Music for January 14, 2018 + The Second Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Hush! Somebody’s Calling My Name – Brazeal Dennard (1929-2010)
• May My Light Shine – Lynn Bailey (b. 1955) and Becki Mayo (b. 1956)

Instrumental Music

• Voluntary in A Minor – Maurice Greene (1696-1755)
• Communion – François-Clément Théodore Dubois (1837 - 1924)
• Allegro in D Minor – John Stanley (1712-1786)

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

• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn 295 - Sing praise to our Creator (CHRISTUS, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life and let it be consecrated (HOOLINSIDE)
• Hymn R149 - I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM LORD)
• Hymn R147 - Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling (THOMPSON)
• Hymn 535 -  Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)
• Psalm 139 Domine, probasti – David Hurd

Becki Slagle Mayo

The Coventry Choir is singing an anthem that is perfect for the season after Christmas and Epiphany. The text is inspired by the Star of Bethlehem, and the music and text both quote the refrain of "We Three Kings." (Star of Wonder, Star of Light...) This work is a collaboration between two composers, Becki Slagle Mayo and Lynn Shaw Bailey.

A graduate of Campbellsville College and Mankato State University, Mayo is director of youth and children's choirs at Alpharetta (Georgia) Presbyterian Church, and maintains a private piano studio in her home. As a composer and arranger, she has published over 50 compositions with 12 major publishing companies.

Lynn Shaw Bailey

Perhaps best known by her anthems for younger and developing voices, Bailey studied music at Oklahoma Baptist University and received OBU’s Alumni Profiles in Excellence Award. She also studied composition privately with Bob Burroughs, David Schwoebel, and Alice Parker. In addition, Lynn has degrees in journalism and nursing.

A native and resident of Georgia for most of her life, Bailey and her husband now live in Waco, Texas

The Good Shepherd Choir is singing an anthem we did exactly three years ago, so I am adding this link to what I said about Hush! Somebody's Calling My Name here.

Maurice Greene

The opening and closing voluntaries are connected by a musical lineage. Maurice Greene , the composer of the opening voluntary, was an English composer in London. His grandfather, John Greene, had been the Recorder in the City of London and his father, Thomas Greene, chaplain of the Chapel Royal and canon of Salisbury. Maurice Greene was the youngest of seven children and began his musical studies as a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral. His voice broke at the age of 14 and his musical tutoring was continued under Richard Brind, the Cathedral organist.

By the time he was but 40 years old, he held all the major musical appointments in the country,  namely Organist of St. Paul's Cathedral, Organist and Composer to the Chapel Royal, Professor of Music at Cambridge University and Master of the King's Musick. 

One of his students was the eight year old John Stanley, who, though blind from an accident since the age of two, studied "with great diligence, and a success that was astonishing" (1).  Stanley had begun his musical studies at seven with lessons from another organist  but the teacher/student partnership was not fruitful. However, under the guidance of Maurice Greene, he progressed so that by age nine he was playing the organ occasionally at All Hallows Church on Bread Street.

John Stanley

The organist at All Hallows at that time was the composer William Babell, a former pupil of Handel. Babell died on September 23rd, 1723 and exactly one month later the eleven year old Stanley was appointed organist to the church at a salary of £20 per annum!

At the age of fourteen he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew's, Holborn and at the age of seventeen became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree at Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Temple Church - a position he held until his death. It was at the ancient Temple Church that his brilliant playing upon the organ and harpsichord attracted the attention of many fine musicians including Handel who regularly visited the church to hear him.

The English organ of this period was not as developed as the German organ of the same time, often having no pedals and only two keyboards, so the music of the period is not as complex as the music of Bach or Buxtehude. The piece I am playing today has been freely arranged for the modern organ by English organist Henry Coleman. It includes a pedal part and more manual (keyboard) changes.

(1) The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces, Charles Burney (1773)

Music for January 18, 2015 + The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Hush! Somebody’s Callin’ My Name – arr. Brazeal W. Dennard (1929-2010)
• Lord, You Have Searched Me – David Hurd (b. 1950)

Instrumental Music

• Galliard on “Gather Us In” – James Biery (b. 1956)
• Song of Peace – Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
• Postlude – Lionel Lackey (1910-1987)

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

• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn 707  - Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn 132 - All glory, Jesus, be to thee (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn R149 - I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM, LORD)
• Hymn 535 - Ye servants of God, your master proclaim (PADERBORN)

Hush, hush, somebody’s callin’ my name. Oh my Lord, oh my Lord, what shall I do?

Today we sing an anthem that I like to schedule whenever the Old Testament lesson is the story of the boy Samuel hearing the voice of God call his name. The boy thinks it is his mentor, Eli, but after the third time Eli suggests the boy respond by saying "Master, speak, thy servant heareth." It turns out God is calling Samuel's name.
I use this spiritual because I imagine, if I heard God calling my name out loud, I'd be saying "What am I going to do?!"

But here is a brief history of the spiritual. Dr. Rosephanye Powell says

 “Hush” is to tell those weeping for us during sickness or dying to stop weeping because there is joy in dying. The verse “soon one morning, death come creeping in my room” was something the slave longed for and welcomed because it meant freedom from slavery.
There is a verse that says “sounds like Jesus” and that refers to the fact that they are truly saved and Jesus is calling them home. Relative to slavery in a sociological context, “hush” was an indication to keep quiet and listen because a conductor in the Underground Railroad was in the area and whatever their signal was (whistling, barking, knocking, tapping on the window) was indicative to the slave’s name being called...  In this context, the verse “sounds like Jesus” is a way of letting those in the slave community know that a conductor or liberator was in the area.

Brazeal Dennard

This setting was arranged by Brazeal Dennard, an African-American singer, educator, choral director, and musical arranger who was a significant contributor in the preservation and revitalization of the spiritual musical form. His efforts helped moved the African-American spiritual beyond the confines of the church, exposing not only the beauty of this music, but also its historical importance to a wider audience.

Dennard was invited by the White House to become a member of a special committee to present White House Fellowships to highly motivated young Americans. He is perhaps best known for his work with the Brazeal Dennard Chorale (founded in 1972), a group of highly trained singers dedicated to developing the choral art to its highest professional level. Brazeal Dennard was supervisor of music for the Detroit Public Schools and served as adjunct faculty at Wayne State University. 

Last week, while driving to church, the Sunday morning choral music program on Sirius/XM's classical channel was playing sacred choral music by French composers in solidarity with the French Creative community which had been hit by terrorists. This Sunday I am including my own tribute by playing French organist Jean Langlais' composition, Chant du Paix (Song of Peace) at communion.

Who is Galliard, and why is he on "Gather Us In?"

Well, Galliard isn't a person, it's a dance form, a vigorous 16th-century European court dance with a six-beat pattern.

"Galliard dance pattern" by Hyacinth at the English language Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

James Biery used that pattern in writing our opening voluntary based on the contemporary hymn, Gather Us In, written by Marty Haugen, Haugen is a Catholic musician who has written a lot of music for the Roman church. (Many traditional musicians have issues with his compositions, even to the point of forming a Facebook page called Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas.) It is found in our Renew Hymnal at No. 14.
In Biery's composition, you'll first hear an introduction with the distinctive, rollicking rhythm of the galliard. This introduction actually becomes a ritournello, interspersed between each phrase of the melody. Then after the entire first verse is presented, there is a musical bridge with fragments of the tune in various keys, building in intensity and volume before coming back with another stanza of the hymn.
The galliard's four hopping steps and one high leap permitted athletic gentlemen to show off for their partners. When performing the galliard, couples danced the length of the ballroom either together, men leaping higher than women, or separately. Imagine that as the choir, acolytes, and servers process down the aisle this Sunday.

The closing voluntary is another work in rollicking 6/8 time, simply called Postlude. It is written by Lionel Lackey, who, in addition to his work on the English faculty of Baptist College of Charleston (now Charleston Southern University), was a composer and librettist primarily known for his short, one-act operas. In this rare organ work, he composed a theme in G minor which starts the piece. After that detached, angular theme is fully presented, a smoother, legato secondary theme is introduced against the primary theme in the left hand. After a short bridge, the first section is repeated again, but this time the secondary theme is in a major key.

• Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON) - Words by Charles Wesley, emphasizing the Epiphany theme of light out of darkness (like the first stanza of Gather Us In.)  The melody was adapted and harmonization written by William Henry Havergal, although we can only guess how closely it resembles the 1524 original.  This may be too short for a processional, so the choir better leap down the aisle quickly!
• Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE) -  This hymn is a beautiful prayer that God would both draw us closer to Himself, and use us to bring others to Him. God calls us to a life of discipleship, and our only response should be, “Here am I. Send me.” The rest of Christendom sings this hymn to another tune, but we Episcopalians sing it to this tune written by John Bacchus Dykes (of Holy, Holy, Holy fame.) Only three other hymnals use this tune, out of more than 80 modern hymnals.
• All glory, Jesus, be to thee (ERHALT UNS, HERR)  - This is the last stanza of the hymn we sang last Sunday. 
• I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM, LORD) - This hymn is a favorite among many in our congregation, and it comes from the same tradition as the hymn Gather Us In mentioned in the opening voluntary. It echoes the same sentiment as Take My Life and Let it Be.
• Ye servants of God, your master proclaim (PADERBORN) -  Charles Wesley is the author of this hymn text. He wrote it in 1744 for Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution in the section titled “Hymns to Be Sung in Tumult.” The occasion for writing was a time of persecution for Methodists in England. They were accused of disloyalty to the British Crown among other things, and were therefore subject to violent persecution.   The text originally had six stanzas, but two of them were quite specific to the Methodist persecution of the time, and are therefore omitted in modern hymnals. Otherwise, the text has been passed down in a very consistent form. The four stanzas elaborate on the theme of God's glory and victorious power. The last two stanzas allude to eschatological passages throughout Revelation.