Music for January 21, 2018 + The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• They Cast Their Nets in Galilee – Michael McCabe (b. 1941)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on “Mit Freuden Zart” – T. Frederick H. Candlyn (1892-1964)
• Deck Thyself, My Soul, With Gladness – Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Grand Chœur – François-Clément Théodore Dubois (1837 - 1924)

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

• Hymn 408 - Sing praise to God who reigns above (MIT FREUDEN ZART)
• Hymn 470 - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER)
• Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works (LYONS)
• Hymn R147 - Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling (THOMPSON)
• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 550 - Jesus calls us: o’er the tumult (GALILEE)
• Psalm 62:6-14 - setting by Thom Pavlechko

Vocation de Saint Jacques et de Saint Jean
Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836 – 1902)
Brooklyn Museum Collection

This Sunday we hear the Gospel story of the calling of the disciples. There are two hymns in our hymnal that speak directly this story, and we will sing (or hear) both of them. The best known is the hymn Jesus calls us: o'er the tumult. In the 1982 Hymnal, the editors decided to do away with the familiar tune GALILEE in favor of two other tunes which honestly have no history of being associated with the text. The first year I was here at Good Shepherd I dutifully chose the tune which I thought the congregation would have the best chance of singing. After the service I was castigated by congregation members who said

(cas·ti·gate [ˈkastəˌɡāt] verb formal: reprimand (someone) severely) 

 the real tune was the one in the 1940 Hymnal (and every other hymnal in the United States.) Henceforth I have always paired this text with the tune GALILEE. (So don't try to read the music out of the hymnal - I'll be playing another tune.)


The other hymn is one that is somewhat peculiar to the Episcopalians. “They cast their nets in Galilee” comes from the last four stanzas of a poem written in 1924 by attorney and poet William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), a native of Greenville, Mississippi, and a graduate of Sewanee. 

The words are simple in themselves, calling to mind “happy, simple fisherfolk” who leave their peaceful lifestyle for the Peace of God. As they soon learned, there is a cost of discipleship.

These verses entered the Hymnal 1940 with the tune composed by David McK. Williams, general music editor of that hymnal. He named the tune GEORGETOWN out of friendship for F. Bland Tucker, who was then rector of St. John's Church, Georgetown Parish, in Washington, D.C.

Michael McCabe

This hymn has been arranged by Michael McCabe, an organist and composer who had a 20 year military career. His various assignments provided McCabe with unique learning opportunities, such as study with such notable musicians as Leo Sowerby, Thomas Matthews, Dale Wood, and the composer of this hymn, David McK. Williams. He has served numerous church, including Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. As a published composer, McCabe was elected to ASCAP in 1972, and ASCAP credits include NBC Television, foreign and domestic recording, the Stockholm and Stuttgart Music Festivals.

This is a pretty straight-forward arrangement of the tune, with the choir singing in unison (or in canon) most of the time. On stanza three, McCabe comes up with a new melody which on the surface looks like the original, but is in an entirely new mode and tonality. Please pray that the tenors and basses (who sing this stanza) remembers the difference. We did not have choir rehearsal this week due to ice and general indifference.

T. Frederick H. Candlyn

The opening voluntary is a setting of our opening hymn. This is a piece I have had in my library since I was in high school. When I began playing the organ at age 15, I also began exploring the hymnal, learning many hymn-tunes that were new to me. One of those was Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above (MIT FREUDEN ZART). I have never heard a hymn that I thought was so grand, and it pained me that my small congregation in Tennessee did not know it. So I scoured a music catalogue (this was before the internet) and ordered this arrangement sight-unseen. I did not know the name of Thomas Frederick Handel Candlyn, nor the church from which he retired, St. Thomas Episcopal in Manhattan, but I loved the improvisatory style in which he wrote, and have loved playing it this 40+ years.  I hope the congregation gets something out of it, too.

Music for January 14, 2018 + The Second Sunday after Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Hush! Somebody’s Calling My Name – Brazeal Dennard (1929-2010)
• May My Light Shine – Lynn Bailey (b. 1955) and Becki Mayo (b. 1956)

Instrumental Music

• Voluntary in A Minor – Maurice Greene (1696-1755)
• Communion – François-Clément Théodore Dubois (1837 - 1924)
• Allegro in D Minor – John Stanley (1712-1786)

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 295 - Sing praise to our Creator (CHRISTUS, DER IST MEIN LEBEN)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life and let it be consecrated (HOOLINSIDE)
• Hymn R149 - I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM LORD)
• Hymn R147 - Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling (THOMPSON)
• Hymn 535 -  Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)
• Psalm 139 Domine, probasti – David Hurd

Becki Slagle Mayo

The Coventry Choir is singing an anthem that is perfect for the season after Christmas and Epiphany. The text is inspired by the Star of Bethlehem, and the music and text both quote the refrain of "We Three Kings." (Star of Wonder, Star of Light...) This work is a collaboration between two composers, Becki Slagle Mayo and Lynn Shaw Bailey.

A graduate of Campbellsville College and Mankato State University, Mayo is director of youth and children's choirs at Alpharetta (Georgia) Presbyterian Church, and maintains a private piano studio in her home. As a composer and arranger, she has published over 50 compositions with 12 major publishing companies.

Lynn Shaw Bailey

Perhaps best known by her anthems for younger and developing voices, Bailey studied music at Oklahoma Baptist University and received OBU’s Alumni Profiles in Excellence Award. She also studied composition privately with Bob Burroughs, David Schwoebel, and Alice Parker. In addition, Lynn has degrees in journalism and nursing.

A native and resident of Georgia for most of her life, Bailey and her husband now live in Waco, Texas

The Good Shepherd Choir is singing an anthem we did exactly three years ago, so I am adding this link to what I said about Hush! Somebody's Calling My Name here.

Maurice Greene

The opening and closing voluntaries are connected by a musical lineage. Maurice Greene , the composer of the opening voluntary, was an English composer in London. His grandfather, John Greene, had been the Recorder in the City of London and his father, Thomas Greene, chaplain of the Chapel Royal and canon of Salisbury. Maurice Greene was the youngest of seven children and began his musical studies as a chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral. His voice broke at the age of 14 and his musical tutoring was continued under Richard Brind, the Cathedral organist.

By the time he was but 40 years old, he held all the major musical appointments in the country,  namely Organist of St. Paul's Cathedral, Organist and Composer to the Chapel Royal, Professor of Music at Cambridge University and Master of the King's Musick. 

One of his students was the eight year old John Stanley, who, though blind from an accident since the age of two, studied "with great diligence, and a success that was astonishing" (1).  Stanley had begun his musical studies at seven with lessons from another organist  but the teacher/student partnership was not fruitful. However, under the guidance of Maurice Greene, he progressed so that by age nine he was playing the organ occasionally at All Hallows Church on Bread Street.

John Stanley

The organist at All Hallows at that time was the composer William Babell, a former pupil of Handel. Babell died on September 23rd, 1723 and exactly one month later the eleven year old Stanley was appointed organist to the church at a salary of £20 per annum!

At the age of fourteen he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew's, Holborn and at the age of seventeen became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree at Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Temple Church - a position he held until his death. It was at the ancient Temple Church that his brilliant playing upon the organ and harpsichord attracted the attention of many fine musicians including Handel who regularly visited the church to hear him.

The English organ of this period was not as developed as the German organ of the same time, often having no pedals and only two keyboards, so the music of the period is not as complex as the music of Bach or Buxtehude. The piece I am playing today has been freely arranged for the modern organ by English organist Henry Coleman. It includes a pedal part and more manual (keyboard) changes.

(1) The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces, Charles Burney (1773)

Music for May 28, 2017 + The Sunday after Ascension Day

Vocal Music

• Let Us With a Gladsome Mind – Alan Ridout (1934-1996)
• I will not leave you comfortless – Everett Titcomb (1884-1968)

Instrumental Music

• Prière du Christ montant vers son Père ("Prayer of Christ ascending towards his Father") - Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
• Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song – James Biery (
• Toccata in G - Théodore Dubois (1837 –1924)

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

• Hymn 494 - Crown him with many crowns (DIADEMATA)
• Hymn R37 - Glorify Your Name (GLORIFY YOUR NAME)
• Hymn 495 - Hail, thou once despised Jesus (IN BABILONE)
• Hymn 214, omit st. 3 - Hail the day that sees him rise (LLANFAIR)
• Hymn 315 - Thou, who at thy first Eucharist didst pray (SONG 1)
• Hymn 460 - Alleluia! Sing to Jesus! (HYFRYDOL) 
• Psalm 68:1-10, 33-26 Exsurgat Deus – Tone VII

Everett Titcomb was an American composer of sacred choral and organ music who contributed a vast amount of works for the Episcopal Church in the first half of the twentieth-century.  A native of Massachusetts, he was largely self-taught, though he was influenced by many of the well-known composers stationed in the Boston area during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Eugene Thayer, Dudley Buck, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker; yet at the same time he was keenly interested in plainchant and the polyphonic style of the 15th and 16th century Italians. For fifty years, Titcomb served the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Boston as their organist and choirmaster.

His motet for Pentecost, I Will Not Leave You Comfortless (1934) reflects his interest in Renaissance polyphony. It begins with a broad, unfolding line and emphasizes the Veni, creator chant (Come, Holy Spirit) which forms a cantus firmus in the bass voice in the Alleluia section. This motet is among his best work, and one which has remained a part of sacred and university choral repertoire into the 21st Century. It is significant for its selection to be in the official program of the 1936 English Church Music Festival in London where it was performed by 4000 voices with Titcomb in attendance. It was the first time an American composer had been featured in the festival. Subsequently, it was made famous in the United States by its inclusion in several coast-to-coast radio broadcasts of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In many ways, it launched his career as an internationally recognized composer of sacred music. (1)

The opening voluntary is the last movement of a suite written for Ascension Day by the French composer Olivier Messiaen which he arranged from his orchestral suite L'ascension. This movement is titled "Prière du Christ montant vers son Père", ("Prayer of Christ ascending to his Father"), and is accompanied by this quotation from this week's Gospel, John 17:6, 11.

I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world... And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.

This piece represents the actual ascent of Christ, wafting slowly up into the heavens, into the light of the Father, with movement beginning in the bottom register of the organ and rising to the top.
Christ's ascension is extremely slow, solemn, and full of emotion. It is written for the tender sound of the string stops on the organ. As the piece begins, it is a little sad,  but comforting. It is the sadness of those left behind who have hope that they will again see their loved one.

From the middle of the piece onward, a marvelous transformation of emotion takes place - from the sadness of the beginning to an inner confirmation of profound faith - and, as we reach the end, which continues to crescendo, the light that radiates from heaven floods the observers of this miraculous ascension with hope and love. The end is ecstatic. When we reach that point (that is, when we can no longer hear any music), we are left with the feeling that Christ's journey through the firmament continues that he is so far away that we, still here on earth, are no longer able to observe his ascent. (2)

(1)  Online diary of William Harris (March 14, 2013) retrieved from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/3/14/1194153/-Thursday-Classical-Music-Op-C109-Everett-Titcomb
(2) Gillock, Jon, Performing Messiaen's Organ Works: 66 Masterclasses. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009, pp 47