Music for Sunday, September 25

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (10:15)

Vocal Music

• Praise God in His Holiness – Geoffrey Shaw (1879-1943)

Instrumental Music

• Grand jeu – Pierre du Mage (1674 – 1751)
• Suite du premier ton No. 3 Récit – Denis Bédard (b. 1950)
• Rigaudon – André Campra (1660-1744)

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

• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn 429 - I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath (OLD 113TH)
• Hymn 705 - As those of old (FOREST GREEN)
• Hymn R - Jesus, remember me (Taizé)
• Hymn 625 - Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)
• Psalm 146 – Tone VIIIa

St. Michael and All Angels (5 PM)

Vocal Music

• God Be In My Head – H. Walford Davies (1869-1941)
• Ave Verum Corpus – W. A. Mozart 

Instrumental Music

• Aria – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Picardy – Charles Callahan
• Ye Holy Angels Bright – Charles Callahan

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

• Hymn 618 - Ye watchers and ye holy ones (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 282 - Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels (CAELITES PLAUDANT)
• Hymn R75 - Praise the Lord, O heavens adore him (AUSTRIA)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (TUNE)
• Hymn 625 - Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)
• Psalm x – Tone VIIIc

Praise God in His Holiness

The composer of today's anthem, the English organist, music educator, and composer Geoffrey Shaw, was the younger brother of the organist and composer Martin Shaw. As a boy, Geoffrey was a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral in London under Sir George Martin. Later he was organ scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied under Sir Charles Stanford and Dr. Chas. Wood.

From 1902 to 1910 Geoffrey Shaw was music master at Gresham's School, Holt. In 1920 he was named his brother's successor as organist at St. Mary's, Primrose Hill, London. He also served as inspector of music to the Board of Education from 1928 until his retirement in 1942. In this post he devoted himself to the furtherance of popular organisations, both in the schools and training colleges and by means of such unofficial activities as summer schools for teachers and competitive festivals. In 1932 he was awarded the honorary Lambeth degree of D.Mus. In 1947 the Geoffrey Shaw Memorial Fund was established to assist musically talented children.

Geoffrey Shaw composed a ballet, All at Sea, orchestral works, and chamber pieces, as well as partsongs and unison songs. He also co-operated with his brother in editing song books.

An interesting fact is that his son, Sebastian Shaw, was an actor who was chosen for the small but crucial role of redeemed, unmasked and dying Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, the third and final film in the original Star Wars trilogy. 

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). 

Music for October 30, 2016 + The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Let thy blood in mercy poured – Johann Cruger (1598-1662)

Instrumental Music

• Praise to the King – Bill Ingram (contemporary)
• Riguadon – André Campra (1660-1744)
• Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)
• Rondeau from Abdelazer - Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

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

• Hymn 411 - O bless the Lord, my soul (St. Thomas (Williams))
• Hymn 605 - What does the Lord require (Sharpethorne)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (East Acklam)
• Hymn 301 - Bread of the world, in mercy broken (Rendez a Dieu)
• Hymn 410 - Praise, my soul, the King of heaven (Lauda anima)
• Psalm 32:1-8, Tonus Pergrinus, refrain by David Clark Isele

This Sunday, the Good Shepherd Bell Choir will ring for the first time this season. We have a great group of ringers this year, and are excited about the coming year. We will be ringing two pieces in worship. First is an original piece for bells by Texas composer Bill Ingram. Ingram is a native of Longview, Texas and a graduate of East Texas Baptist University. He began work as a minister of music in 1963 and served several Baptist churches in Texarkana, Dallas, and Pasadena, (all Texas) before residing in Baytown, Texas.

Now Ingram is a freelance composer and arranger and serves as handbell editor for two different publishers. He often serves churches in the Houston area as interim Minister of Music.

Mr. Ingram says, “I began writing for hand bells when we purchased bells at First Baptist Church, Baytown in 1975. My first compositions and arrangements were probably published in 1976. I have over 650 arrangements and compositions in print." In 1996, Jeffers Handbell Supply honored him as the “Composer of the Year” when “Do Lord” was the best seller that year.

The other piece we will play is an arrangement of the French baroque composer André Campra's Rigaudon from his opera Idoménée. Arguably his most familiar work, it is most often used as a wedding processional. It is in the form of a rondo, a work ,with one principal musical theme that is stated at least three times in the same key and to which return is made after the introduction of each subordinate theme.

Andre Campra. His hair was not
all he had in common with Henry Purcell

The most significant composer for the French stage between Lully and Rameau, Campra had his beginnings as a church musician. His father, an amateur violinist, provided him with his first music lessons, and at age 14 he joined the choir of St. Sauveur. At one point he nearly lost his place in the choir when he was caught giving unauthorized performances in secular theaters on the side. In August of 1681 he became the director of music at the church of Ste. Trophime in Arles, and two years later moved on to the same position at the Cathedral of St. Étienne in Toulouse. In 1694 he became choir master at Notre Dame. Until he arrived in Paris he had composed mostly sacred music, but even though he had reached a top position in the world of church music, the dramatic stage once again began to draw his creativity.

He began writing a new form of entertainment, the opéra-ballet, which he had published in his younger brother's name because he was afraid of losing his church appointment. His first three works were so successful, however, that he became confident in his ability to support himself with secular music. In 1700, he left Notre Dame and wrote his first of eight operas. Of these, only Tancrède (1702) and Idomenée (1712) have been performed with any regularity in the twentieth century.

The closing voluntary is an organ arrangement of a Rondeau by Henry Purcell. (Note the French spelling of the word Rondo.) The similarity of our handbell offertory by Campra and the organ voluntary is more than just the musical form, however. Both are arrangements of popular tunes from theatrical works by leading composers of the same time period.

The Rondeau is from the incidental music that Henry Purcell composed for the play Abdelazer, or the Moor's Revenge. One of Purcell’s last works, the play was staged in 1695, the year of Purcell's death. The Rondeau’s place in history was assured when the composer Benjamin Britten chose it for his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell (1946).

The choir will sing the four part hymn by Johann Cruger, Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured, as the communion motet. This is one of the top five hymns by Cruger, whose other hymns are much better known to modern worshippers.

• Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended

• Now Thank We All Our God

• Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness

• Jesus, Priceless Treasure

• Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured

Cruger was the son of an innkeeper, born at Gross-Bressen, near Guben in Prussia. He studied theology at the University of Wittenberg but left early to be the cantor of St. Nicholas Church in Berlin and to teach at the Gymnasium of the Grey Friars.

A friend of Paul Gerhardt, Cruger composed melodies for many hymns by Gerhardt and others. He composed seventy-one sacred chorales and also created elaborate instrumental accompaniments for hymns, actively promoting congregational singing. He was also a musicologist and wrote about the theory and practice of music. His hymnals also included other famous tunes such as Praise to the Lord, the Almighty and O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.

I will follow the choir's singing of the hymn with an organ work based on the same hymn by the contemporary of J. S. Bach, the German organist Johann Gottlieb Walther.