter, but not as slow as the Sarabande.
VI. Gigue - probably the most familiar dance to modern folks (as in jig), it is a lively dance in compound duple time (6/8 or 6/4).