Music for March 19, 2017 + The Third Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• As Pants the Hart - Joel Martinson (b. 1960)

Instrumental Music

• Lenten Contemplation – William E. Moats (20th-21st C.)
• Antiphonal Celebration  – Kevin McChesney (b. 1963)

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

• Hymn 522 - Glorious things of thee are spoken (AUSTRIA)
• Hymn 143- The glory of these forty days (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 686 - Come thou fount of every blessing (NETTLETON)
• Hymn R122 - Surely it is God who saves me (FIRST SONG OF ISAIAH)
• Hymn R9 - As the deer (AS THE DEER)
• Hymn 690 - Guide me, O thou great Jehovah (CWM RHONDDA)
• Psalm 95 - Tone IIa

Kevin McChesney

This Sunday we feature the Good Shepherd Bell Choir in two pieces by contemporary American composers. The opening voluntary is a piece in 6/8 time called Antiphonal Celebration - not the most Lent-like title, but a nice way to start the service. It is by Kevin McChesney, a free-lance specialist in handbells who is in demand as a workshop leader across the country. Previously he was a church music director in Methodist and Presbyterian churches as well as accompanist and co‑director for the vocal music department at Air Academy High School, where he co‑directed a major production each fall season for eleven years. McChesney graduated with highest honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BMus in Composition and Theory. A composer and arranger of handbell music, Kevin currently has over 450 titles in print.

Listen for the antiphonal dialogue between treble and brass bells. The piece combines a lyrical melody with strong rhythmic energy, and uses mallets and the bell technique called martellato, where the bells are rung directly into the table pads.

The other piece uses both the full set of bells plus our three octaves of handchimes. It is a lovely medley of hymns associated with the Lenten season: SOUTHWELL (Lord Jesus, Think on Me), GETHSEMANE (Go to Dark Gethsemane), and HERZLIEBSTER JESU (Ah, Holy Jesus), all from the Hymnal 1980. This arrangement is by William E. Moats, a former band and orchestra director from Ohio. Moats graduated from Kent State University in Music Education and from Ball State University with a Master of Arts degree in Music.

He also served as choir director at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Kettering, Ohio for 15 years.  In addition to vocal choir he directed a brass ensemble, church band, folk ensemble, and handbell choir. In addition to handbell music, he has published band music, string orchestra music and brass chamber music.

Mr. Moats is currently semi-retired, currently directing an adult vocal choir in Mechanicsville, Virginia.

Music for March 12, 2017 + The Second Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• God So Loved the World – John Stainer (1840-1901)

Instrumental Music

• From Deepest Woe I Cry to Thee – Max Drischner (1891-1971)
• Song Without Words: Andante espressivo – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

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

• Hymn 401 - The God of Abraham praise (LEONI)
• Hymn 147 - Now let us all with one accord (BOURBON)
• Hymn 636 - How firm a foundation (FOUNDATION)
• Hymn R229 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn R231 - How blessed are you (Taizé)
• Hymn 473 - Lift high the cross (CRUCIFER)
• Psalm 121 - Tone IIa

Church music must be like a good sermon that everyone can understand - Max Drischner

Max Drischner (composer of the opening voluntary) was a Polish/German composer, church musician, and organist whose life and career spanned two World Wars. He began studying theology in 1910 at 19, but in 1914 he decided to go against the will of his father and take up music. He was the first German student of the famed harpsichordist Wanda Landowska in Berlin.

In 1916 he volunteered for medical service in France, and during his service there lost the end of a finger on his right hand. After the war, he taught himself about early music, the music written before J. S. Bach, and became an authority on the subject. At a time when such music was hardly ever played, Drischner had music of approximately 120 early composers in his repertoire. His music cabinet would have been worth a fortune had the Russian army and later Polish looters not stolen everything. A clavichord, a gift from Albert Schweitzers, was also used as a target and was shot to pieces by Russian soldiers.

Max Drischner and his sister Margarete

Drischner's music is distinguished by its simple, quiet, particularly melodic splendor. Compared to music being written by the leading composers of the early part of the 20th century, his music was very conservative. He wrote music for his own use, or for the simple church musician. He hated to use the organ as a concert instrument out of the liturgical context. He called his concerts "organ celebrations".

Today's opening voluntary is a piece he wrote based on the Lutheran Chorale, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (From deepest woe I cry to you, No. 151, The Hymnal 1980), based on a paraphrase of Psalm 130.  It is in the form of a passacaglia, a musical form from the early seventeenth-century based on a bass-ostinato and often written in triple metre (though not in this case).

The opening eight notes of the chorale form the ostinato which the pedal plays repetitively:

You will first hear this refrain by itself before the manuals add their own variations on the implied harmonies. Each repetition gets louder as well as more complicated until the end where the full organ is playing.

Music for March 5, 2017 + The First Sunday in Lent

Vocal Music

• Turn Thy Face From My Sin – Thomas Attwood (1765–1838)

Instrumental Music

• A Mighty Fortress Is Our God – Dietrich Buxtehude

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

• The Great Litany
• Hymn 142 - Lord, who throughout these forty days (ST. FLAVIAN)
• Hymn 380 - From all that dwells below the skies (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn R107 - You are my hiding place (Michael Ledner)
• Hymn 688 - A mighty fortress is our God (EIN FESTE BURG)
• Psalm 32 - Tone IIa

The First Sunday in Lent is like riding in a car that has been going 65 miles an hour then the driver hits the brakes because he realizes he needs to be going in the other direction. All the music from the previous weeks with its "Alleluias" and upbeat tempos are gone, and we are unaccustomed to the quietness we find in Lent.

We start the service not with a prelude and opening hymn followed by the Gloria, but with silence and then the Great Litany, sung in procession. The Great Litany is an intercessory prayer including various petitions that are said or sung by the leader, with fixed responses by the congregation. The Litany was the first English language rite prepared by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, published in 1544. Cranmer modified an earlier litany form by consolidating certain groups of petitions into single prayers with response.

The Great Litany may be said or sung, with the officiant and people kneeling or standing, or it may be done in procession, as is our custom.  Because of its penitential tone, it is especially appropriate during Lent.

The anthem is Turn thy face from my sins, with words from Psalm 51. It is by Thomas Attwood, an English organist and composer who was fortunate enough to come under the patronage of the Prince of Wales (later George IV) at the age of 16. This enabled him to travel abroad to study in Naples and later Vienna, where he was a pupil of Mozart.  In 1796, when he was 31, he was chosen as the organist of St Paul's Cathedral, and in the same year he was made composer of the Chapel Royal. 

In spite of his modest achievements in the field of composition—which include some thirty-two operas—Attwood will be remembered for a few short anthems, including "Turn Thy face from my sins" and "Teach me, O Lord" (which we sang just two weeks ago at the Bishop's visit.) 

The only other piece of music outside the usual hymns is a chorale prelude by the Baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude. Like many of the composers of the 1600s, Buxtehude loved to take a familiar hymn (in this case, Ein feste Burg - A Mighty Fortress) and add embellishments, or musical flourishes, that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central note, like a trill or a turn. Sometimes the melody becomes so drawn out that you might not even recognize it. See if you can pick "A Mighty Fortress is our God" out of the notes you'll hear from the organ during the communion.

examples of Baroque ornamentation in art

Music for February 26, 2017 + The Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Transfiguration of Christ

Vocal Music

• The Lord is My Light and Salvation – Fred Gramman (contemporary)
• The Lord Bless You and Keep You – John Rutter (b. 1945)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude and Fugatoon “St. Elizabeth” – Gordon Young (1919-1998)
• Christ Upon the Mountain Peak – Joyce Moon Stroble (contemporary)
• Shine, Jesus, Shine – David Blackwell, arr. (b. 1961)

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

• Hymn 427 - When morning gilds the skies (LAUDES DOMINI)
• Hymn 383 - Fairest Lord Jesus (St. ELIZABETH)
• Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise (SALZBURG)
• Hymn 328 - Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord (SONG 46)
• Hymn R247 - Lord, the light of your love is shining (SHINE JESUS SHINE)
• Psalm 99 - Dominus regnavit (Tone V)

This Sunday we focus on the story of Jesus' Transfiguration - that time when Jesus, Peter, James and John went to the Mount of Transfiguration to pray, and Jesus began to shine with bright rays of light. The prophets Moses and Elijah appeared next to him and he spoke with them. The actual feast day is August 6, but the Revised Common Lectionary chooses to end the season after Epiphany with the telling of the Transfiguration story.

If we look at the collect for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in our prayer book, we can see reasons why the Transfiguration of Our Lord is celebrated when it is:

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Episcopal Church, 1979, page 217.)

We celebrate the revelation of Christ's glory "before the passion" so that we may "be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness." The focus of the Lenten season is renewed discipline in walking in the way of the cross and rediscovery of the baptismal renunciation of evil and sin and our daily adherence to Christ. At Easter, which reveals the fullness of Christ’s glory (foreshadowed in the Transfiguration), Christians give themselves anew to the gospel at the Easter Vigil where they share the dying and rising of Christ.

In the biblical context, the synoptic gospels narrate the Transfiguration as a bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.

The key words in the story of the transfiguration and, indeed, the entire season of Epiphany are light and glory. Much of the music today references those themes.

One of the few hymns specifically for Transfiguration is Christ, upon the mountain peak, written by contemporary English poet Brian Wren in 1962. Peter Cutts wrote the tune SHILLINGFORD specifically for that text, and both text and tune are in our hymnal (hymn 130). But it is not really the kind of tune that easily catches on, as most hymnals which have included this text use another tune. (In fact, even our hymnal includes another tune as an alternate.) It looks innocent enough on paper, but upon hearing it you become aware of a tonal ambiguity that frankly freaks out the average congregation singer.

But the recent publication, Bayoubuchlein*, published for the 2016 American Guild of Organist convention here in Houston, includes a setting of this hymn which I think works well during communion. 

Joyce Moon Strobel's arrangement begins with an undulating eighth note accompaniment in the right hand, with the melody coming in quietly in the left hand. Taking a cue from the adventuresome tonality of the melody, Strobel also ventures into new keys for each of the three times she presents the tune. A graduate of the Conservatory at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joyce Strobel has served as Organist/Choir Director at St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Scott Township, in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 1986.

* Bayoubüchlein: New Choral Preludes for AGO Houston 2016

This distinctive new collection of organ music for the liturgical year was commissioned for the 2016 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Houston. The title refers to J. S. Bach’s volume of chorale-based organ works and Houston’s Gulf Coast waterways. Realizing that newer hymn tunes often lacked chorale preludes, the convention’s new music committee decided that each piece in this collection would be based on a hymn tune composed since 1960. The works chosen are a combination of pieces commissioned by the convention and pieces selected from an open “call for scores.” 

Music for February 19, 2017 + The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

10:15 service

Instrumental Music

• These are the Holy Ten Commandments, BWV 678 – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
• Prelude on “Chereponi” - Ann Krentz Organ (b. 1960)
• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein (21st C.)
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn 518 - Christ is made the sure foundation (WESTMINISTER ABBEY)
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn 424 - For the fruit of all creation (EAST ACKLAM)
• Hymn R148 - Brother, let me be your servant (THE SERVANT SONG)
• Hymn R289 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Bishop Andy Doyle Visitation at 5 PM

Vocal Music

• Teach Me, O Lord – Thomas Attwood (1765-1838)
• The Servant Song – Richard Gilliard, arr. David Haas

Instrumental Music

• Baptized into Your Name Most Holy – Mark Nickelbein
• Fugue in G (Gigue) – J. S. Bach

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

• Hymn R172 - In our lives, Lord, be glorified (LORD, BE GLORIFIED)
• Hymn R185 - Lord, prepare me (SANCTUARY)
• Hymn R5 - God is here, as we your people (ABBOT’S LEIGH)     
• Hymn 657 - Love divine, all loves excelling (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn R 266 - Give thanks with a grateful heart (GIVE THANKS)
• Hymn 602 - Jesu, Jesu (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 637 - How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord (LYONS)

Charlton Heston (not Moses) 

Two services this Sunday! Same scriptures, but different feel. The choir will not be singing at the 10:15 service but will be at the 5 PM service with Bishop Doyle.

At the 10:15 service, I am starting with a chorale prelude by Bach based on an old chorale by Martin Luther. Luther wrote an entire hymn setting the 10 commandments in verse. Once very popular, appearing in over 100 hymns when it was first written, it has not appeared in any hymnals published since 1900. Bach's setting of the hymn, however, is still a classic.

Two things are going on in this chorale prelude. First, the tune is played by the left hand on a trumpet-like sound, in canon. A canon is a compositional technique that presents the melody with the same melody starting after a given duration (in this case, two measures.) Think of how you sing “Three Blind Mice” or a similar round. That’s what’s happening here. It is also what we call a strict canon, where the notes and rhythm of the second part is exactly the same as the leader. Most musicologists think Bach used this strict technique to emphasize the strictness of the law. (I find it interesting that the musical term for the imitative technique “canon” is also used to describe any church's or religion's laws, rules, and regulations, i.e. “canon law.”)

The other thing going on in this prelude is that the right hand is playing a lovely, lyrical melody full of chromaticism that could stand quite well on its own without the addition of the chorale melody. This lilting accompaniment is the perfect foil for the inflexible canonic entrance of the hymn-tune. Hermann Schroeder, in his book on the music of Bach, suggests that Bach purposely chose 

to bring warmth to the inflexible, inexorable cantus firmus in the Christian thought, "God is love." Serene faith and imploring sighs are the two poles of this feeling, as Bach expresses it here.

In other words, grace.

At the 5 PM service, the choir continues the Law theme with Thomas Attwood's short anthem, Teach Me, O Lord (the way of thy statutes). 

At first a chorister in the Chapel Royal, Thomas Attwood, in 1781, became a Page in the household of the Prince of Wales, who sent him to study in Naples and then in Vienna as a pupil of Mozart. Returning to London in 1787, he continued his connection with the court and was appointed organist at St Paul's Cathedral and composer of the Chapel Royal, eventually to take the position of organist. In the last decade of the eighteenth century he wrote a quantity of music for the theater, but his principal contribution in the end turned out to be to church music.

Music for February 12, 2017 + The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• O For a Closer Walk With God – Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
• If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)

Instrumental Music

• Air from Orchestral Suite in D – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Saraband on “Land of Rest” – Gerald Near (b. 1942)
• Allegro, Op. 105, No. 6 - C. V. Stanford 

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

• Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of glory (CWM RHONDDA)
• Hymn 674 -“Forgive our sins as we forgive” (DETROIT)
• Hymn 707 - Take my life, and let it be (HOLLINGSIDE)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn R231 - How blessed are you (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 344 - Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (SICILIAN MARINERS)

Sometimes you just need to hear (or perform) a beautiful melody. That's the reason I am playing an organ transcription of J. S. Bach's lovely Air. Often called "Air on the G String," it was part of Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, written for Prince Leopold, Bach's employer in the little principality of Anhalt-Cothen between 1717 and 1723. This movement became popular over 100 year later, when German violinist August Wilhelm arranged the piece for violin and piano to be played on the evocative G-string of the violin .

The melody is typical of a melody from the Baroque period, as it winds its way all over the musical scale, leaping up and down the keyboard before wriggling back to whence it came. In my music appreciation class, this never fails to be the piece that captures the attention of people who may have never heard of Bach. One of the more unusual performances (and most striking) is this performance by Bobby McFerrin (a good Episcopalian, btw).

Bobby McFerrin Sings Bach

The offertory anthem is a setting of a of a hymn by the poet William Cowper. From the handbook to the Psalter Hymnal we learn that he wrote this text on December 9, 1769, during the illness of his long-time friend and housekeeper, Mrs. Unwin. "In a letter written the next day Cowper voiced his anxieties about her condition and about what might happen to him if she died. Saying that he composed the text "to surrender up to the Lord" all his "dearest comforts," Cowper added,

Her illness has been a sharp trial to me. Oh, that it may have a sanctifying effect!. . . I began to compose the verses yesterday morning before daybreak, but fell asleep at the end of the first two lines; when I awoke again, the third and fourth were whispered to my heart in a way which I have often experienced.

"Although Cowper frequently battled depression, doubt, and melancholy, this text speaks of a very intimate walk with the Lord. That walk is rooted in Scripture (st. 1), rejoices in conversion (st. 2-3), and denounces all idols that would usurp God's sovereignty (st. 4). The text concludes with a return to the prayer of the first stanza, but now that prayer is sung with increased confidence and serenity." -Psalter Hymnal Handbook

The tune, CAITHNESS, is Scottish, as was the arranger, Charles Villiers Stanford.

Music for February 5, 2017 + The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Vocal Music

• Give Almes of Thy Goods – Christopher Tye (1505-1572)

Instrumental Music

• Prelude on Slane – Healey Willan (1880-1968)
• Let Us Break Bread Together – Dale Wood (1934-2003)
• Trumpet Tune in D – David N. Johnson (1922-1988)

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

• Hymn 372 - Praise to the Living God (LEONI)
• Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart (SLANE)
• Hymn 380 - From all that dwell below the skies (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn 325 - Let us break bread together (LET US BREAK BREAD)
• Hymn R306 - We are marching in the light of the Lord (SIYAHAMBA)

The anthem this morning is by the 16th century composer Christopher Tye. Tye was the choirmaster at Ely Cathedral during the reign of Henry the VIII, and as such contributed new music for the Anglican church, including this anthem, Give Almes of thy Goods. (The word almes being an Middle English spelling and pronunciation of alms, or charitable gifts.)

Give Almes of thy Goods is a short setting of an offertory sentence which appeared in both the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer. This is an Tudor creation in every way. Constructed in the ABB form of the early English anthem, this four-voice piece is entirely syllabic, exactly as Thomas Cramner, the architect of the Book of Common Prayer, required: "to every syllable a note."

Northeast aspect of Ely Cathedral
by John Buckler

And, yes, the closing voluntary is the Trumpet Tune in D by David Johnson which was heard every Sunday for years on KUHF(KUHA) as the theme music for the Sunday morning program "With Heart and Voice" until the station was taken off the air. It was a sad day for music and the arts in Houston.