Music for May 7, 2023 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• Together – Dennis and Nan Allen (21st C.)
• Thou Art God – Lionel Bourne (b. 1960)

Instrumental Music

• Flute Solo – Thomas Arne (1710 – 1778)
• Kyrie from Missa della Domenica (Sunday Mass) – Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
• Toccata in G Major – William Walond (1719-1768)

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 47 - On this day, the first of days (GOTT SEI DANK)
• Hymn R33- We will glorify the King of kings (WE WILL GLORIFY)
• Hymn 288 - Praise to God, Immortal praise (DIX)
• Hymn R220 - Let the hungry come to me (ADORO TE DEVOTE)
• Hymn 525 - The Church’s one foundation (AURELIA)

Today the Coventry Choir, our early elementary children's choir, sings at both the family service and the 10:15 service. This is our final performance for the year, which is the first full season we have sung since 2019! Thanks to the nine children and their families for making this happen!

Together

The anthem the children are singing is a "pop" style anthem, with words and music by the husband and wife team, Dennis and Nan Allen. The Allens have been writing for close to 40 years, with over 1200 songs, musicals, and drama projects to their credit. They have received multiple nominations and are 3-time winners of the GMA Dove Awards for Musical of the Year. 

Nan has also written five books, including three Christian nonfiction works and two novels. Dennis and Nan are now retired from teaching at Truett-McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia and are back in the Nashville area resuming their writing careers.

Thou Art God

The anthem is a modern Celtic prayer set to music by Lionel Bourne, Organist and Master of Music at St John the Evangelist in London, after fourteen  years as Organist and Director of Music at St John the Divine, Kennington.  An experienced church musician, Lionel has held a number of organist posts over many years and has also enjoyed a career as teacher and BBC Music Researcher.

The prayer is from the book The Edge of Glory: Prayers in the Celtic Tradition, by Anglican priest David Adam (1936 – 24 January 2020). He was vicar of Danby-Castleton-Commondale in North Yorkshire for over 20 years, where he began writing prayers in the Celtic pattern. In the Celtic way of prayer, the divine glory was intertwined with the ordinariness of everyday events which hallows the everyday stuff of life, rather than irrelevances it in the way much church-centred spirituality does today. 

He later became rector of Holy Island, Lindisfarne, where he ministered to thousands of pilgrims and other visitors. He was made a canon of York Minster in 1989.

Organ Music

Ernest White was an American organist, choirmaster, organ designer, teacher, and music editor who flourished in the first half of the 20th century. For 25 years he was organist and/or music director at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. He was a proponent of early music in an era when such music was ignored. In 1954 he published a book of such organ music called Graveyard Gems, so named as a nod to his friend Scott Buhrman, editor of The American Organist, who called pre-Bach music "Graveyard Music." The opening voluntary this morning is taken from that volume.

Flute Solo is actually the Allegro from Thomas Arne's Sonata in A Major. As the title implies, it is features the flute stop on the organ.

Thomas Arne was an English composer, best known for his tune, Rule, Britannia! Arne was the only native English composer of his day that was able to compete successfully with composers like George Frideric Handel who monopolized the British music scene during the eighteenth century.

The other organ music could also be categorized as "graveyard music." The communion voluntaries are three settings of the Kyrie from Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali (lit. 'Musical Flowers'), a collection of liturgical organ music first published in 1635. It contains three organ masses and two secular capriccios. Generally acknowledged as one of Frescobaldi's greatest works, Fiori musicali influenced composers during at least two centuries. Johann Sebastian Bach was among its admirers.

Frescobaldi was an Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player who is considered one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Frescobaldi was appointed organist of St. Peter's Basilica from 21 July 1608 until 1628 and again from 1634 until his death.

The closing voluntary is another from an English organist William Walond. Walond was an organist who lived and died in Oxford in the 18th century. In 1752 he published a set of six voluntaries for organ or harpsichord, generally designated Opus 1 to distinguish them from the second set published in 1758. 

Voluntary V in G Major Op. 1 was written to be played without pedals, as English organs of the day were not as advanced as the organs in Germany. But today I am playing an arrangement of the second half of the voluntary arranged by the famed organist E. Power Biggs which includes pedals.