Music for January 6, 2019 + The Feast of the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• The Provençal Carol – Donald Busarow (b. 1934)

Instrumental Music

• How Brightly Shines the Morning Star – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• What Star Is This – Jean-François Dandrieu (1682 - 1738)
• Fugue in C– Dietrich Buxtehude

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982)

• Hymn 127 - Earth has many a noble city (STUTTGART)
• Hymn 124 - What star is this, with beams so bright? (PUER NOBIS)
• Hymn 132 - When Christ's appearing was made known (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 128 - We three kings of Orient are (THREE KINGS OF ORIENT)
• Hymn 119 - As with gladness men of old (DIX)

Cecil Frances Alexander was an Irish poet and hymn-writer who wrote over 400 poems and hymns, with many of her most popular aimed at children. Her highly descriptive texts include such hymns as "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in Royal David's city," "There is a green hill far away," and "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult," to name but a few. Nine of her hymns can be found in our hymnal alone, yet the text to this Sunday's anthem is not one of them. "Saw you never, in the twilight" tells the story of the star of Bethlehem, and the journey of the wise men in following that star to find the infant Jesus, the "bright and morning star."

Cecil Frances Alexander
(No, she is not a man).

Saw you never, in the twilight,
when the sun had left the skies,
up in heav'n the clear stars shining
through the gloom, like silver eyes?
So of old the wise men, watching,
saw a little stranger star,
and they knew the King was given,
and they followed it from far.

Heard you never of the story
how they crossed the desert wild,
journeyed on by plain and mountain
till they found the holy child?
How they opened all their treasure,
kneeling to that infant King;
gave the gold and fragrant incense,
gave the myrrh in offering?

Know ye not that lowly baby
was the bright and morning Star?
He who came to light the Gentiles
and the darkened isles afar?
And we, too, may seek his cradle;
there our hearts' best treasures bring;
love and faith and true devotion
for our Savior, God, and King.

Jesus is often referred to as "the Morning Star." He even said, in Revelation 22:16, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." Therefore, I chose Dietrich Buxtehude's chorale fantasia on ‘Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern’, BuxWV223, (How bright appears the morning star, hymn 497 in The Hymnal 1982 ) as my prelude for the Sunday of Epiphany.

It begins with a section in which the first part of the melody is given in long notes first to the pedals and then to the uppermost voice. The melody’s subsequent notes are the subject of the deceptively free-sounding passage which immediately follows. Then begins a section based on the descending scale with which the melody concludes. The second verse  is a wonderfully exuberant jig fugue in AAB form (the form of the melody) whose initial subject is based on the melody’s first few notes (note how in the B section the momentum created by Buxtehude’s rhythms effortlessly sweeps up the repetitive phrases with which the melody’s last section begins).

The communion voluntary is another setting of an Epiphany hymn, this time from Eighteenth Century France. Jean-François Dandrieu was born in Paris into a family of artists and musicians. A gifted and precocious child, he gave his first public performances when he was 5 years old, playing the harpsichord for King Louis XIV of France, and his court. These concerts marked the beginning of Dandrieu's very successful career as harpsichordist and organist. In 1700, at age 18, he started playing the organ at the Saint-Merri church in Paris (a post previously occupied by Nicolas Lebègue) and became its titular organist in 1705. In 1721 he was appointed one of the four organists of the Chapelle royale of France. In 1733, he succeeded his uncle, the organist and priest Pierre Dandrieu to become the organist of the church of St Barthélémy in the Île de la Cité. When he died in 1739, he was succeeded at the organ of St Barthélemy by his sister, Jeanne-Françoise.

The organ piece this morning comes from a volume of organ noëls, which was a revised and enlarged version of a similar book published by his uncle, Pierre Dandrieu in 1714 and published posthumously by his sister, Jeanne-Françoise, in 1759.

Music for December 21, 2014 + The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• Maria Walks amid the Thorn - David Cherwein (b. 1957)
• The Provençal Carol - Donald Busarow (1934-2011)

Instrumental Music

• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel – arr. Larry Dalton (1946-2009)
• Ave Maria von Arcadelt – Franz Liszt
• Magnificat primi toni (BuxWV 203) – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 56 – O come, O come, Emanuel (VENI, VENI, EMMANUEL)
• Hymn 54 – Savior of the nations, come (NUN KOMM, DER HEIDEN HEILAND)
• Hymn 66 – Come, thou long expected Jesus (STUTTGART) 
• Canticle S-242: The Song of Mary (Magnificat) – Tonus Peregrinus

Two ancient Christmas melodies from two different countries provide the tunes for today's anthems. At the offertory you will hear the Minnesota composer David Cherwein's setting of the German Folk Song, Maria durch ein'n Dornwald ging, a sixteenth-century hymn traditionally sung in anticipation of Christmas during the Advent season. Although the melody is considered to be much older, its first appearances of lyrics and music together is the Gesangbuch of Andernach (1608) which claims that it was universally known and liked at that time.

Translated into English in the 1950s by Henry S. Drinker, the lyrics and hymn tune were introduced to Americans by Maria Augusta Trapp, (of Sound of Music fame) in her book, Around the Year with the Trapp Family (New York: Pantheon, 1955), who identifies this as a traditional Advent hymn.  

The lyrics combine the Greek text of the “Kyrie eleison” from the Ordinary of the Mass with a vernacular text (originally German, translated into English) that both tells of Mary’s pregnancy and her role as mother of Jesus,with the association of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the “spotless Rose”—a traditional image in German Christian hymnody.

The Annunciation. Fra Angelico c.1450. Fresco, 230 x 297. Museo di San Marco, Corridor, Florence, Italy

The other anthem is a setting of a Christmas Carol from the Provence region of France, arranged by the Lutheran composer, organist, and educator Donald Busarow. The tune first appeared in a collection of Provençal Noels in 1856, but Dr. Busarow wrote these lyrics suitable for the Gospel account of he Annunciation, in 1995. 

As this is the last Sunday of Advent, I like to include the well-known chant, Veni, Emmanuel. We'll sing it as a processional hymn, but I will also play a piano arrangement as the opening voluntary by a man known as Larry Dalton. He's unique among the composers I usually  play in that he is not Anglican, Lutheran or any other liturgical-based composer, but Pentecostal! In fact, he was once the music director for Oral Robert's Television program. The fact that this charismatic musician arranged and played this ancient chant is testimony to the popularity of this hymn, which appears in over fifty modern hymnals.

The communion voluntary is a piece by another talented pianist, Franz Liszt, though not for piano, but for the organ. Many people know that Liszt was known to be quite the ladies' man in his youth, with dashing good looks and a mesmeric personality and stage presence. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. He had several affairs with married women. But in later years, he retreated from public life and joined the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome. He was ordained to the four minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte, and was often called Abbé Liszt.  He wrote several organ works for liturgical use during this time, often based on famous choral works of the day. This work is based on an Ave Maria by Jacob Arcadelt (c. 1507 – 1568) , a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance.

Hymns: 
Hymn 56: O come, O come, Emanuel  - The text for "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" comes from a 7 verse poem that dates back to the 8th century. It was used during the Advent evening, service. The original text created the reverse acrostic "ero cras," which means "I shall be with you tomorrow," and is particularly appropriate for the advent season. The tune, VENI EMMANUEL was originally music for a Requiem Mass in fifteenth-century France. In 1854, an Anglican priest, Thomas Helmore adapted this chant tune and published it in The Hymnal Noted.

Hymn 54: Savior of the nations, come - One of the oldest hymn texts in our hymnal, St. Ambrose wrote this hymn ("Veni, Redemptor gentium") in the fourth century. The text appears in a number of eighth- and ninth-century manuscripts. Martin Luther translated this text into German ("Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland") in 1523. Various English translations have come down through the years. Like VENI EMMANUEL, this tune is derived from a chant which was found in  a twelfth- or thirteenth-century Einsiedeln manuscript. The adaptation of the tune was published in 1524 in an early Lutheran Hymnal. Johann S. Bach used the tune for preludes in the Clavierübung and Orgelbüchlein and in his cantatas 36 and 62.

Hymn 66: Come, thou long expected Jesus - Charles Wesley wrote this Advent hymn and printed it in his Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord (1744). Like so many of Wesley's texts, "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" alludes to one or more Scripture passages in virtually every phrase. The double nature of Advent is reflected in this text, in which we remember Christ's first coming even while praying for his return. Our hymnal uses the tune STUTTGART, which is from Psalmodia Sacra (1715), one of the most significant hymnals of the early eighteenth century, which paired the tune STUTTGART to the text "Sollt' es gleich."
The tune title STUTTGART relates to a story about Rev. C. A. Dann's banishment from his pulpit at St. Leonard's Church in Stuttgart in the early nineteenth century. When Dann was eventually invited back to his church, his congregation greeted him with the singing of "Sollt' es gleich." ("It seems right" or something like that.)

Canticle S-242: The Song of Mary (Magnificat) – Tonus Peregrinus. Instead of the Psalm today, we are going with the other option of Mary's song of praise upon hearing the news that she would bear the savior of the world. Like the psalms in Advent, we will chant to text to a Psalm tone, this time the Tonus Peregrinus (or "wandering tone"), a so-called "deviant" Psalm-tone since it uses two different reciting tones (an A for the first part of the psalm verse and a G for the second half), unlike the first eight Psalm tones which use the same note for both halves of the psalm verse.