Music for February 7, 2021 + The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies - Rachel Aarons (b. 1984) 
• One Thing I Ask of the Lord – Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)
• Hymn – O Christ, the Healer, We Have Come (ERHALT UNS, HERR)

Instrumental Music

• Six Short Preludes and Intermezzos for Organ – Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984) 

VI. Poco Vivace
V. Andantino
IV. Allegretto
III. Allegro moderato
II. Andante Sostenuto
I. Maestoso

• Prelude in C, BWV 533 – attr. To J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

February is Black History Month, so I want to highlight the black composers who contribute so much to our worship life, not just in February, but all year long.

Take, for instance, the Sanctus and Fraction anthem which we have been singing since Christmas. As familiar as this music is to most of us, you may not know that it is written by an Black American Episcopal Musician. David Hurd is widely recognized as one of the foremost church musicians and concert organists in the United States, with a long list of awards, prizes, honors, and achievements, and immeasurable expertise in organ performance, improvisation, and composition.

From 1976 until 2015, David Hurd was a faculty member at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City, first as Director of Chapel Music and later also as Professor of Church Music and Organist. He is the composer of dozens of hymns, choral works, settings of the liturgy, and organ works published by a number of major houses. He was one of the major contributors of new hymnody and liturgical settings for the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1982 and his music is seen in hymnals and choir libraries in churches of all religious denominations. In 2010 he became the fifteenth recipient of The American Guild of Organists’ Distinguished Composer award. From 1998-2013 he was Music Director and Organist at Church of the Holy Apostles (Episcopal) in New York City. Dr. Hurd is now Organist/Choirmaster of the famed Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Times Square.

As a concert organist David Hurd enjoys instant recognition both at home and abroad. Since winning both first prizes (in performance and improvisation) of the 1977 International Congress of Organists, he has performed throughout North America and Europe, has been a featured artist at numerous national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. 

He studied both at the Preparatory Division of the Juilliard School and at Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art. Later he attended Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating with a music degree in 1971, and went on for further study at the University of North Carolina and, back in New York, at the Manhattan School of Music. His organ teachers have included Bronson Ragan, Garth Peacock, Arthur Poister, and Rudolph Kremer.

The offertory anthem this Sunday is a setting of the hymn, Christ, whose glory fills the skies, written by the Wyoming native, Rachel Aarons. While in college, she studied piano, voice, and composition while pursuing a B.A. in French Language and Literature. Rachel composes for her church choir where she is happy to be a Back Row Alto. She lives in Virginia with her husband, and her two dogs, and stays busy as a real estate agent. 

She has written a new melody for the familiar lyrics - well, two melodies, actually. The first stanza is in a lilting, 6/8 meter, with a sparkling accompaniment. Stanza two is more subdued, in common 4/4 time (befitting the words, "dark and cheerless is the morn, unaccompanied by Thee." Stanza three sees the return of the first melody, this time in canon, with the tenor echoing the soprano. 

During communion we hear a setting of Psalm 27:4-5 from the Kleine geistliche Konzerte (1636) of the early baroque composer Heinrich Schutz. Eins bitte ich vom Herren (One thing I ask of the Lord) is for two equal voices, characterized by elegant vocal writing and wonderful harmonic movement which Schutz is known for.

Schütz was a German Lutheran composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before J.S. Bach, and, along with Monteverdi, often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century.

The opening voluntary is a collection of short pieces by German composer and a Catholic church musician Hermann Schroeder. His music is characterized by quintal and quartal harmonies and 20th-century polyphonic linear, sometimes atonal writing similar to that of Paul Hindemith. This collect was not meant to be played as a suite, but as individual pieces, which is why I am NOT playing them in the order in which they are written. I'm starting at the BACK of the book, working my way toward the front!

Music for June 21, 2020 + The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• God Help the Outcasts from The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Alan Menken (b. 1949), Camryn Creech, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Faith of Our Fathers/Precious Lord, Take My Hand/ God Will Take Care of You/We Shall Overcome – Bernice Satterwhite, pianist
• Poco Vivace – Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984)

Congregational Music (The hymn is from Lift Every Voice and Sing. The Gloria is from the Hymnal 1982, and the Sanctus is from Wonder Love and Praise.)

• Hymn - Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine (BLESSED ASSURANCE)
• Song of Praise - Glory to You (Canticle 13) – John Rutter (b. 1945)
• Sanctus 858 - Holy, holy, holy (LAND OF REST)

Bernice Satterwhite, who regularly plays piano at our 8 AM service (in the good old days!), plays a medley of hymns and spiritual songs appropriate to the events and people we remember this weekend. 

Sunday is, of course, Father's Day, so she opens with the hymn Faith of our Fathers.  Precious Lord, Take My Hand and God Will Take Care of You remind us that, during these troubling, trying times, we have a God who will take our hand and take care of us through all of this. And Friday, June 19th, is Juneteenth, the day celebrated annually throughout the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free. We Shall Overcome reminds us that we have a way to go before all are truly free.

This week we have another example of the works of musical theatre composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, whose works, including his first big hit, Godspell, contain more than a hint of the Gospel (which is pretty good for a Jewish man from New York City).

Sunday we'll hear Camryn Creech sing the song God Help the Outcasts from the Disney animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I remember the first time I heard this song, thinking that it would make a great church piece.

God help the outcasts, hungry from birth
Show them the mercy they don't find on Earth
The lost and forgotten, they look to you still
God help the outcasts, or nobody will
I ask for nothing, I can get by
But I know so many less lucky than I
God help the outcasts, the poor and downtrod
I thought we all were the children of God (1)

There are still so many that are considered outcasts in our country, state, and community. Some are outcast because of homelessness, mental health, race, or sexuality. I pray that we can be moved by God to help the outcast, too.

(1) God Help the Outcasts lyrics © Walt Disney Music Co. Ltd., Walt Disney Music Company, Trunksong Music Ltd., Menken Music, Heelstone Parc Prod., Wonderland Music Co. Inc., Wonderland Music Company Inc., Wonderland Music Company Inc, Wonderland Music Co., Inc., Walt Disney Music Co Ltd

Music for January 20, 2019 + The Second Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Instrumental Music

• Schönster Herr Jesu – Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984)
• Andante Sostenuto – Hermann Schroeder
• Poco Vivace – Hermann Schroeder

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

• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (LIEBSTER JESU)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn R90 - Spirit of the living God (SPIRIT OF THE LIVING GOD)
• Hymn R136 - Alleluia (ALLELUIA)
• Hymn 371- Thou, whose almighty word (MOSCOW)
• Psalm 36:5-10 - simplified Anglican Chant by Jerome W. Meachen

These days when you go to a church wedding, you are apt to hear at least one (if not all) of these three pieces:

1. Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel
2. Trumpet Voluntary (or Prince of Denmark's March) by Jeremiah Clarke
3. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by J. S. Bach

A forensic deconstruction of J. S. Bach. Working with a cast
of the composer's skull on loan from the Bach Museum
in Eisenach, Scottish anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson
created a 3-D representation of the face of the man who died in
1750 at the age of 65.

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus goes to a wedding, so I thought it only fitting that he should hear at least one of these!
Jesu, Joy... was the obvious choice for the choir. It is taken from Bach's cantata No. 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (which translates as ‘heart and mouth and deed and life’). It was written in 1723, the first year that Bach was the Cantor at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Bach took up the position of Thomaskantor, the directorship of church music in Leipzig, after a thoroughly depressing and insulting application process. The head of the search committee, the councilman Abraham Christoph Plaz wrote, “since we cannot get the best," (Telemann and Graupner had declined the offer) "we will have to settle for average.”

Today no one knows who Graupner was, and Telemann is a little more than a relic of early music, but everyone knows Bach, and this movement from one of roughly 100 such works written in his first two years in Leipzig is one of his greatest hits. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", shortened to simply "Joy", became a pop hit record in 1972 when covered by English studio group Apollo 100. It reached number six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 during the winter of that year.

Today's organ music all comes from the pen of Hermann Schroeder. Schroeder is one of the most important German composers of the  20th century for organ. His music combines elements of the Middle Ages (fauxbourdon, ostinato technique, Gregorian modes), 20th-century polyphony and the linear, atonal writing of Hindemith. His chamber music for organ and other instruments constituted a special field of his musical activity.

While renowned in Germany, Schroeder is relatively unknown in the United States. His most widely regarded pieces are Kleine Praeludien und Intermezzi Op. 9 (1932) (Six Short Preludes and Intermezzos) and the chorale prelude Schönster Herr Jesu (1933) (Fairest Lord Jesus), both rather early works in his oeuvre.

I am playing two selections from his Op. 9 for communion and the closing voluntary, and his prelude on Schoenster Herr Jesu for the opening voluntary. I've listed the page number for this hymn in the service leaflet, in case you want to compare the melody you hear played on the oboe in the pedal part with the hymn in the hymnal. (Note: The text "Fairest Lord Jesus" has two tunes. The first one, ST. ELIZABETH, is the one we typically sing when we sing this text. The other, SCHONSTER HERR JESU, is the German tune originally used for this text in 1662. It is still quite popular in Germany. The Episcopal Hymnal 1940 was the first to use this tune with this text in America in modern times.

Music for August 13, 2017 + The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• It Is Enough from Elijah – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
• Richard Murray, baritone

Instrumental Music

• Kommst du nun, Jesu vom Himmel herunter auf Erden, BWV 650 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Sonatina from Cantata 106, God’s Time Is Best – Johann Sebastian Bach
• Maestoso, Opus 9, No. 1 – Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984)

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

• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)
• Hymn 529 - In Christ there is no East or West (MCKEE)
• Hymn R75 - Praise the Lord! Ye heavens adore him (AUSTRIAN HYMN)
• Hymn - When the storms of life are raging, stand by me (STAND BY ME)
• Hymn 680 - O God, our help in ages past (ST. ANNE)
• Psalm 85:8-13 – Tone VIIIa

An organ transcription is an arrangement for the organ of a musical work that was originally written for another medium. Often it's an orchestra piece that has been arranged, but it could be a vocal work or even a piano piece that someone has arranged for use on the organ. Such music is often helpful for wedding use (think Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Ave Maria, or even [shudder!] the Wedding March. More often than not, it's not a terribly satisfying treatment of the piece (think Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel), but it's written because somebody [the Bride's Mother] really likes the music.

But all transcribed works for organ are not banal. In fact, Bach arranged some of his own music for solo organ. That wonderful Advent piece, Wachet Auf/Sleepers, Wake, is a transcription of the tenor aria from Cantata 140. And this morning's prelude is another transcribed setting of another movement of another cantata, Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren, BWV 137, movement 2 (alto solo). (You know LOBE DEN HERREN as the tune we use for our opening hymn this morning,) What is curious is that Bach renames the chorale to make it suitable for Advent: Are you coming , Jesus from heaven down to earth ? Why? I don't know. When I am playing it this morning, I am thinking of Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.

The melody is played in the pedal on a 4' trumpet stop, so it sounds higher than that of the left hand (which is thus the true bass of the piece).  The melody only appears in isolated pockets of the prelude, each time rising up out of the flowing right hand's obbligato melody, itself built of such beautiful music that it continues for a full twelve measures after the cantus firmus has had its final say, finally winding down only at the final, rich cadence.

 Here is what the melody looks like, compared with the hymn-tune on top. (And remember, I am playing this with my feet!)

Edwin Arthur Kraft

The communion voluntary is another transcription of the Sinfonia (the opening movement) of Cantata 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God's time is best). However, Bach did not make this arrangement. It was arranged from the original orchestration (two flutes, two violins, and continuo) by Edwin Arthur Kraft, an American organist and choir-director who was best known for being organist choirmaster at the Episcopal cathedral in Cleveland, and head of the Organ Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He finally retired from his position at the cathedral in 1959, after service continually (except for one year) since 1907.

In this work, marked Molto adagio,  you hear the obbligato alto recorders in the right hand, mournfully echo each other over a sonorous background of viola da gambas and continuo, played by the left hand and pedals.

The offertory solo is the beautiful aria from the second part of Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio, Elijah. This solo precedes the Old Testament passage this morning, (and sometimes includes it.)
It is enough! O Lord, now take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers! I desire to live no longer: now let me die, for my days are but vanity. I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, for the children of Israel have broken Thy covenant, and thrown down Thine altars, and slain all Thy prophets, slain them with the sword. And I, even I only am left: and they seek my life to take it away! It is enough! O Lord, now take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers! Now let me die, Lord, take away my life!

Music for January 15, 2017 + The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Wondrous Love – Steve Pilkington

Instrumental Music

• Ritournello on “Liebster Jesu, Wir sind Her” – Aaron David Miller (b. 1962)
• Soul, Adorn Yourself With Gladness – Ann Krentz Organ (b. 1960)
• Poco Vivace, Opus 9, No. 6  –Hermann Schroeder (1904-1984)

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

• Hymn 7 - Christ, whose glory fills the skies (RATISBON)
• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works (LYONS)
• Hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (LIEBSTER JESU)
• Hymn - I have decided to follow Jesus (ASSAM)
• Hymn 550 - Jesus calls us; o’er the tumult (GALILEE)
• Psalm 40:1-11 - Expectans, expectavi

Sometimes nothing can beat a simple, plaintive melody for its beauty. Such is my opinion of the Southern folk hymn, What wondrous Love Is This? In the version the choir sings this week, you never hear the voices in more than two-part harmony, and that is when they are singing in canon (The men echoing the women four beats later.) Their singing is accompanied on the piano with a flowing, eighth-note piano part, with the addition of handbells playing growing chord clusters or ringing randomly during the last stanza. The text in the hymnal does not match exactly the text in our music, so here is the text for the solo stanza (stanza two) which will be sung by Bidkar Cajina.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of life
to lay aside his crown for my soul?

As we read the Gospel lesson about Jesus beginning his ministry, I thought this anthem raised some valid questions to stimulate thought about why Jesus  would "lay aside his crown for (our) soul."

The arranger, Steve Pilkington, serves on the faculty of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. as Associate Professor of Sacred Music. He also oversees all the music ministries at Christ Church United Methodist in  New York City, where he has been Director of Music and Organist since 1994. 

Aaron David Miller

Aaron David Miller serves as the Director of Music and Organist at House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota and maintains an active recital schedule. He has been a featured performer at four National Conventions for the American Guild of Organists since 1996, the most recent being the 2016 convention here in Houston. He also is a prolific composer, and Dr. Miller’s many solo organ, choral, and orchestral compositions are published by Augsburg Fortress, Oxford University Press, Paraclete Press, ECS, Morning Star and Kjos Publishing House. 

One of his shorter compositions is the opening voluntary. It is a setting of our hymn before the Gospel, hymn 440 - Blessed Jesus, at thy word (tune name: LIEBSTER JESU). A Ritournello (more commonly spelled Ritornello) is a Baroque form where a repeated section of music, the ritornello (literally, "the little thing that returns") alternates with freer episodes. You'll actually hear several fragments of melody returning in the organ prelude which alternates meters in a dance-like way.

Speaking of alternating meters, the closing voluntary is full of changing time signatures. If you are trying to clap along, have fun finding a steady beat!) This piece by German composer Hermann Schroeder, the only composer of those featured this morning to be neither American or living. He was born in Bernkastel and spent the greatest part of his life’s work in the Rheinland. His activity as composer was supplemental to his career in education. 

Schroeder's main accomplishments as a composer were in Catholic church music, where he attempted to break free of the lingering monopoly held by Romantic music. His works are characterized by the employment of medieval elements such as Gregorian chant, modal scales, and fauxbourdon which he combined with quintal and quartal harmonies and 20th-century polyphonic linear, sometimes atonal writing. In the work played this week, the last number in a collection of short preludes and intermezzi, you'll hear an initial Fanfare-like flourish characterized by octave leaps in the manuals and pedals.  In the middle section, linear, angular melodies are heard in each hand before returning to the initial fanfare section.