Music for May 17, 2015 + The Seventh Sunday after Easter and The Sunday after Ascension Day

Vocal Music

• Blessed is the Man – Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
• O Taste and See - Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Danket dem Herren (Thank the Lord) - Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• Prière du Christ montant vers son Père ("Prayer of Christ ascending towards his Father") - Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
• Hyfrdol - Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

• Hymn 450 All hail the power of Jesus’ Name!  (CORONATION)
• Hymn 494 Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn 314 Humbly I adore thee (ADORO DEVOTE)
• Hymn 460 Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)

Known primarily for his symphonies, concertos and ballets, Pytor Tchaikovsky was also deeply interested in the music and liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Though his sacred output was not large, it still included A Hymn to the Trinity (1877), the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (1878), an All-Night Vigil (1881), and 9 Sacred Pieces (1884–85). He published a book in 1875, A Short Course of Harmony adapted for the Study of Russian Church Music.

Interestingly, the anthem the choir sings today is not from one of his sacred works, but is an arrangement from his piano work Album for the Young, Op.39, subtitled "24 simple pieces à la Schumann". It is a cycle of piano pieces composed between May and July 1878, and No. 24., In Church, is the source for our anthem.  As a prelude to this short anthem, I will play the first number from that volume called Morning Prayers.

Olivier Messiaen in March, 1952.
He looks a LOT like my Aunt Bonnie.

Some composers labor for years before finding their own voice. But Olivier Messiaen, even in his earliest works, sounds like Messiaen and no one else. In his work L’Ascension, we see (or hear) Messiaen’s language emerge before our very eyes as passages influenced by his early models — chiefly Debussy and Stravinsky — begin to evolve in entirely new directions. One bedrock of Messiaen’s music was the composer’s Catholic faith, which is behind every note he composed.

Messiaen was only 25 when he completed L’Ascension. He had graduated from the Paris Conservatoire just three years earlier. Since 1931, he had been the organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Written for orchestra (he rewrote it for the organ a year later in 1933), it was his reflections on the Feast of the Ascension. Here, Christ’s reunion with His Father gives cause for joy, but also for the contemplation of a deep mystery. Messiaen prefaced each movement with a quote from the Bible or the Catholic liturgy to set the tone.

I will be playing movement four during communion today. Messiaen assigned this saying of Jesus to 4. Prayer of Christ Ascending to His Father.

Father . . . I have revealed Your name to humanity. . . . Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I come to you (John 17: 1, 6, and 11). 

The tempo is slow (Extrêment Lent – extrememly slow – is the tempo marking); the texture is homophonic, and the harmonies iridescent and otherworldly. The music climbs higher and higher (in keeping with the idea of Ascension) and ends on a resplendent dominant-seventh chord. According to Western musical conventions, this chord would call for resolution, but in this context, the lack of resolution is a perfect ending point for this quite extraordinary set of harmonies.

The opening voluntary is a short setting of an old Lutheran hymn which, loosely translated, is Thank the Lord. That’s the way I feel with summer quickly approaching. The closing voluntary is one of three works that Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote for the organ. It is based on the closing hymn tune today.

• All hail the power of Jesus’ Name!  (CORONATION) It is interesting that those who express the most eloquent praise are often the people we would deem the least likely to have the ability. Yet David, the adulterating, murdering, lying king of Israel wrote a good deal of the Psalms, which we still use today as our guide for worship. In the same way, all accounts show Rev. Edward Perronet (1721-1792) to be a sharp-tongued, difficult personality, who would rather pick a fight over theology than display brotherly love.  This one has been published in over 2,760 hymnals!
• Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA) Composed in 1868 for this text by Matthew Bridges, George J. Elvey named the tune DIADEMATA. “Diademata” is Latin, basically meaning “wearing a crown.” Almost 150 years later, this sturdy, rousing tune is still thouroughly connected to this text.  
• Humbly I adore thee (ADORO DEVOTE) One of the oldest hymns in our hymnal, it is part of a larger hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas. We may not get to sing it this Sunday, due to the length of the communion voluntary.
• Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL) One of the favorite hymns of the Episcopal Church, it combines the Welsh tune HYFRYDOL with a text by William Chatterton Dix, who also wrote the words for As with Gladness Men of Old and What Child Is This? The second stanza is often left out, but we will sing it today, as we remember the ascension of Christ.

Music for January 25, 2015 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• I Will Arise – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker (1916-1999/b. 1925)

Instrumental Music

• Choral – Joseph Jongen (1883-1953)
• Fanfare - Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881)
• Suite on the Chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott (In God, My Faithful God) – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

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

• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise (LYONS)
• Hymn 469 - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER)
• Hymn - I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM)
• Hymn 473 - Lift high the cross (CRUCIFER)

In response to the Gospel reading where Jesus calls his first disciples, the offertory anthem today is a great setting of the old hymn, "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus." The refrain comes from Joseph Hart's 1759 hymn, "Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched" but today it is combined with stanzas from the hymn "Come, thou fount of every blessing." The tune the choir sings was arranged by Alice Parker with Robert Shaw, and it comes from William Walker's Southern Harmony of 1834. Since I wrote about another anthem that these two collaborated on which came from the same hymnal, I suggest you head over to that post for more information.

N. Jacques Lemmens

The organ music today features works of two Belgian organists of the 19th and  20th centuries. Belgian organ music had been very closely aligned with French organ music during the 19th century, but it was Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens who turned from the overly sentimental and trite Parisian style of organ playing to that which was more idiomatic to the instrument. I'll be playing one of his best known works, his Fanfare, as the closing voluntary. It's a showy toccata, which was included in his École d'Orgue (1862), an organ method book which became the leading method book at the Conservatories in Paris and Brussels.

Joseph Jongen

The other Belgian is Joseph Jongen, who, at the tender age of seven, was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire and spent the next sixteen years there. He began composing at the age of 13, and immediately exhibited exceptional talent in that field. Jongen composed a great deal, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and songs, but today, the only part of his music performed with any regularity is his output for organ, much of it solo, but one work, with orchestra, shines above them all. His monumental Symphonie Concertante of 1926 is a tour de force, considered by many to be among the greatest works ever written for organ and orchestra.

The opening voluntary is a very popular work by Jongen from his Opus No. 37, Choral. Just like the chorals of his fellow countryman César Franck, Jongen's Choral is not based on a hymn tune like the German Chorales of Bach and Buxtehude, but is a free-composed work. In it, the organ begins softly, building throughout the three pages of music until it ends with full organ roaring away. If you listen closely, you'll hear the melody in the soprano line played in canon by the feet in the bass line.

And speaking of a chorale based work, the communion voluntary is a odd little work by the celebrated German Dietrich Buxtehude. A common musical form among baroque composers was the keyboard suite, a collection of pieces for harpsichord or clavichord using various dance forms as basis for each movement, with the separate movements often thematically and tonally linked. Buxtehude did a strange thing by using the German chorale Auf meinen lieben Gott (In God, My Faithful God) as the unifying element. It's strange in that these dance suites were typically secular in nature. After all, who would expect to hear a jig (gigue) in church?
The movements you will hear this Sunday as I play the piano will be

1. Prelude
2. Double
3. Sarabande
4. Courante
5. Gigue

HYMNS

• How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise (LYONS) This hymn is by Henry Ustick Onderdonk, Bishop of Pennsylvania from 1827 to 1844, when his fondness for alcohol necessitated his resignation. He turned his life around, and from then on was changed that he was restored to his bishopric two years before his death on December 6, 1858. We sing this text to the tune LYONS, named for the French city Lyons.
• There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER) I'm not so crazy about this tune that our hymnal sets the text to, but it is well known by our congregation and has a strong tune with clean rhythms that are easily sung. Most hymnals use this tune for Love divine, all loves excelling.
• I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM) I've always thought this was a Negro Spiritual, but it in fact comes from India! (Hence the tune name, Assam, named after a region in northeastern India.) There are a variety of different stories about the origin of this hymn, but all of them agree that it was written in India by someone facing persecution for his or her faith. One of the more dramatic and widespread stories comes from the book Why God, Why? by Dr. P. P. Job, in which a Christian missionary first sang this song to an Indian folk song, probably from the Garo tribe, as he and his family were being murdered for their faith.
• Lift high the cross (CRUCIFER) We sing this grand hymn of the Anglican tradition in honor of the Daughters of the King, as this weekend we mark the anniversary of the founding of our local chapter. This is their official hymn. 

Music for January 11, 2015 + The First Sunday after Pentecost

The Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ

Vocal Music

• The Blessed Son of God (from Hodie) - Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Christ, Our Lord, to the Jordan Came – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• Canzonetta – Dietrich Buxtehude 
• Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 400 - All creatures of our God and King (LASST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 132 - When Christ’s appearing was made known (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 339 - Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness (SCHMÜCKE DICH)
• Hymn 76 - On Jordan’s bank, the baptist’s cry (WINCHESTER NEW)
• Psalm 29 - Simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome J. Meachem

This week we remember Christ's own baptism. One of the questions I have always had about this is if John baptized for repentance for sins, what did Jesus have to repent?  Why did he get baptized? I think it was part of Christ's way of being one of us. 

It was with that in mind that I chose today's anthem, The Blessed Son of God, from Ralph Vaughan Williams's last large work, Hodie. This was the fifth movement of that Christmas cantata, and is much simpler in form and performance forces than the rest of the work. Vaughan Williams employed a poem by Miles Coverdale (1488-1569), the English translator of the Bible, who had translated this poem previously penned by Martin Luther, "Gelobet seist du." The poem has seven stanzas, of which Vaughan Williams used three, each ending with the traditional Latin "Kyrie eleison" ("Lord, have mercy"). 

Ralph Vaughan Williams,
around the time of the composition of "Hodie"

What developed was a quiet, slow, unaccompanied choral: The blessed son of God only In a crib full poor did lie; humble, gentle, unassuming and as plain as music can be, it is the most completely anonymous tune Vaughan Williams ever composed, without any harmonies or musical phrase to give his identity away. The harmony is of the simplest hymnal kind. When you first hear it it seems almost too ordinary, but after some time it reveals itself as the most precious jewel in the whole of this splendid cantata. Time stands still and one listens to it with the breath held. 

The theme of the poem is God's mercy brought by the Christ child, who would exchange his swaddling cloth with our own fleshly sins so we could fully receive that mercy. According to Coverdale, Jesus came to earth to make himself one of us, so that, "we might live eternally" Along with this living sacrifice, Christ's gifts of munificence and mercy are also extolled in the poem Miles Coverdale wrote.

The blessed son of God only
In a crib full poor did lie;
With our poor flesh and our poor blood
Was clothed that everlasting good.
Kyrieleison.

The Lord Christ Jesu, God's son dear,
Was a guest and a stranger here;
Us for to bring from misery,
That we might live eternally.
Kyrieleison.

All this did he for us freely,
For to declare his great mercy;
All Christendom be merry therefore,
And give him thanks for evermore.
Kyrieleison.

The organ music is a setting of an old Lutheran Chorale for Christ's Baptism by the Danish organist Dietrich Buxtehude, written in the typical Baroque style of ornamenting the simple choral melody so that it becomes almost unrecognizable. The right hand plays the melody on a collection of stops called a cornet, while the left hand (and feet) accompany on soft flute sounds. The closing voluntary is what we call a free work - written without any hymn or chorale in mind. Canzonetta means "a little song."

All creatures of our God and King (LASST UNS ERFREUEN) was chosen to highlight the Old Testament account of the creation. In the year 1225, completely blind and nearing death, St. Francis of Assisi arrived at the Convent of St. Damian to bid goodbye to his dear friend, Sister Clara, the first woman to follow the call of St. Francis and take vows of the Order. Clara built him a small reed hut in the garden of her little monastery. It’s said that at times St. Francis could be heard singing faint melodies from within the hut. It was at a meal with the sisters after having stayed for some time at the monastery that he wrote his famous text, “Canticle of the Sun,” later paraphrased into the beloved hymn we sing today. Ralph Vaughan Williams harmonized the tune.

When Christ’s appearing was made known (ERHALT UNS, HERR) This hymn for the season of Epiphany covers several topics; the Magi, Christ's baptism, the Wedding at Cana, ending with a doxological stanza praising the Trinity. The tune, from 16th century Germany, is one of the most used in our hymnody at Good Shepherd, as we sing it with at last four different texts.

Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness (SCHMÜCKE DICH) Our third (and final) German chorale this morning is the classic communion hymn. The first stanza of "Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele" by Johann Franck was published in Johann Crüger's Geistliche Kirchen-Melodien (1649). Crüger and C. Runge published the complete hymn in nine stanzas in their 1653 Gesangbuch. The hymn has since appeared in virtually all German hymnals and in 50% of English language ones since 1970. 

On Jordan’s bank, the baptist’s cry (WINCHESTER NEW) This is classified as an Advent hymn, but I am including it today as an opporunity for us to hear (and sing) again of John's ministry of baptism which Jesus today takes part.