Music for Sunday, July 17, 2022 + The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Instrumental Music

• Partita on “Liebster Jesu” – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)
• Sonata in A – Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
• Festive Trumpet Tune – David German (b. 1954)

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

• Hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (LIEBSTER JESU)
• Hymn 421 - All glory be to God on high (ALLEIN GOTT IN DER HÖHE)
• Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart (SLANE)
• Hymn R-266 - Give thanks with a grateful heart (GIVE THANKS)
• Hymn R201 - Be still, for the Spirit of the Lord (BE STILL)
• Hymn 344 - Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)

Partita on “Liebster Jesu” – Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)

The opening voluntary is a set of variations on the tune for our opening hymn. The tune, written in 1664 for text written by Tobias Clausnitzer in 1663, was a favorite of Johann Sebastian Bach and other Lutheran musicians.

There will be three settings. The first is in 4/4 time, and includes a running eighth  note figure. The second is in 6/8 time. Both settings follow the exact form of the hymn (AABB) and are written for the manuals only (no pedal). The third setting is in 6/8, but begins with a little fugue in the manuals before adding the straight melody in the pedals.

Sonata in A – Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

The communion voluntary is one of the 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, the Italian -born composer born same year as Bach and Handel. His other compositions for opera and church pale in comparison to his keyboard works.

Scarlatti started off as an organist at the Royal Chapel in Naples when he was only sixteen years old.  He continued to work at the Royal Chapel until 1704. Then, in 1709, Scarlatti was commissioned for service to the exiled queen of Poland, Marie Casimire. This was where he met Handel. Scarlatti and Handel performed at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in a trial of skill. When Scarlatti was judged to be better than Handel at the harpsichord, word began to spread about the young composer. Scarlatti then went on to teach music to Maria Magdalena Barbara, a Portuguese princess, where he became the master of music for Maria’s household. When the princess was crowned Queen of Spain, Scarlatti served the Spanish Royalty till his death in 1757.

Due to the nature of his appointment to the Portuguese and Spanish courts, most of his music was published after his death. Still, the sonatas were highly regarded by musicians such as Johannes Brahms, Frederic Chopin, Béla Bartók and Heinrich Schenker.

Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, Spain on July 23, 1757. His residence and his music have been preserved as part of Spanish Cultural Heritage. Many of his descendants still live in Madrid to this day.

Festive Trumpet Tune – David German

This festive trumpet tune (descriptive, if not original, title) was written by organist David German for his own wedding when he was director of music at Calvary Church in Charlotte. These days, he is director of music at Stephens Valley Church in Nashville. He attended  Moody Bible Institute, Olivet College, and Winthrop University. 

Music for November 8, 2020 + The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• How Great Thou Art – Stuart K. Hine (1899-1989), Amy Bogan, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Suite for Organ – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – Rudy Davenport (b. 1948)
• Festive Trumpet Tune – David German (b. 1954)

Amy Bogan sings a favorite of many in the congregation, "How Great Thou Art," by Stuart K. Hine. Hine was a British Methodist missionary on a mission trip in Ukraine in 1931 when he heard the Russian translation of a German song inspired by Carl Boberg's poem "O Store Gud" (O Great God). Hine began to translation the song to English and added several verses. The third verse was inspired by the conversion of villagers in Russia who cried out to God loudly as the repented and realized God's love and mercy - "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in." 

Stuart K. Hine

Stuart Hine and his family left Ukraine as famine and World War Two began, and settled in Somerset, Britain where he continued to serve as a missionary to Polish refugees. The fourth verse of "How Great Thou Art" was inspired by displaced Russians who experienced great loss and looked forward to seeing their loved ones again in heaven - "When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation to take me home, what joy shall fill my heart."

The final English version of "How Great Thou Art" was published in 1949 and quickly spread among Britain, Africa, India and America. 

The opening voluntaries are all from a suite by American composer Gerald Near. Now living in Arizona, he is director of music and organist at St. Francis in the Valley Episcopal church in Green Valley, Arizona. He's been connected to Episcopal churches most of his career, including St. Matthew's Cathedral in Dallas. I think it's because of his understanding of Anglican music that I find his compositions very appealing. He's written much music based on chant, and traditional hymn-tunes of the church, but this Suite, written in 1965 when he was 27 years, has only one movement based on a hymn tune. 

It opens with a Chaconne. Originally a fiery and suggestive dance that appeared in Spain about 1600 in moderate triple meter, the chaconne became a popular compositional form of composers of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was a series of variations built on a short phrase in the bass. This form often is confused with the form Passacaglia, and honestly, there is little difference. Near uses a short, 2-bar motive as the repeated bass line (called a "ground bass") in the pedal while he employs the tonal resources of the organ to vary the accompanying music found in the manuals (keyboards). You will hear the same eight notes in the pedal 18 times (except for variation 14 which finds the motive, not in the pedal, but in the top line of the music.

In the middle movement, the American folk tune Land of rest is set as a sarabande. A sarabande is also a dance in triple meter that originated in Central America back in the sixteenth century. It became popular in the Spanish colonies before making its way to Europe. At first, it was regarded as being rather scandalous, even being banned in Spain for its obscenity. Baroque composers, such as Handel, adopted the sarabande as one of the movements for the suites they were writing at the time.

The Suite ends with a Final (We musicians pronounce it fee-nahl) in A-B-A form. The A section is a dialogue between the Full organ on the great with a less-full organ sound on the accompanying choir manual. In the B section, you will hear a jaunty melody played on the organ's trumpet stop, accompanied by flutes. Then the A section returns just like the beginning to bring the whole thing to a close.

LAND OF REST is the tune used for hymn 620 in our hymnal, Jerusalem, my happy home, which is appropriate for today's readings. (It is also used for the communion hymn I come with joy and a favorite setting of the Sanctus that we often sing in the summer.)

Another hymn that was appropriate for today is the hymn Let all mortal flesh keep silence. During communion, I will be playing a piano setting of that tune, PICARDY, arranged by the composer Rudy Davenport. I played another piece by him last month.

Music for August 7, 2016 + The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Panis Angelicus – César Franck (1822-1890) Richard Murray, baritone

Instrumental Music

• Variations on Holy Manna – Raymond H. Haan (b. 1938)
• Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness – Mark Knickelbein (21st C.)
• Festive Trumpet Tune – David German (b. 1954)

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

• Hymn 636 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (Foundation)
• Hymn R37 - Father we love you  (Glorify your name )
• Hymn 178 - Alleluia, alleluia! Give thanks to the risen Lord (Alleluia No. 1)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be consecrated (Hollingside)
• Hymn 335 - I am the bread of life (I Am the Bread of Life )
• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (Diademata)
• Psalm 33 - Exultate, justi (refrain by Jacques Berthier)

Richard Murray sings one of the classics of sacred music this Sunday when he sings César Franck's Panis Angelicus. The text is part of the hymn Sacris solemniis written by Saint Thomas Aquinas. "Panis Angelicus" is often treated as a separate hymn and set to music, just as Franck did in his Messe solennelle in A major, Op.12. There it was written for tenor solo with cello, harp, and organ accompaniment. We will be singing the entire Messe solennelle in the spring.

Franck

Unlike many musicians whose parents had other aspirations for their children, César Franck was encouraged by his father to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. But at the Paris Conservatoire he failed to achieve the necessary distinction as a performer, so he turned his attention to composition and the organ. (Can’t play piano? Be an organist!) It was a smart move, for he became famouse in Paris as organist at the newly built church of Ste Clotilde, with its Cavaillé-Coll organ. He drew to himself a loyal and devoted circle of pupils and in 1871 became organ professor at the Conservatoire.

 As a composer, his best known orchestral works are the Symphonic Variations for solo piano and orchestra and the Symphony in D minor. Though he was best known in his day as a very distinguished organist, Franck wrote remarkably little for the instrument on which his improvisations had won him fame and pupils. The Organ pieces he did write, however, form the backbone of French Romantic organ literature, and have never gone out of style.

Raymond Haan

The variations on the hymn Holy Manna (used twice in the Hymnal 1982 - #238 and #580) were written by a public school educator to whom music was just a sideline. Raymond H. Haan was born in Falmouth, Michigan in 1938. As a boy, his piano teacher told him he'd never be a musician.Though it was his dream, he realized there was no way he could support himself as a musician in his denomination, the Christian Reformed Church and, as he says "...at that time leaving my church was not an option." So despite his desire to write music, he never took a music course of any kind.

Instead he became a middle school, then a high school English teacher and wrote music in his spare time-while also playing the organ, directing several choirs and being a father to four children. He became the Director of Music for the Cutlerville East Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids when he was 22, and had this position for over 50 years.

Even in his spare time, he was able to write more than 500 compositions published by 24 music companies. Retired from teaching, his children grown, Haan can now give his music more attention. He still lives in Cutlerville, Michigan and his hobbies include bicycling, tennis and golf.

Mark Knickelbein

From a new collection of piano pieces based on hymns of Baptism and Holy Communion we find the communion voluntary by the young Lutheran composer Mark Knickelbein. Each piece in this volume highlights specific stanzas and uses effective text painting to feature each theme. This piece based on the German chorale Schmücke dich begins in a very similar way to the famous Canon in D by Pachelbel before adding the chorale melody. This neo-Baroque style continues through the first verse, and then, when the second stanza (from the Lutheran Hymnal, "Hasten as a bride to meet Him") begins, he switches to a Renaissance Dance rhythm, 123, 123, 12, 12 for a lively, hastening feel.

Mark Knickelbein is the editor of music/worship at Concordia Publishing House and an active composer and church musician. He has a Bachelor of Science in Education from Martin Luther College, New Ulm, MN and Master of Arts in Music from Concordia University Chicago. He previously worked as an organist and choir director in Lutheran churches.