Music for Sunday, October 31, 2021 + + The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• I Give to You a New Commandment – Peter Nardone (b. 1965)

Instrumental Music

• A Mighty Fortress Is Our God – Dieterich Buxtehude (c. 1637 – 1707)
• Let Us Break Bread Together – Charles Callahan (b. 1951)
• Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 688 - A mighty fortress is our God (EIN FESTE BURG)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn 602 - Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 551 - Rise up, ye saints of God! (FESTAL SONG)

There are three things we are focusing on musically today. First is the Gospel reading. In Mark 12:28-31we read, 

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

This reminded me of the passage in John 13 where Jesus gives a new commandment, that we love one another as Jesus has loved us. I therefore looked to Peter Nardone's anthem setting of that scripture which pairs those words with an original tune with the Roman Catholic chant, Ubi Caritas.

Where charity and love are, there God is.

The love of Christ has gathered us into one.

Let us exult, and in Him be joyful.

Let us fear and let us love the living God.

And from a sincere heart let us love each other.

You'll hear the tenors and basses sing that chant in Latin while the trebles sing the scripture.

Peter Nardone is a free-lance conductor, singer and composer who has sung with the Monteverdi Choir, The King’s Consort and the Tallis Scholars. He has been Director of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral and was subsequently Organist and Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral.

The second thing we focus on today is the Reformation. Today is Reformation Day, a Protestant Christian religious holiday celebrated on October 31st in remembrance of the onset of the Reformation. According to Philip Melanchthon, All Hallows' Eve 1517 was the day German monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony. His famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” is considered to be the great Reformation hymn. We will sing the hymn at the opening of the service, preceded by Dietrich Buxtehude's elegant chorale prelude based on the hymn. Just don't expect to recognize the melody in Buxtehude's setting

The third thing we focus on today (at the end of the service) is All Hallows' Eve, better known as Halloween. It is liturgical in as far as the day is the Eve of All Hallows' Day (or All Saints' Day). It's roots are Christian, but it's modern reflection is more secular, or at least Pagan. And of all the music for organ, the pièce de résistance is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Whenever I meet new people and tell them I am an organist, more often than not they will ask "Can you play the Phantom of the Opera?" - meaning, "can you play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565?" Whatever. It's a fun piece to play, and if I'm ever going to play it in church, today is the day. 

me, practicing this Sunday's closing voluntary.

Music for September 2, 2018

Vocal Music

• I Give to You a New Commandment – Peter Nardone (b. 1965)

Instrumental Music

• Onse Vader in hemelrijck – Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)
• Ayre in F – Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1757)
• Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise – arr. Michael Burkhardt (b. 1957)

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

• Hymn 423 - Immortal, invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO)
• Hymn R122 - Surely it is God who saves me (FIRST SONG OF ISAIAH)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn R145 - Lord, I want to be a Christian (I WANT TO BE A CHRISTIAN)
• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn 556 - Rejoice, ye pure in heart (MARIAN)
• Psalm 15 - paraphrase by Christopher Webber, 1986 (ST. ANNE)

The choir sings a lyrical anthem by the Scottish composer Peter Nardone. He sets a text from John 13:34-35 (I give to you a new commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you) to a lovely melody, which is sung by the treble voices. He then combines that melody with the Latin chant Ubi caritas, sung by the gentlemen of the choir.

Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. Exsultemus et in ipso jucundemur. Timeamus et amemus Deum vivum. Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
[Where charity is true, God is there. The love of Christ has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be glad in him. Let us fear and love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love one another.]

Peter Thomas Nardone is a Scottish countertenor, organist, choirmaster, and composer. He has sung with the Monteverdi Choir, the King's Consort, and the Tallis Scholars. He has been Director at Chelmsford Cathedral and is currently Organist and Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral, and Artistic Director of Three Choirs Festival.

Peter Nardone, conducting the Three Choirs Festival

From the 14th century on, The Netherlands were known for their organs, and organ builders from the Lowlands influenced organs built all across Europe. I find it strange, then, that Dutch organ playing failed to keep up with the innovative organs being built in the 15th and 16th century. Most local organists played transcriptions of vocal literature. When a few prominent English organists moved to the Lowlands as religious exiles, the Dutch were exposed to what the keyboards were capable of. In Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Netherlandish organ music found its first significant organist of native birth. He was able to combine the polyphonic heritage of Netherlandish choral composers with foreign keyboard traditions.

The two variations of the German chorale Vater Unser in Himmelreich (Our Father in Heaven), with which I open today's service, are examples of that. In the first, we hear a basic four-part setting, with the melody in longer, sustained notes on top. This is very much like a choral work of the period, though with more 16th note passages in the lower voices. (You can follow this melody by looking in our hymnal at hymn 575). The second variation changes key, and has the melody, or the cantus firmus, in the alto line. The organ of Sweelinck's time, as innovative as it was, still did not have much of a pedal division, and was used mainly to solo out the melody. Though this variation is not written specifically with that in mind, I will be playing the alto melody on the pedal reed, so you will hear it prominently featured in this arrangement.

There are several different variations on this chorale that are attributed to Sweelinck, and most of them are spurious compositions, with their authenticity in question. The volume in which these two variations are published feels as though these two, at least, are authentic. So I feel validated. (Smug grin.)

The communion voluntary is a transcription of an instrumental work by Georg Phillipe Telemann. Telemann was another Lutheran organist, living and working in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century. But for a composer to have written over 3000 works in his lifetime, he is relatively unknown today.

a marmot. (Not Telemann)

Telemann became a composer in spite of his mother’s firm disapproval. She wanted him to become a priest, and when she discovered that young Telemann had been secretly
learning the violin, she confiscated the instrument, lest it inspire her son to trade in his ecclesiastical aspirations for some kind of low-class, show-biz job like "a clown, a tightrope walker or a marmot trainer."

A marmot trainer, no less.

But, she need not have worried. By his early 20s, Telemann's music had already established the composer as one of the most distinguished individuals in the city of Leipzig. Throughout the decades that followed, he was perhaps the greatest musical celebrity of his time. In his early 40s, he even turned down the most prestigious church music gig in Leipzig, which eventually went to the city council's third choice: Johann Sebastian Bach.

Music for April 24, 2016 + The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• I Give You a New Commandment – Peter Nardone (b. 1965)
• The Call – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Instrumental Music

• Adagio – Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
• Allegro marziale e ben marcato – Frank Bridge

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 205 - Good Christians all, rejoice and sing (Gelobt sei Gott)
• Hymn R276 - Soon and very soon (Soon and Very Soon)
• Hymn 296 - We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (Engleberg)
• Hymn 576 - God is love and where true love is (Mandatum)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (Land of Rest)

Peter Nardone

The Gospel this week should be familiar - after all, we just heard it four weeks ago at Maundy Thursday. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." We sing this verse in an anthem by Scottish composer, organist, conductor, and singer Peter Nardone. In addition to being Organist & Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral, he is conductor of the Worcester Festival Choral Society and is Artistic Director of the Worcester Three Choirs Festival. In this anthem, an original melody for the Gospel text is juxtaposed with the ancient chant Ubi Caritas, pairing these two traditional Maundy Thursday texts. We are past Holy Week, obviously, but any Maundy Thursday text dealing with a new commandment would be super appropriate today. That is also why we are singing the hymn God is love and where true love is during communion this week. Heck, even the tune name of that hymn is super appropriate! ( Mandatum = mandate = commandment).

The communion solo is that beautiful, classic song, The Call, with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams based on a text by George Herbert.  Anyone who grew up with the hymnody of the Anglican Church will have grown up with George Herbert. ‘Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing’, ‘Teach me, my God and King’, ‘King of Glory, King of Peace’—these all helped to teach us, little though we might have been aware of it at the time, that good hymns could also be good verse. Vaughan Williams recognized this, and used five of Herbert's poems for his Five Mystical Songs, written in 1911 for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester (see Peter Nardone, above!) The simple setting by Vaughan Williams reflects the hymnic stance and metre of the poem. It has, in fact, been used as a hymn in many modern hymnals, including ours. (see hymn 487).