Music for May 19, 2019 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Senior Sunday

Vocal Music

• I Give You a New Commandment – Peter Aston (b. 1938-2013)

Instrumental Music

• Air – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Ubi Caritas – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• When in Our Music God Is Glorified – Robert A. Hobby (b. 1962)

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

• Hymn 492 - Come, ye faithful, sing with gladness (FINNIAN)
• Hymn 529 - In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn 295 - Sing praise to our creator (CHRISTUS, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn 297 - Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 576 - God is love, and where true love is (MANDATUM)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 296 - We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (ENGLEBERG)
• Psalm 148 - Simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome W. Meachen

In the Gospel this Sunday, we will hear the first of a collection of passages known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is preparing the disciples for a life without his physical presence. More than offering comfort, Jesus is trying to reorient them toward their mission. He tells them

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." - John 13:34,35

Peter Aston

The anthem this morning is a simple setting of that very text, by the English composer Peter Aston
Aston's published compositions include chamber music, choral and orchestral works and a children’s opera, but he is best known as a composer of church music, much of which is performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world. As a conductor and lecturer, he directed many courses and workshops for composers in the UK and overseas, especially in the USA.  He was also a musicologist and baroque-music scholar.

Gerre Hancock

 The world lost an exceptional musician and gentleman with the death of Gerre Hancock in 2012 who, from 1971 to 2004, was master of the choristers at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City and, more recently, professor of organ and sacred music at the University of Texas-Austin. He was renowned for his improvisatory skills at the organ, his work with the St. Thomas Boy Choir, and his compositions. The Air that is this morning's opening voluntary is one of his first published organ works, written in 1960 and dedicated to his future wife, Judith Eckerman.

Robert Hobby

The closing voluntary is an organ work based on the same tune as the closing hymn. "When in Our Music God Is Glorified," by American organist Robert Hobby,  is bright, rollicking setting of the tune we sing quite frequently. The melody will be heard in the bass clef, played by the left hand, while the right hand plays an infectious rhythm and the pedals punctuate the accompaniment with octave leaps on the weak beats.

Music for October 4, 2015 + The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• For the Beauty of the Earth – John Rutter (b. 1945)
• O Kind Jesus - Robert Hunter, arr. (1929-2001)

Instrumental Music

• Air - Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Jesus Loves Me- Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Now Thank We All Our God - Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

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

• Hymn 376 - Joyful, joyful, we adore thee (HYMN TO JOY)
• Hymn 480 - When Jesus left his Father’s throne (KINGSFOLD)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus, stanzas 1-3 (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn - Jesus loves me, this I know (JESUS LOVES ME)
• Hymn 397 - Now thank we all our God (NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT)

Of the two choral offerings this Sunday, John Rutter's For the Beauty of the Earth is by far the best known. It's joyous text and infectious melody have made it a favorite among choirs throughout the world since it was first published in 1980, after he wrote it for The Texas Choral Director's Association. It incorporates several of Rutter's distinctive musical trademarks: an interesting, singable melody, several changes in key, and syncopated rhythms used in conjunction with smooth, straight legato lines. The accompaniment, which I will be playing on the piano, stands alone, supporting but not doubling what the choral parts do.


The other anthem, based on a simple Latvian folk tune, is arranged by Ralph Hunter. A choral conductor, educator, and arranger, Hunter was born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1921. He began his musical career as a church organist at Newark, New Jersey’s First Reformed Church. He served in the Army during World War II and then attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1955, he became the conductor of New York’s Collegiate Chorale, the second conductor after founder Robert Shaw, and held that position until 1959. In the late 1950s, he was an arranger for Harry Belafonte, conducted the Radio City Music Hall Chorus, and formed his own group, the Ralph Hunter Choir, with whom he recorded five albums. In the 1960’s, he conducted a variety of groups, including a campaign chorus for Richard Nixon, called Voices for Nixon, as well as a chorus that performed on NBC television under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. From 1969-1987, he was a music professor at New York’s Hunter College, where he taught choral literature, conducting, and arranging. He conducted and arranged a wide variety of choral music, including the temperance songs we sing today. He is known for his arrangements and conducting of classical choral works by such early music composers as Thomas Tallis and Nicholas Porpora.

Sunday's Gospel lessons is about Jesus and divorce and and Jesus and the children. I've decided to focus on Jesus and the children. That's why we are singing these two anthems and today's hymns, especially Jesus Loves Me. Preceding the singing of Jesus Loves Me (in a rocking 6/8 setting by Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer as found in Lift Every Voice and Sing II, An African American Hymnal for the Episcopal Church), I will play an very improvisatory piano piece by Charles Callahan which quotes snippets of the tune while never playing the melody outright. \

Just this past week I watched an episode of "Call the Midwife" on Netflix (watch it, if you haven't yet!) where one of the characters dies tragically. His girlfriend laments that she cannot see God in this tragedy, and the head nun responds that God is not in the tragedy, God is in the response. That could be said about Martin Rinkart, the writer of our closing hymn.

Rinkart was a minister in the city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years War. Apart from battles, lives were lost in great number during this time due to illnesses and disease spreading quickly throughout impoverished cities. In the Epidemic of 1637, Rinkart officiated at over four thousand funerals, sometimes fifty per day. In the midst of these horrors, it’s difficult to imagine maintaining faith and praising God, and yet, that’s exactly what Rinkart did. Sometime in the next twenty years, he wrote the hymn, Now Thank We All Our God, originally meant to be a prayer said before meals. Rinkart could recognize that our God is faithful, and even when the world looks bleak, He is “bounteous” and is full of blessings, if only we look for them. Blessings as seemingly small as a dinner meal, or as large as the end of a brutal war and unnecessary bloodshed are all reasons to lift up our thanks to God, with our hearts, our hands, and our voices.

The closing voluntary is Sigfrid Karg-Elert's setting of that tune, but the melody is hidden even more than in the piano piece of Callahan's on Jesus Loves Me. I've put up a diagram showing how fragment of the opening line is used as a basis for the main theme of this organ masterpiece.

Music for September 27, 2015 + St. Michael and All Angels

Vocal Music

• Mass in the Lydian Mode - Richard Webster (b. 1952)
• Abide With Me - Richard Webster

Instrumental Music

• Improvisation on "St. Clement" - Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Improvisation on “Picardy” –Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Hymn-Prelude on “Darwall’s 148th” - Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 618 - Ye watchers and ye holy ones (LASST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 282 - Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels (CAELITES PLAUDANT)
• Hymn 535 - Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 625 - Ye holy angels bright (DARWALL’S 148TH)

ON Sunday Afternoon, at 5 PM, Good Shepherd will celebrate the Feast of St. Michael with a choral eucharist. 

The Feast of Michael and All Angels, or Michaelmas, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”.

There are traditionally four “quarter days” in a year (Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas (25th December)). They are spaced three months apart, on religious festivals, usually close to the solstices or equinoxes. They were the four dates on which new servants were hired or land was exchanged and debts were paid. This is how it came to be for Michaelmas to be the time for the beginning of university terms. We use this service to mark the beginning of service for a new class of acolytes at Good Shepherd and the rededication of 81 members of our Acolyte Guild.

St Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels. As Michaelmas is the time that the darker nights and colder days begin - the edge into winter - the celebration of Michaelmas is associated with encouraging protection during these dark months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defences during the later months of the year.

The music for this year's service is written by Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston. His hymn arrangements for brass, percussion, organ and congregation are heard across the English-speaking world.

A native of Nashville, Mr. Webster studied organ with Peter Fyfe, Karel Paukert and Wolfgang Rübsam. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Great Britain, as Organ Scholar at Chichester Cathedral under the late John Birch.

Richard loves running, and has completed 26 marathons, including eleven Boston Marathons.

Music for September 21, 2014 + The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Behold Now, Praise the Lord – Everett Titcomb (1884-1968)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Slane” – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Kanon/Seek Ye First – Johann Pachelbel/Karen Lafferty (1653-1706/b. 1948)
• Toccata for Organ – John Weaver (b. 1937)

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

• Hymn 414 – God, my King, thy might confessing (STUTTGART)
• Psalm 145:1-8 – Tone Ig
• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 711 – Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn 482 – Lord of all hopefulness (SLANE)
• Hymn 551 – Rise up, ye saints of God! (FESTAL SONG)

The anthem this morning is by another giant of Anglican music of the 20^th century, Everett Titcomb. A life-long New Englander, he never strayed far from the Boston, Massachusetts area. He was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and studied with Samuel Whitney, the organist at Boston’s Church of the Advent. He never attended college, nor music school, but nevertheless, he taught classes in sacred music and chant at New England Conservatory and Boston University where he briefly held the chair in the 50's. 

His interest in Gregorian chant and High Church liturgies met a happy match when he was appointed organist-choir master at Boston’s Church of St. John the Evangelist in 1910. The church was a mission of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, also known as the "Cowley Fathers" and "Anglican Jesuits", an Anglican monastic order which established a house in Boston in 1870. As an outgrowth of the Oxford movement, the Cowleys were Anglo-Catholics ("High Church") and deeply devoted to social justice setting up their house on the base of Beacon Hill to serve the tenements of the West End. He was one of the earliest proponents of early music (before 1650), and, as a result, his Choir at St. John's was singing plainchant and Renaissance polyphony while the majority of church choirs (and even Cathedral choirs in this country) were still mired in the kind of  late-Victorian preciousness which Titcomb so disdained in choral music. Today, however, Titcomb tends to be known for a handful of works which are popular with volunteer church choirs. One of those is today’s anthem, which has a strong Houston connection.

In 1939, for the centennial of Christ Church, Houston, Titcomb wrote the anthem Behold now, praise the Lord, which he dedicated to Edward B. Gammons, the organist-choirmaster of Christ Church at the time. The text, taken from the first two verses of Psalm 134, was chosen by the rector, Dr. James DeWolfe. This well-known anthem is still frequently performed at the Cathedral.

Behold now, praise the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord.Ye that by night stand in the house of the Lord,even in the courts of the house of our God.Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and praise the Lord.

Text: Psalm 134:1-2

The Opening voluntary is an improvisation of the familiar hymn-tune, Slane (Be thou my vision), by the organist Gerre Hancock. Hancock was a master of improvisation, and he treats the tune here in a meandering way, relying more on a suggestion of the Irish tune than actually quoting the tune itself. I think it is perfect for an opening voluntary, as it gives the impression of one of the hymns that will be coming up later in the service.

John Weaver in 2005

John Weaver in 1959, age 22

 The closing voluntary is a toccata by the New York organist John Weaver, another giant among the organ world. For 35 years he was organist and director of music at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, while simultaneously serving on as Head of the Organ Department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (1972-2003), and Chair of the Organ Department at The Juilliard School (1987-2004). His students perform and teach all over the world. Ken Cowan, organist at Rice University (and Palmer Memorial Episcopal) is a former student of his.
This Toccata was written by him in 1954, when he was 17. 

Music for September 7, 2014 + The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Draw Us In the Spirit’s Tether – Harold Friedell (1905-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Air – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)
• Ubi Caritas – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Trumpet Dialogue Processional – Alice Jordan (1916-2011)

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

• Hymn 400 – All creatures of our God and King (LASST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 674 – “Forgive our sins as we forgive” (DETROIT)
• Hymn 576 – God is love, and where true love is (MANDATUM)
• Hymn 602 – Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 527 – Singing songs of expectation (TON-Y-BOTEL)

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

These two sentences are the last two verses of today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 13. And every time I hear this passage, I recall the opening verse of today’s anthem.

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether, for when humbly in thy name, two or three are met together, thou art in the midst of them. Alleluia! Alleluia! Touch we now thy garment’s hem

Harold W. Friedell

This anthem was written by Harold Friedell, one of America’s leading church musicians in the first half of the 20^th century who ended his career at St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in New York City. He based the anthem on a hymn tune he wrote in 1945 using a text by Percy Dearmer, a British priest, hymn writer, educator, and editor. I won’t go into the history of that text right now, but the interested can read about it here.

The text links the singer with the disciples who gathered with Christ at the table (Matthew 18:20). We are joined by a “tether”—an archaic word that the internet defines as a cord, rope, or chain that anchors something movable to a reference point which may be fixed or moving. It is an appropriate image of the work of the Holy Spirit that links Christians of every time and place at the table. Michael Hawn, professor of sacred music at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, sums up the whole text this way:

In the final stanza, Dearmer makes a beautiful and powerful statement that “All our meals and all our living make as sacraments of thee.” Through “caring, helping, giving, we may true disciples be.”

Thus, the hymn begins in the upper room with the disciples and comes full circle as we join them around the table and are nourished to serve others in the world.

This call to love and serve others is also felt in the Epistle reading today.

 ⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments…  are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

With that in mind, we will sing hymns of love and service before the Gospel, at communion and at the end of the service. The organ voluntary at communion is another setting of the Gregorian Chant that was played on the piano two weeks ago and is found at hymn 606. This setting of the chant is by American organist and composer, Charles Callahan. He is among the most published organ composers today, and, though he is a devout Roman Catholic, he bases his organ works on hymns and chants from all traditions within the church universal.

Gerre Hancock

The opening voluntary is by Gerre Hancock, who many would consider the leading musician in the Episcopal Church from the 70's until his retirement from St. Thomas Church, New York City, in 2004. At one time, he had been the assistant at St. Bartholomew's mentioned earlier in the post, but after the time of Harold Friedell. A native of Lubbock, he returned to Texas after his retirement to teach organ at the University of Texas. He wrote this lovely Air in honor of his wife, Judith, in 1963. 

The closing voluntary is a brief processional by one of the small number of women who have been successful writing for the organ and getting it published. Alice Jordan was a native of Iowa, having graduated Drake University and continuing her studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, as did Gerre Hancock. This is the same school where Harold Friedell was on the faculty in the late 40s and early 50s. UTS had one of the great schools of sacred music until it disbanded it in the early 70s.