Music for Sunday, June 19, 2022 + The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music 

• Litany to the Holy Spirit – Peter Hurford (1930-2019)
• Bruce Bailey, baritone

Instrumental Music

• Fanfare-Improvisation on "Azmon" – Alec Wyton (1921-2007)
• How Can I Keep from Singing? – arr. Lani Smith (1931-2015)
• Trumpet Tune in D – Sam Batt Owens (1928-1978)

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

• Hymn 388 O worship the King (HANOVER)
• Hymn R37 Father, we love you (GLORIFY YOUR NAME)
• Hymn 658 As longs the deer for cooling stream (MARTYRDOM)
• Hymn 529 In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn From North and South (LASST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn R9 As the deer pants for the water (Martin Nystrom)
• Hymn 493 O For a thousand tongues to sing (AZMON)

Litany to the Holy Spirit

Peter Hurford

English organist Peter Hurford was one of the leading organists of his day, concertizing in places such as Royal Festival Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and St. Albans Cathedral, just north of London, where he started the St. Albans International Organ Festival in 1963. He was known for for his incisive, buoyant recordings of Bach’s complete organ works for Decca in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

But he was also the director of music at St. Alban's, where he was credited with raising the standard of the abbey choir to that of the best cathedral and collegiate choirs in the country. He also initiated a choir camp at Luccombe, Somerset, and in 1958 brought together parish choirs from Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire for the first biennial diocesan choirs’ festival. He also published choral music for the Anglican liturgy, notably the Litany to the Holy Spirit, to a text by Robert Herrick, which Bruce Bailey will be singing for us today.

The Litany is a lovely, simple hymn which was originally written for the treble choir at St. Alban's, but since then has become so popular that an arrangement for full choir has been produced.

Fanfare-Improvisation on "Azmon"

AZMON is the tune name for our closing hymn this morning. Alec Wyton has taken this tune and used it for this extended prelude on that tune. Upon hearing it, you won't immediately hear the melody you connect with the words "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing." Instead, the first thing you hear is a fanfare, followed by a leaping melodic line ("...and leap, ye lame, for joy." Pretty clever, huh?) that repeats over and over again. This is a compositional technique called ostinato (a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm). Then comes a slowly moving melodic line that is reminiscent of the tune for "O for a thousand tongues," but not quite. In fact, in won't be until the third time that the melody is played that it begins to follow the familiar tune, and then it comes in with several iterations. At one point, the manuals are playing the tune in one key while the feet are playing it in another!

Alec Wyton

Alec Wyton was a ground breaking Anglican musician who for twenty years was Organist and Master of the Choristers at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and Headmaster of the Cathedral Choir School. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians described him by saying, "Wyton has brought together and caused to flourish three separate traditions: English church music, American church music and music from outside the churches." In his obituary, The New York Times called him the "Organist who updated church music."

Wyton was born in London, England. He was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, London and Oxford University. In 1950 he moved to America to take a position as Organist Choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, MO. Four years later he to St. John the Divine, where he remained for the next twenty years. He served as President of the American Guild of Organists and was a part of the editorial team that produced the influential ECUMENCIAL PRAISE hymnal in 1977. From that collection came the tune SHORNEY which is tune is #369 in THE HYMNAL 1982 set to Isaac Watts Holy Trinity text "How Wondrous Great, How Glorious Bright." 

During his time at St. John the Divine, Wyton tried to incorporate a variety of musical traditions into the music of the church. He provided a performing platform for emerging artists as well as collaborated with such performers as Eubie Blake, Duke Ellington, Leopold Stokowski, and the cast of “Hair.”

Trumpet Tune in D

The closing voluntary was written by another great Anglican musician, Sam Batt Owens, and like the opening voluntary, it is based on another great hymn tune, LOBE DEN HERREN ("Praise to the Lord, the Almighty").

Music for October 25 + The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• O Thou the Central Orb – Charles Wood (1866-1926)
• Nunc Dimittis – A. H. Brewer (1865-1928)

Instrumental Music

• Fanfare-Improvisation on “Azmon” - Alec Wyton (1921-2007)
• Erhalt uns, Herr (Hymn R191) - Johann Pachelbel
• Trumpet Tune in D Major - William Boyce

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

• Hymn 493           O for a thousand tongues to sing (Azmon)
• Hymn 679           Surely it is God who saves me (Thomas Merton)
• Hymn 460           Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (st. 1, 3 &4) (Hyfrydol)
• Hymn 302           Father, we thank thee who hast planted (Rendez a Dieu)
• Hymn R191        O Christ, the healer (Erhalt uns, Herr)

Charles Wood

The choir is singing two anthems from the repertoire list of this Sunday's Diocese of Texas 56th Annual Adult Choral Festival. O Thou the Central Orb is by Charles Wood, one of the great 19th-century composers of Anglican choral music. His anthems are frequently performed, though he also wrote eight string quartets and an opera based on Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Though he studied at Cambridge and in London, he hailed from Armagh in Northern Ireland, where his father was a tenor in the choir of St Patrick's Cathedral. O Thou the central orb is without a doubt a classic of the English Anthem which defines in many people's minds the Anglican 'cathedral sound'.
This anthem is often sung in Advent, with its line

Come, quickly come, and let thy glory shine, 

as well as the line

Pure beam of the most High, eternal Light
Of this our wintry world, 

But the main theme is that of light, and it works well on any Sunday morning.

The other anthem is the Nunc Dimittis from Herbert Brewer's Evening Canticles in D Major. A contemporary of Charles Wood, Brewer was born one year earlier than Wood and died less than two years later. He was an English composer and organist who lived in Gloucester his whole life, and was the organist at two of its churches; he also founded the city's choral society in 1905. He had been a cathedral chorister in his boyhood, and began his organ studies with the organist of the same cathedral, C. H. Lloyd. As a composer, Brewer was fairly conservative; his output includes church music of all types, cantatas, songs, instrumental works, and orchestral music.

The opening voluntary this Sunday is by another English Cathedral Musician, though this one moved to America. Born in London, Alec Wyton studied at The Royal Academy of Music and Oxford University. He came to the United States in 1950 at the invitation of the Bishop of the Dallas Diocese, who wanted English-style music at his Cathedral. Four years later he was appointed organist and Master of the Choristers at St. John the Divine, New York City, where he combined his musician duties with those of Headmaster of the Cathedral Choir School. He held that position for 20 years.

He was the Coordinator for the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church which produced the hymnal which we now use.

I first heard this composition, Fanfare-Improvisation on “Azmon”, when I was in high school. It is based on that great hymn, "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing." As it begins, we hear a fanfare, and a brief statement of the closing phrase of the hymn-tune, before an ostinato pedal part begins and a melody which only hints at the well known tune begins. After two repetitions of that improvisatory hymn-like melody, he presents the well-known tune, only it's not in the familiar "short-short Long, Long" pattern of the hymn. Not until the fourth time the tune is played is the familiar hymn heard in its original rhythm. At one point, the melody is also heard in canon, and in canon in two different keys at the same time!.  The final stanza is a direct presentation of the hymn-tune complete with fanfares.

The communion voluntary is a setting of today's closing hymn, with the melody in the pedal, accompanied by the hands on the manuals. It is by the South German composer Johann Pachelbel, who's famous for that Pachelbel Canon that you hear at weddings all the time.