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 September 20, 2015 + The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Cantique de Jean Racine – Gabriel  Fauré (1845-1924)
• Lord, I Trust Thee – George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)

Instrumental Music

• Voluntary on “Engleberg”– Robert A Hobby (b. 1962)
• Violin Sonata in F major, HWV 370: I. Adagio – George Frederic Handel (trns. John M. Klein)
• Fanfare and Chorale on “Abbott’s Leigh” – Robert A. Hobby

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

• Hymn 379 God is Love, let heaven adore him (ABBOT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn 660 O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 390 Praise to the Lord (LOBE DEN HERREN)
• Hymn 711 Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn 477 All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGELBERG)

Gabriel Faure,
when he was young.

Two staples of choral music are included in our worship this Sunday. The first is an anthem by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. Best known for his art songs, chamber music, orchestral music, and his Requiem, this choral work was one of his first compositions, written in his final year at the Ecole Niedermeyer in1865. (He was 19 years old!) It used a religious poem by the playwright Jean Racine as its text, and it immediately made him famous as a composer. Its harmonic language is as rich and satisfying as a gateau au chocolat, and as complex as a fine cabernet sauvignon.

Great. Now I am Hungry.

By comparison, the communion anthem, Handel's setting of the 4th stanza of the hymn Deck, Thyself, my Soul, With Gladness (Hymn 339 in our hymnal), is a straight-forward chorale with a more elaborate (but still very reserved) accompaniment. It is taken from Handel's full scale setting of a libretto by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, an influential German poet who wrote Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (The Story of Jesus, Suffering and Dying for the Sins of the World). It was Brockes re-working of the traditional form of a Passion oratorio, in whichhe added reflective and descriptive poetry. Brockes Passion was well admired among musicians, and Handel's setting, though the best known, was not the only one. Handel's setting featured soloists more than choir, and for the most part, the choral parts were simple settings of hymns such as this.

The closing hymn is F. Bland Tucker's metrical setting of one of the great biblical hymns, Philippians 2:5-11. This is one of the several New Testament creedal statements found throughout the Epistles.

Francis Bland Tucker (1895-1984), was the son of a bishop and brother of a Presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. He himself became a priest after studying at Virginia Theological Seminary. He served parishes in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Christ Church in Savannah, Ga., where the missionary John Wesley was a priest.

Having a keen interest in hymnody, Tucker served on the joint commission that produced the Protestant Episcopal Hymnal 1940 and was a language consultant to this hymnal’s successor, The Hymnal 1982.

It is set to the tune ENGELBERG which Charles V. Stanford  composed as a setting for William W. How's "For All the Saints". The tune was published in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern with no less than six different musical settings. It is clearly a fine congregational hymn with an attractive, energetic melody with many ascending motives, designed for unison singing with no pauses between stanzas. 

Music for July 19, 2015 + The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Instrumental Music

• Tribute (Lullaby) – Craig Phillips (b. 1961)
• A Tune for the Tuba – Eric Thiman (1900-1975)
• Meditation on “Repton” -  Robert A. Hobby (b. 1962)
• O Perfect Love - Gordon Young (1919-1998)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 525 - The Church’s one foundation (AURELIA)
• Hymn 653 - Dear Lord and Father of mankind (REPTON)
• Hymn 343 - Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless (ST. AGNES)
• Hymn 708 - Savior, Like a shepherd lead us (SICILIAN MARINERS)

Lots of organ music this week, and all of it, I think, is immediately accessible even to those not particularly fond of the organ. Two of the pieces are original works with no reference to a hymn tune. 

The communion piece, Tribute, was written by Craig Philips, the organist and director of music at All Saints (Episcopal) Church in Beverly Hills. He wrote this at the request of concert organist David Craighead in honor of David's concert manager, Karen McFarlane. It is a gentle piece with the opening melody played on the krummhorn, one of the oldest organ sounds that in its most familiar form has a tone resembling that of the clarinet. It's written in 3/4 time, so it lends itself to the feel of a lullaby (which is probably why Philips sub-titled it thus so.)

The closing voluntary features another distinctive organ sound, the tuba. Much like the trumpet, it is a reed-stop with a brassy sound, but at 16' pitch, meaning it sounds an octave lower. This is a work written by the organist and composer Eric Thiman, who was active in England in the middle of the 20th century. Largely self-taught, he was Professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy of Music, and from 1956 to 1962, Dean of the Faculty of Music at London University. He was also organist and choirmaster at the City Temple in London, a Congregational Church where he achieved renown as an improviser of great skill. This Tuba Tune is in a form often used for trumpet tunes on the organ, with the solo featured on the opening theme, followed by the exact same theme with the full organ. The most famous example of that is the Trumpet Voluntary (Prince of Denmark's March) used so often at weddings.

The two other organ works are based on hymn tunes. 

Robert A. Hobby

C.H.H.Parry

We start of with Robert Hobby's straightforward setting of the tune Repton, used for the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. The tune first appeared in Charles H. H. Parry's oratorio Judith with the text, "Long since in Egypt's plenteous land, Our fathers were oppressed." Some time later this chorus was published separately as an anthem with the words which we will sing today as a hymn later in the service. It's a glorious melody, with a second half of the hymn tune that gradually builds toward a high note with such sweeping grandeur that one cannot fail to feel the passion of the music. 

At the last minute I had to substitute an organ voluntary for the vocal selection originally scheduled for today. Since I knew Father Bill was going to preach on recent events concerning marriage, I thought I would play Gordon Young's setting of the little-used wedding hymn, O Perfect Love. Regardless of your thoughts about marriage equality, you have to admit the text of the hymn, written in 1848 by Dorothy Francis Blomfield for her sister's wedding, is appropriate for any couple pledging their love for each other. It is a prayer that the marriage will be blessed with love, faith, endurance, and other qualities that lead to a strong relationship. The fourth stanza is a doxology addressed to the members of the Trinity.

O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
lowly we kneel in prayer before thy throne,
that theirs may be the love which knows no ending,
whom thou in sacred vow dost join in one.  

O perfect Life, be thou their full assurance
of tender charity and steadfast faith,
of patient hope and quiet, brave endurance,
with childlike trust that fears no pain or death. 

Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow;
grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife;
grant them the vision of the glorious morrow
that will reveal eternal love and life