Music for March 21, 2021 + The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

Create in Me a Clean Heart – Carl F. Mueller (1892-1982)
Hymn: As Moses Raised the Serpent Up (GIFT OF LOVE)

Instrumental Music

Praise to the Lord – Anna Laura Page (b. 1943)
Called Home to Heaven – Fred Gramman (b. 1950)
This Is the Day– Susan Morris (b. 1951)
Grand Jeu – Pierre DuMage (1674-1751)

The Bells are ringing! For the first time since this pandemic began, the Good Shepherd Handbell Guild will be ringing in our morning worship services. We have actually been rehearsing since September, but the fall was spent focusing on music for Christmas, as we played at the live Nativity services. But now we get a chance to play in worship.

Because we are playing three numbers (the most we've ever played in one service) and because we are live-streaming our services, we are moving from the security and anonymity of the loft right down front of the congregation. This will offer you the rare opportunity to watch the entire choir in action. I believe that bell choir music is as interesting visually as it is aurally, so this should prove to be fascinating for the members of the congregation.

Anna Laura Page

The first piece is an arrangement of the hymn Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, by Anna Laura Page A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Kentucky. A widely published composer of choral and handbell music, she has been active in the promotion, composition, and publication of music for handbells, serving as the Handbell editor for Alfred Publishing for 11 years, and was also on the Music Committee for the 1991 Southern Baptist Hymnal. She currently resides in Sherman, Texas.

In this piece, listen for several idiomatic handbells techniques, including the martellato (where the bell is sounded by hitting the padded table), mart lift (similar to the martellato, but the bell is immediately lifted off the table to allow it to vibrate), staccato (the bell is rung normally, but with a thumb or finger on the bell to shorten the sound), and echo, where the bell is rung normally then touched lightly on the table to affect the sound (listen for a "wow-wow" effect).

Fred Gramman

At the offering we are playing a meditation on the hymn-tune HOLY MANNA, which is often used for the text "Brethren, we are met to worship." It was written by Fred Gramman, the organist at the American Church in Paris. He is a native of Washington state where he began organ studies with Dr. Edward Hansen of Seattle. He earned organ performance degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Michigan, moving to Paris in 1972 for organ study with Marie-Claire Alain and Maurice Duruflé. Since 1976, he has been Director of Music at the American Church in Paris where, in addition to his organist duties, he also conducts the Adult Choir, the ACP Bronze Ringers, and the Celebration Ringers

He wrote the piece for the community ensemble Music Made in Heaven, a handbell choir made up of parents who have lost children to death. The group was formed in 2004 as a continuing expression of the parent's love for God and their joy in the gift of their children. 

Gramman named the piece Called Home to Heaven, utilizing the last verse of the hymn Brethren We Have Met to Worship. The line, "Then He'll call us home to heaven" resonates with those who have lost children and other loved ones. 

HOLY MANNA is masterfully woven through this arrangement creating an enchanting setting of the traditional tune. The second verse is beautifully created, juxtaposing bells and chimes in a fugue-like style. It is followed by a majestic verse and prayerful conclusion.

Listen for the use of mallets , the Echo technique , and the Swing. (You'll see it at the very beginning.)

Susan Morris

The communion bell piece is an interpretation of Psalm 118:24, "This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it." This gentle and inspirational work was written by Susan Morris for the Handbell Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Music is an avocation for Morris. Even though she began taking piano lessons at the age of ten and soon after began composing her own music, her career was in science. She received a BS in Biology from Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and then continued her studies at the University of Virginia, receiving a graduate degree in Medical Technology.  She now resides in Lynchburg, VA.

Music for February 26, 2017 + The Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Transfiguration of Christ

Vocal Music

• The Lord is My Light and Salvation – Fred Gramman (contemporary)
• The Lord Bless You and Keep You – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude and Fugatoon “St. Elizabeth” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)
• Christ Upon the Mountain Peak – Joyce Moon Stroble (contemporary)
• Shine, Jesus, Shine – David Blackwell, arr. (b. 1961)

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

• Hymn 427 - When morning gilds the skies (LAUDES DOMINI)
• Hymn 383 - Fairest Lord Jesus (St. ELIZABETH)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn 328 - Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord (SONG 46)
• Hymn R247 - Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE JESUS SHINE)
• Psalm 99 - Dominus regnavit (Tone V)

This Sunday we focus on the story of Jesus' Transfiguration - that time when Jesus, Peter, James and John went to the Mount of Transfiguration to pray, and Jesus began to shine with bright rays of light. The prophets Moses and Elijah appeared next to him and he spoke with them. The actual feast day is August 6, but the Revised Common Lectionary chooses to end the season after Epiphany with the telling of the Transfiguration story.

If we look at the collect for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in our prayer book, we can see reasons why the Transfiguration of Our Lord is celebrated when it is:

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Episcopal Church, 1979, page 217.)

We celebrate the revelation of Christ's glory "before the passion" so that we may "be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness." The focus of the Lenten season is renewed discipline in walking in the way of the cross and rediscovery of the baptismal renunciation of evil and sin and our daily adherence to Christ. At Easter, which reveals the fullness of Christ’s glory (foreshadowed in the Transfiguration), Christians give themselves anew to the gospel at the Easter Vigil where they share the dying and rising of Christ.

In the biblical context, the synoptic gospels narrate the Transfiguration as a bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.

The key words in the story of the transfiguration and, indeed, the entire season of Epiphany are light and glory. Much of the music today references those themes.

One of the few hymns specifically for Transfiguration is Christ, upon the mountain peak, written by contemporary English poet Brian Wren in 1962. Peter Cutts wrote the tune SHILLINGFORD specifically for that text, and both text and tune are in our hymnal (hymn 130). But it is not really the kind of tune that easily catches on, as most hymnals which have included this text use another tune. (In fact, even our hymnal includes another tune as an alternate.) It looks innocent enough on paper, but upon hearing it you become aware of a tonal ambiguity that frankly freaks out the average congregation singer.

But the recent publication, Bayoubuchlein*, published for the 2016 American Guild of Organist convention here in Houston, includes a setting of this hymn which I think works well during communion. 

Joyce Moon Strobel's arrangement begins with an undulating eighth note accompaniment in the right hand, with the melody coming in quietly in the left hand. Taking a cue from the adventuresome tonality of the melody, Strobel also ventures into new keys for each of the three times she presents the tune. A graduate of the Conservatory at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joyce Strobel has served as Organist/Choir Director at St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Scott Township, in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 1986.

* Bayoubüchlein: New Choral Preludes for AGO Houston 2016

This distinctive new collection of organ music for the liturgical year was commissioned for the 2016 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Houston. The title refers to J. S. Bach’s volume of chorale-based organ works and Houston’s Gulf Coast waterways. Realizing that newer hymn tunes often lacked chorale preludes, the convention’s new music committee decided that each piece in this collection would be based on a hymn tune composed since 1960. The works chosen are a combination of pieces commissioned by the convention and pieces selected from an open “call for scores.”