Music for May 29, 2022 + The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Vocal Music

• A Song to the Lamb – Donald Pearson (b. 1953)

Instrumental Music

• Sonata No. 8: Andante Sostenuto – Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)
• Sarabande (Concerto for Oboe in G Minor) – G. F. Handel (1685-1759)
• Llanfair – Robert J. Powell (b. 1932)

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

• Hymn 214 - Hail the day that sees him rise (LLANFAIR)
• Hymn R168 - If you believe and I believe (ZIMBABWE)
• Hymn 325 - Let us break bread together on our knees (LET US BREAK BREAD)
• Hymn 460 - Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL)
• Psalm 97 – Tone IIa

Anthem: A Song to the Lamb

The American composer Donald Pearson wrote this setting of Canticle 18 while he was organist/choir master of St. John's Cathedral in Denver. Now a canticle (from the Latin canticulum, a diminutive of canticum, "song") is a hymn, psalm or other Christian song of praise with lyrics usually taken from biblical or holy texts. Canticles are used in Christian liturgy. You are probably most familiar with canticle 20 - we sing it most Sundays at the beginning of the service. (Glory to God in the Highest.) Other familiar canticles are the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, which are common at evening prayer services.

This setting starts of with a sparkling organ intro, which continues under the refrain which returns after each verse. The refrain was obviously meant for the congregation to sing, but today we will just leave it to the choir.

Opening Voluntary:  Sonata No. 8: Andante Sostenuto

Andante Sostenuto is the fourth movement of Alexandre Guilmant's Eight Sonata in A Major, Opus 9, completed at the composer's home in September 1906 and dedicated to Louis Herbette, a councilor of state. He later orchestrated the work as the Secondo Symphonie pour Orgue & Orchestra. It has some rich, thick chords which remind me of the opening of Camille Saint-Saens Organ Symphony which was written some 20 years earlier.

Félix-Alexandre Guilmant was a French organist and composer who was well known both as a recitalist and as a composer. His organ repertoire includes his 18 collections of Pièces dans différents styles (pieces in differing styles), the more liturgical Soixante interludes dans la tonalité grégorienne (60 pieces in Gregorian tonality) and his 12 books of l'Organiste liturgique (the liturgical organist). He also wrote chamber music, vocal music, a sinfonia cantata (Ariane) as well a lyric scene (Bathsheba).

Communion Voluntary: Sarabande 

This is the third movement of Handel's Oboe Concerto No. 3 in G minor (HWV 287) composed  possibly in 1704-1705. It was arranged for organ by Edward Shippen Barnes, an American organist from the first half of the 20th century who was well known for his editions of organ transcriptions of orchestral works. 

Here is a recording of the Houston Early Music group, Ars Lyrica, performing this movement. (Don't listen to it in church!)

Closing Voluntary: Llanfair

The closing voluntary is a setting of our opening hymn by the living Episcopalian composer Robert J. Powell. He is known to our congregation if for no other reason than his setting of the Gloria (Canticle No. 20 - see above) that we have been singing each Sunday during Eastertide.

Music for June 2, 2017 + Pentecost

Confirmation

Vocal Music

• Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove – Robert Powell (b. 1932)
• Dance: I’m goin’a sing When the Spirit Says Sing – arr. William Farley Smith (1941-1997)
• Dance: Spirit Song – John Wimber (1934 - 1997) 

Instrumental Music

• Exuberant Praise – Cynthia Dobrinski (b. 1950)
• Jubilate – Kris Anthony
• Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist  ("Come, God Creator, Holy Ghost") (BWV 667) – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

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

• Hymn 225 - Hail thee, festival day! (SALVE FESTE DIES)
• Hymn 511 - Holy Spirit, ever living (ABBOT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn R201 - Be Still, for the Spirit of the Lord (BE STILL)
• Hymn R168 - If you believe and I believe (Traditional Zimbabwe)
• Hymn R280 - Like the murmur of the dove’s song (BRIDEGROOM)
• Hymn 506 - Praise the Spirit in Creation (FINNIAN)
• Baptism Hymn 297 – Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37 - Benedic, anima mea – Thomas Pavlechko

The choir anthem this Sunday is an arrangement of an ancient hymn and chant for Pentecost usually referred to as Veni Creator Spiritus. Robert Powell has taken this elegant text and tune and supplied an excellent setting for choir, handbells and organ, preserving the flowing modal character of the original sources. The first three stanzas are presented in typical chant style, progressing to a more chorale-like setting for the fourth and fifth stanzas, mirroring the evolution of the original chant to chorale which can be seen by comparing hymn 502 ("Veni Creator Spiritus") to hymn 501 ("Komm, Gott Schöpfer") in our hymnal. (Hymn 501 is the tune that Bach used for his piece that I am using for the closing voluntary this morning.)

Powell, who for thirty-five years was Director of Music and Organist of Christ Church Episcopal of Greenville, South Carolina, also wrote the musical setting of the Eucharist which we will be singing this summer. Although it hasn't been sung much in our parish, this setting of the Gloria and Sanctus is among the most well known of the Rite II musical settings in the Hymnal 1982.

This Sunday marks the last time the Good Shepherd Handbell Choir will play this 2016-2017 season. We will be playing two works by two contemporary Handbell composers. (OK, honestly, ALL handbell composers are contemporary, as the handbell choir hasn't really been around for all that long. Though the first set of handbells came to America in 1902, it wasn't until the early 1970s that handbell choirs began to take off in churches all across America.

Cynthia Dobrinski

Cynthia Dobrinski is one of the leaders in handbell composition. With more than 175 works in print, she has conducted about 350 handbell workshops and festivals internationally. Dobrinski earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Texas Christian University and her Master of Music degree in organ performance from Northwestern University. She was a Fulbright scholar and taught for 15 years at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Currently she is the Music Director & Organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Martinsville, Virginia.

I cannot find anything about the composer of the communion voluntary, Kris Anthony. The piece Jubilate (pronounced Yoo-bee-lah-teh, Latin for "Rejoice!") was published early on, in 1991, and though it sounds relatively simple, is actually one of the tougher pieces we've worked on, and I've joked with the choir that Kris Anthony was probably banished from the earth by his bell choir after they had to learn the piece. It is very linear in its compositional make-up, employing the technique of polyphony, the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other. At one point you'll hear 4 different layers of music.

Music for December 11, 2016 + The Third Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• How Lovely Are the Messengers – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Instrumental Music

• Fantasy on “Veni Emmanuel” – Robert C. Lau (b. 1943)
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence – Cathy Moklebust (b. 1958)
• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel – Robert Powell (b. 1932)

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

• Hymn R128 - Bless’d be the God of Israel (Forest Green)
• Hymn 56, st. 5-6 - O come, O come, Emmanuel (Veni, veni, Emmanuel)
• Hymn 615 - “Thy Kingdom come!” (St. Flavian)
• Hymn 59, st. 3-5 - Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding (Merton)
• Hymn R278 - Wait for the Lord (Taizé)
• Hymn 76 - On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry (Winchester New)
• Psalm 146 - Lauda, anima mea

The anthem this Sunday is the beautiful chorus from Mendelssohn's oratorio St. Paul. (I wrote about it in January when we sang this anthem in church. You can read about it here.) We are singing it again this Sunday because the Gospel reminds us that Jesus said that John the Baptist was the one about whom it was written,

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’

The opening and closing voluntaries are based on the well-loved Advent hymn, Veni, veni, Emmanuel. (You remember your Latin I, right? Veni, vidi, vici? "I came, I saw, I conquered.") This is the hymn that we have been singing in place of the Gloria each Sunday in Advent. Both of these settings, by contemporary composers, are more paraphrases of the melody than a single exposition of the tune. You hear bits and pieces, or snippets of the melody, instead of a complete presentation of each phrase.

Robert C. Lau

The opening voluntary is by Robert Lau, recently retired as director of music and organist at Mt. Calvary Episcopal Church in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where he held the post for over 25 years. He has degrees from Lebanon Valley College, the Eastman School of Music and The Catholic University of America.  A former member of the faculty at Lebanon Valley College where he taught music theory and chaired the Music Department, Dr. Lau also served as Adjunct Professor of Music at Penn State Harrisburg, teaching in the School of Humanities.

He has written more than 250 choral and keyboard works which have been published by the leading music publishing companies in the United States, and he has been commissioned to write choral, keyboard and vocal works for a variety of institutions, churches and individuals.  For his work in published choral and keyboard works he has won 15 Special Awards from ASCAP.  In 2010 Paraclete Press published his book A Practical Approach to Improvisation for the Church Organist.

In his setting of Veni Emmanuel, he employs an improvisatory style. I think he had verse one in mind while writing this work.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
Refrain:Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.

The work begins with rather desolate harmonies, sparse chords spread out over the keyboard using a thin, stringy sound. The melody comes in the pedal, employing a plaintive oboe-like sound. At the "rejoice!" section, instead of the typical "rejoice" refrain, we hear a new chant like melody on the full Swell, rolling around, like a pot approaching full boil, until huge, screaming chords call us to rejoice, take heart, take courage, for the promise of the Messiah. I think that is why the piece doesn't resolve without a fight (listen for the struggles in the harmonies as the organ builds.) Finally, the dust settles, and the familiar "rejoice" melody comes in, but not loudly, but with a quiet hope, trusting in the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us.

The Good Shepherd Handbells are playing a gorgeous arrangement of the communion hymn, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. It is a setting by Cathy Moklebust, a composer from South Dakota, whose compositions for handbell are influenced by her over forty-six years as a handbell musician and her background as a percussionist.

Music for October 23, 2016 + The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Fight On, My Soul” – Robert J. Powell (b. 1932)
• Ubi Caritas and Adoro Te Devote - Michael Larkin
• Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)

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

• Hymn 557 Rejoice, ye pure in heart (Marion)
• Hymn 552 Fight the good fight with all thy might (Pentecost)
• Hymn 429 I'll praise my maker while I've breath (Old 113th)
• Hymn R122 Surely it is God who saves me (First Song of Isaiah)
• Hymn R188 Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord (Bob Hudson)
• Hymn 637 How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (Lyons)
• Psalm 65 (Tone 5a)

I'm adding two new pieces to my organ repertoire this week, and both by living, American composers. And one of them (GASP!) is a woman! At this rate, no telling where gender equality goes. We might even have a woman run for president!

Let's talk about the closing voluntary first. It's an organ setting of the old hymn-tune EBENEZER, used for the Southern hymn Come thou Fount of Every Blessing. The composer, Emma Lou Diemer, has put the melody in the pedal for the first exposition of the melody, with the manuals accompanying with rippling 16th note broken chords. After one presentation of the hymn, the whole piece transposes to the key of F (from D), but a new element is added: the melody is now in a canon at the fourth, meaning the pedal plays the melody in F, and the top of note of the accompaniment is playing the melody in B-flat. What fun!

Emma Lou Diemer

Emma Lou Diemer is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. She studied piano from an early age, wrote little piano pieces as a child, and began to play the organ in church at age 13. She determined to be a composer about that time with a strong interest also in piano. Her degrees in composition are from the Yale School of Music (BM,1949; MM, 1950) and from the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.,1960), and she studied composition further in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at the Berkshire Music Center.

From 1954-1965 she taught in several schools and was organist in area churches. In 1965 she joined the faculty of the University of Maryland as an assistant professor of theory and composition. In 1971 she was appointed to a similar position at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and subsequently became a full professor and, since 1991, professor emeritus. Her present position as organist is at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara.

The opening voluntary is an organ setting of an old Southern Harmony hymn by J. P Reese from 1859, Fight on, my soul.

Fight on, my soul, till death
Shall bring thee to thy God

Robert Powell

Even if you knew this old tune, you might not recognize the melody as it is hidden in the left hand of the manual parts. It is not until the quieter B section that you can clearly hear the melody played by the oboe stop of the organ against a flute accompaniment. The rollicking open theme returns, but this time the melody is clearly stated in the pedal part with the trumpet. On the fourth repetition of the tune, the melody is a again heard in the top line as the full organ declaims the tune.

Robert J. Powell retired in 2003 as organist and choirmaster at Christ Church in Greenville, S.C., a position he had held since 1968. Previously he served as director of music at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H.; organist and choir director at St. Paul's Church in Meridian, Miss.; and associate organist at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in N.Y.C. Powell's music was first published in 1959, and he has written over 200 works for chorus, solo voice, organ and brass.

The life of Thomas Tallis is a mirror of the musical effects of the Anglican Reformation in England. He served in the Chapel Royal for some 40 years, composing under four Monarchs with widely differing religious practices. Tallis was among the first to set English words to music for the rites of the Church of England, although most of his vocal music was written in Latin. A composer of great contrapuntal skill, his works show intense expressivity and are cast in a bewildering variety of styles.

During the reign of King Edward VI (1547-1553) it was mandated that the services be sung in English, and that the choral music be brief and succinct "to each syllable a plain and distinct note." If Ye Love Me is the classic example of these new English anthems: mainly homophonic, but with brief moments of imitation. Like many early Anglican anthems, it is cast in ABB form, the second section repeated twice.

Music for March 1, 2015 + The Second Sunday of Lent

Vocal Music

• Lord, for thy Tender Mercy's Sake – Richard Farrant (c.1530-1580) or John Hilton (1565-1708?)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Leoni” - Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• A Lenten Meditation – Robert Powell (b. 1932)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception “NORRIS” which is from Lift Every Voice and Sing.)

• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 147 - Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON)
• Hymn - I can hear my Savior calling (NORRIS)
• Hymn 675 - Take up your cross, the Savior said (BOURBON)

The Choir is singing an anthem from one of my favorite eras and style of choral music: The 16th century Tudor anthem. The word “Tudor” is loosely used to denote the 100 years from the early 1500s to the 1600s, a period which some call the Golden Age of English church music. This genre includes simple four-part homophonic anthems to the more elaborate polyphony of six-, seven- or eight-part motets. Lord, For Thy Tender Mercy's Sake is one of two short anthems by either Richard Farrant or John Hilton, both English composers of sacred music. Farrant was organist at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the middle of the sixteenth century, while Hilton was known as a counter-tenor and organist, most notably at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the beginning, the music is in a simple, a capella, hymn-like style which befits the reflective and restful mood of the text, but at the words "that we may walk in a perfect heart" the choir has a chance to play around with the rhythms of the words and sing much more independently of each other, finally ending with a contrapuntal "amen."   The words are from Christian Prayers and Holy Meditations, by Henry Bull (1566).

Robert Powell at the console of the
organ at Christ Church, Greenville, SC

The Communion voluntary is a handbell piece by Robert Powell, retired music director of Christ Episcopal Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Born in Benoit, Mississippi, Powell attended Louisiana State University. After graduating from LSU, with a degree in organ and composition, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Tokyo, where he conducted a choir of American soldiers and Japanese women; their first big program was Handel's Messiah. After his military service, he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City. While there, he  was assistant organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, where Alec Wyton, his mentor, was organist and choirmaster. His first published work was in 1959, and since that time, he has published over 400 works for choir, organ, handbells, and other instruments, as well as his Service of Holy Communion, which is in our hymnal.

This Week's Hymns

• The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI) Forshadowing the reading from the Old Testament, we open our service with this hymn, which, according to Cyberhymnal.com, is based on The Yigdal of Daniel ben Judah, a Jewish judge in Rome, circa 1400, paraphrased by Thomas Olivers, circa 1765; first appeared in The Gospel Magazine, April 1775. The lyrics are based on the 13 creeds of Moses Maimonides (circa 1130-1204).  Indeed, Cyberhymnal prints twelve verses, which have been shortened to five in our hymnal.  
• Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON) We have a few Early American hymn tunes in our hymnal.  This tune, BOURBON, appeared in Columbian Harmony (1825) and was therein attributed to Freeman Lewis (1780-1859).  The melody is actually in a pentatonic key, which means its scale has five notes.  It also means you could play it on the piano on all black keys.  The tune name comes from Bourbon Country, Kentucky, not from the drink!
• I can hear my Savior calling (NORRIS) - This old gospel hymn is from Lift Every Voice and Sing II (LEVAS), a hymnal published for African-American congregations in the Episcopal Church. The text was written in 1890 by E.W.Blandy, with music composed for it by John S. Norris. LEVAS leaves out the fermatas (the held-out notes) on the last line, ("with him        , with him       ...), so I am going to follow good performance practice and include them as we sing this hymn. This hymn calls us to obey the call of Jesus, and "take up my cross."
• Take up your cross, the Savior said (BOURBON)  Charles W. Everest, an Episcopal priest , was but nineteen when he published Visions of Death, and Other Poems; from this work this popular hymn is taken. This hymn is perfect as a response to today's Gospel, as it describes the fully committed Christian life as denying self, facing all dangers, and following Christ to the uttermost. And, yes, this is the same tune as we sang earlier in the service!