Music for November 12, 2017 + Kirking of the Tartans

Vocal Music

• Keep Your Lamps – André Thomas (b. 1952)

Instrumental Music

• Highland Cathedral - James D. Wetherald, arr., Richard Kean, piper
• Meditation on Jesus, meine Zuversicht – Leo Sowerby (1895-1968)

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

• Hymn 524 - I love thy kingdom, Lord  (ST. THOMAS (WILLIAMS))
• Hymn S-204 - Glory be to God on High - Old Scottish Chant
• Hymn 68 - Rejoice! Rejoice, believers (LLANGLOFFAN)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn R229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R167 - Surely the presence of the Lord (SURELY THE PRESENCE)
• Hymn 189 - Amazing grace! how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 436 - Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO)
• Psalm 78:1-7 – Tone VIIIa

It is a favorite Sunday for many parishioners at Good Shepherd when we “Kirk (or bless) the Tartans.” It's not on the official prayerbook liturgical calendar, but we have been observing the Sunday closest to the feast day of Samuel Seabury as "Kirking Sunday" for 20 years now!  It's a custom which seems to have begun in the early 1940s, when Peter Marshall (the Presbyterian minister who was chaplain of the Senate - not the game show host) held prayer services at New York Avenue Presbyterian in D.C to raise funds for War Relief. At one of the services, he preached a sermon called “Kirking of the Tartans,” and thus a legend was born. You can read the entire fascinating history here on the Scottish Tartans Website.

We do it every year around the feast day of Samuel Seabury, the first American Anglican bishop who was consecrated by the Scottish Bishops of the Anglican church during the Revolutionary War. (England was a bit perturbed with Americans, so they would have none of that!) 

Thus we commemorate his consecration by wearing our tartans, hanging them in the church, and hearing the bagpipes play. We begin the service with the piper playing “Highland Cathedral” and end with him playing “Amazing Grace.”

Our piper this Sunday is Richard Kean, a professional piper who now calls Houston home. He is a native of Scotland who made his way through Canada before moving to Texas. We are honored to have him with us today.

André Thomas

Today's anthem was chosen because of its appropriateness in light of the scripture. In Matthew 25 we read of the ten bridesmaids who go out to meet the bridegroom. Five took enough oil in their lamps so that they would continue to burn. Five "foolish" bridesmaids did not, and were left in the dark when the bridegroom came.  Keep Your Lamps (Trimmed and Burning) is a traditional gospel blues song that alludes to the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids. It was first recorded in 1928 by Blind Willie Johnson, an American gospel blues singer, guitarist, and evangelist.

This arrangement is by André Jerome Thomas, an American composer and conductor who is currently Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Choral Music Education at Florida State University and the artistic director for the Tallahassee Community Chorus.

The organ voluntary at communion is based on the chorale JESUS, MEINE ZUVERSICHT. You can find it at hymn 313 in the hymnal, with the communion text, "Let thy Blood in mercy poured."

Music for November 9, 2014 + The 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Keep Your Lamps – Spiritual, arr. André J. Thomas
• Missa Brevis No. X in C – Healey Willan

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on the hymn tune “Bevan” – Healey Willan
• (Jesus, My Great High Priest)
• Postlude in D Major – Healey Willan
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence -  improvisation 

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

• Hymn 690 - Guide me, O thou great Jehovah (CWM RHONDDA)
• Hymn 57 - Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 436 - Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO)
• Psalm 70 – Tone VIIIg
• Alleuia     Tone VIIIg

To me, there is no purer form of music making than unaccompanied singing. Music that is made
without benefit of any musical instrument is the purest expression of musical art. Don’t get me wrong, I love the piano and the organ, and the cello is one of my favorite instruments, but given a choice between hearing a choir sing with accompaniment or without, and I will take the unaccompanied choir every time. And this Sunday, we feature the Good Shepherd choir in two varied expressions of a capella singing.

André Thomas

The anthem is a setting of the African-American Spiritual Keep Your Lamps by André J. Thomas, the Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Choral Music Education at The Florida State University. He has made it his mission to educate the public about spirituals, arranging the sorts of spirituals and gospel music he had heard as a child. His first such arrangement was Keep Your Lamps, a spiritual based on today’s Gospel reading. Except for a conga drum beat, it is sung completely unaccompanied.

Healey Willan

The service music (Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) is the Missa Brevis No. X by Canadian composer Healey Willan. Willan was well versed in plainsong and became an authority on plainchant in the vernacular (ie, English rather than Latin). He also loved the sound of choral music of the Renaissance period (roughly 1400-1600). A typical choral piece has four, five, or six voice parts of nearly equal melodic interest. Imitation among the voices is common: each presents the same melodic idea in turn, as in a round. This is music with a gentle flow rather than a sharply defined beat, because each melodic line has great rhythmic independence: when one singer is at the beginning of his or her melodic phrase, the others may already be in the middle of theirs.

Inside the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Toronto

The Missa Brevis No. X was written for the dedication of Willan's church, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto, in 1948. It reflects the needs of the church’s Anglo-catholic liturgy and exploits its suggestions of a more mystical approach. Willan’s deep interest in plainsong and polyphonic music is clearly evident in this short mass. The melismatic vocal line, rhythmic freedom based on verbal accentuation, and a strong preoccupation with linear shape rather than vertical congruence combine to form a thoroughly personal idiom. It is this that separates this music from his organ and choral music based on hymns and makes it possibly his most important.

Willan's work as a practical, publishing church musician gave rise to a variety of lesser pieces, including anthems and organ works based on hymn-tunes, collections for junior choirs, and many carols and carol arrangements. Our organ voluntaries are indicative of those kinds of pieces. The opening voluntary is based on a Lutheran chorale, and the closing voluntary is from an anthology of organ music for the church organist.

Hymn 690 Guide me, O thou great Jehovah (CWM RHONDDA) At the urging of a Welsh evangelist, under whom he was converted, William Williams (and not the one in our congregation) began writing hymns as a Welsh Calvinist-Methodist minister. The tune is another one of those great, rollicking Welsh tunes that practically sing themselves!
Hymn 57  Lo! he comes with clouds descending (HELMSLEY) Charles Wesley used the first line but completely recast the rest of a crude hymn by John Cennick six years after Cennick's death. The ideas and language are borrowed from the book of Revelation, and the whole is based on Rev. 1:7, "Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindred of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen." The language is apocalyptic and should be interpreted symbolically, not literally.
Hymn 324 Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY) This hymn comes from the opening of the Eucharist in one of the oldest liturgies of the Christian Church, traditionally ascribed to and named after St. James, the brother of Jesus. Its first written form exists in the mid fourth century in bot Greek and Syriac, and is still sung in Jerusalem on the Sunday after Christmas.
Hymn 436 Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (TRURO) This hymn by Georg Weissel (1590-1635) is probably the most famous paraphrase of Psalm 24 (Lift up your heads, Oh ye gates), and reveals a spirit of praise and hope unexpected from the depths of the dreadful years of the Thirty Years' War. Its theme is the preparation for the Messiah's coming, and goes well with these pre-Advent readings today.