Music for May 7, 2023 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• Together – Dennis and Nan Allen (21st C.)
• Thou Art God – Lionel Bourne (b. 1960)

Instrumental Music

• Flute Solo – Thomas Arne (1710 – 1778)
• Kyrie from Missa della Domenica (Sunday Mass) – Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
• Toccata in G Major – William Walond (1719-1768)

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

• Hymn 47 - On this day, the first of days (GOTT SEI DANK)
• Hymn R33- We will glorify the King of kings (WE WILL GLORIFY)
• Hymn 288 - Praise to God, Immortal praise (DIX)
• Hymn R220 - Let the hungry come to me (ADORO TE DEVOTE)
• Hymn 525 - The Church’s one foundation (AURELIA)

Today the Coventry Choir, our early elementary children's choir, sings at both the family service and the 10:15 service. This is our final performance for the year, which is the first full season we have sung since 2019! Thanks to the nine children and their families for making this happen!

Together

The anthem the children are singing is a "pop" style anthem, with words and music by the husband and wife team, Dennis and Nan Allen. The Allens have been writing for close to 40 years, with over 1200 songs, musicals, and drama projects to their credit. They have received multiple nominations and are 3-time winners of the GMA Dove Awards for Musical of the Year. 

Nan has also written five books, including three Christian nonfiction works and two novels. Dennis and Nan are now retired from teaching at Truett-McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia and are back in the Nashville area resuming their writing careers.

Thou Art God

The anthem is a modern Celtic prayer set to music by Lionel Bourne, Organist and Master of Music at St John the Evangelist in London, after fourteen  years as Organist and Director of Music at St John the Divine, Kennington.  An experienced church musician, Lionel has held a number of organist posts over many years and has also enjoyed a career as teacher and BBC Music Researcher.

The prayer is from the book The Edge of Glory: Prayers in the Celtic Tradition, by Anglican priest David Adam (1936 – 24 January 2020). He was vicar of Danby-Castleton-Commondale in North Yorkshire for over 20 years, where he began writing prayers in the Celtic pattern. In the Celtic way of prayer, the divine glory was intertwined with the ordinariness of everyday events which hallows the everyday stuff of life, rather than irrelevances it in the way much church-centred spirituality does today. 

He later became rector of Holy Island, Lindisfarne, where he ministered to thousands of pilgrims and other visitors. He was made a canon of York Minster in 1989.

Organ Music

Ernest White was an American organist, choirmaster, organ designer, teacher, and music editor who flourished in the first half of the 20th century. For 25 years he was organist and/or music director at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. He was a proponent of early music in an era when such music was ignored. In 1954 he published a book of such organ music called Graveyard Gems, so named as a nod to his friend Scott Buhrman, editor of The American Organist, who called pre-Bach music "Graveyard Music." The opening voluntary this morning is taken from that volume.

Flute Solo is actually the Allegro from Thomas Arne's Sonata in A Major. As the title implies, it is features the flute stop on the organ.

Thomas Arne was an English composer, best known for his tune, Rule, Britannia! Arne was the only native English composer of his day that was able to compete successfully with composers like George Frideric Handel who monopolized the British music scene during the eighteenth century.

The other organ music could also be categorized as "graveyard music." The communion voluntaries are three settings of the Kyrie from Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali (lit. 'Musical Flowers'), a collection of liturgical organ music first published in 1635. It contains three organ masses and two secular capriccios. Generally acknowledged as one of Frescobaldi's greatest works, Fiori musicali influenced composers during at least two centuries. Johann Sebastian Bach was among its admirers.

Frescobaldi was an Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player who is considered one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Frescobaldi was appointed organist of St. Peter's Basilica from 21 July 1608 until 1628 and again from 1634 until his death.

The closing voluntary is another from an English organist William Walond. Walond was an organist who lived and died in Oxford in the 18th century. In 1752 he published a set of six voluntaries for organ or harpsichord, generally designated Opus 1 to distinguish them from the second set published in 1758. 

Voluntary V in G Major Op. 1 was written to be played without pedals, as English organs of the day were not as advanced as the organs in Germany. But today I am playing an arrangement of the second half of the voluntary arranged by the famed organist E. Power Biggs which includes pedals.

Music for November 11, 2018 + Kirking of the Tartans

Vocal Music

• Thou Art God – Lionel Bourne

Instrumental Music

• Highland Cathedral - James D. Wetherald, arr., Richard Kean, piper
• Lascia ch’io Pianga – G. F. Handel

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

• Hymn 686 - Come, thou fount of every blessing (NETTLETON)
• Hymn S-204 - Glory be to God on High - Old Scottish Chant
• Hymn 429 - I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath (OLD 113TH)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn R172 - In my life, Lord, be glorified (LORD BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn R27 - O how he loves you and me (PATRICIA)
• Hymn - In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful (Jacques Barthier)
• Hymn 671 - Amazing grace! how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 579 - Almighty Father, strong to save (MELITA)
• Psalm 146 – Tone VIIIa

This is a favorite Sunday for many parishoners at Good Shepherd when we “Kirk (or bless) the Tartans.” This is a relatively new rite, beginning in the early 1940s, when Peter Marshall (the Presbyterian minister who was chaplain of the Senate - not the game show host) held prayer services at New York Avenue Presbyterian in D.C to raise funds for War Relief. At one of the services, he preached a sermon called “Kirking of the Tartans,” and thus a legend was born. You can read the entire fascinating history here on the Tartan Authority Website.

Samuel Seabury

We do it every year around Samuel Seabury day, the first American Anglican bishop who was consecrated by the Scottish Bishops of the Anglican church during the Revolutionary War. Ironically, Samuel Seabury was born on November 30, 1729, the day of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland, which may have presaged his future consecration as the first American Bishop when he was consecrated at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Aberdeen, Scotland

Seabury as
portrayed in the
musical "Hamilton"

Thus we commemorate his consecration by wearing our tartans, hanging them in the church, and hearing the bagpipes play. We begin the service with the piper playing “Highland Cathedral” and end with him playing “Amazing Grace.”

(Seabury appears in the musical "Hamilton" in the number "Farmer Refuted". He is an active Loyalist, someone who remains loyal to an established ruler especially during a revolt, preaching against the Revolution in front of important members of the American government and supporters of the Revolution. Hamilton then backs him down and eventually wins the debate after important members of the congress backed Hamilton. Seabury wrote his defense of the Loyalist position under the name A. W. Farmer, or A Westchester Farmer, hence "The farmer refuted.")

The anthem is a work by Lionel Bourne, Organist & Director of Music at the church of St John the Divine, Kennington (London). Bourne has been at St John’s since 2006.  A graduate of the Birmingham Conservatoire, he has many years’ experience as a church musician under his belt as well as a career in music at the BBC.

The text is by the Reverend Canon David Adam, former Vicar of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Lindisfarne is famous for its medieval religious heritage. In 635AD Saint Aidan came from Iona and chose to found his monastery on The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, thus making it a center of Celtic spiritualism. Mr. Adam’s poem sounds eversomuch like an ancient Gaelic Rune.

Bourne has scored this piece for four vocal parts (SATB) and organ. Marked "Flowing, but not too fast", the music is in G major and 3/4 time. The choir begins singing in unison, but by the second stanza begins to unfold into four parts. piece. Dynamically, the music begins softly and stays that way until the beginning of the third stanza, when a gradual crescendo climaxes on the text “Thou art the light, the truth, the way,” with pronounced breaks after “Light,” “truth,” and “way.” There is a diminuendo to a very soft ending as the choir repeats the final line “Thou art my Savior this very day.”

Lascia ch’io pianga (Let Me Weep) is an aria from the opera Rinaldo by George Frederick Handel. I'll admit it has nothing to do with church, per se, but it is very spiritual in nature. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato's includes it on her recent album with conductor Maxim Emelyanychev and the ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro, In War & Peace: Harmony Through Music. On this recording, she uses Baroque arias to explore the pain and possibilities of these troubled times. A companion website invites anyone and everyone to answer the simple but loaded question, "In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?"

The piano arrangement I'm playing is from an old Etude magazine from 1919 - one year after World War I ended. It is arranged by Moritz Moszkowski, a German composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish-Jewish descent. He took quite a few liberties in his "transcription."