Music for October 6, 2019

Vocal Music

• O Lord, Increase My Faith – Henry Loosemore (c.1600-1670)

Instrumental Music

• By the Water of Babylon, BWV 653 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Amazing Grace – George Shearing (1919-2011)
• Chaconne – Louis Couperin (1626-1661)

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

• Hymn R 49 - Let the whole creation cry (LLANFAIR)
• Hymn 671 - Amazing grace, how sweet the sound (NEW BRITAIN)
• Hymn 380 - Praise God from whom all blessings flow (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn 660 - O Master, let me walk with thee (MARYTON)
• Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
• Hymn 535 - Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim (PADERBORN)

George Michael, who has nothing to do with this Sunday's music, but got your attention.

As George Michael said, "You Gotta Have Faith."

In Sunday's Gospel, the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. (Luke 17:5-6)

The Good Shepherd Choir asks the same thing in this Sunday’s anthem.

O Lord, increase my faith,
strengthen me and confirm me in Thy true faith;
endue me with wisdom, charity, and patience,
in all my adversity, Sweet Jesu, say Amen.

Attributed for many years to the English composer Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), modern scholarly research reveals the composer as Henry Loosemore, an English composer and organist. His father, John Loosemore, built the organ at Exeter Cathedral.  Henry Loosemore served as the organist at King's College, Cambridge.  In 1640, Loosemore was granted the degree of B.Mus by the University, on the supplication of King's College avowing that 'he had studied the art of musical composition for seven years, together with its practice, and has achieved approval of those skilled in the art.'

Psalm 137 is an alternate Psalm for the day. (We will be singing Psalm 37). The text,

1. By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
2. On the willows there we hung up our harps.
3. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

describes the desperate situation of the Israelites in exile.

In 1525, Wolfgang Dachstein wrote a German Chorale based on the psalm, and many 17th century organists used the chorale in both organ and choral settings. J. S. Bach was one of those. In his collection known as the 18 Choräle or Leipziger Choräle, Bach included two different versions. One of them, BWV 653b, has five voices, and the melody sounds ethereally in the upper voice, against a sombre double pedal part. In the other version, BWV 653a, the ornamented melody in the middle voice is wedged between two upper voices and pedal. This is the version I will play as the opening voluntary.

This latter version was clearly Bach’s favourite, as he revised the material in his later years in Leipzig, by adding even more ornamentation to the melody and further accentuating the drawn-out rhythm as a slow sarabande (a slow, stately Spanish dance in triple time). In this way, he emphasised the point of this chorale, which is expressed in the later verses of the text, where the Israelites are forced to sing a song of praise. But how are they to sing in such hopeless circumstances? That is precisely what Bach conveys in this chorale prelude. Although the oppressors have got the exiles right where they want them, the timid middle voice keeps going courageously, and with all the ornamentation displays faith in a good outcome.(1)

The closing voluntary is also in an ancient dance form, this time the chaconne, a composition in a series of varying sections in slow triple time, typically over a short repeated bass theme. Originally a stately dance performed to a chaconne, popular in the 18th century, here we have an organ arrangement of a harpsichord piece by French composer Louis Couperin. Couperin moved to Paris in 1650–1651, where he worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court.

This arrangement is by the early 20th century French organist, Joseph Bonnet.

(1) A Somber Sarabande, Netherlands Bach Society, https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-653/

Music for September 29, 2019

Good Shepherd School Sunday

The Children of the Good Shepherd School

Vocal Music

• Noah’s Ark – Cristi Cary Miller (contemporary)

Instrumental Music

• Trumpet Prelude in D – Johan Helmich Roman (1694 – 1758)
• Sheep May Safely Graze – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Dona Nobis Pacem - Handchimes
• Processional of Joy – Hal H. Hopson (b. 1933)

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

• Hymn 380 - From all that dwells below the skies (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn R-37 - Glorify Your Name
• Hymn - Through North and South  (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 711 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God (SEEK YE FIRST)
• Hymn - The Lord is my shepherd (Good Shepherd School Song)
• Hymn 594 - God of grace and God of Glory (CWM RHONDDA)

St. Michael and All Angels

Choral High Mass, 5 p.m..

Vocal Music

• oks Fly Homeward – Arthur Baynon (1889-1954)
• Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs – Paul Ritchie (b. 1954)
• Here, O My Lord – Eleanor Daley (b. 1955)

Instrumental Music

• Suite Gothique: Prière à Notre Dame– Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897)
• Our Father, Who in Heaven Art – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
• Suite Gothique: Toccata– Léon Boëllmann

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

• Hymn 618 - Ye watchers and ye holy ones (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Psalm 103 - Bless the Lord, My Soul (Jacques Berthier)
• Hymn 282 - Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels (CAELITES PLAUDANT)
• Hymn R 75 - Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore him (HYFRYDOL)
• Hymn 324 - Let all mortal flesh keep silence (PICARDY)
• Hymn 307 - Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor (BRYN CALFARIA)

Guido Reni, St. Michael, c. 1636

Music for Sunday, September 22, 2019

Vocal Music

• Psalm 113 – Edward Bairstow (1874-1946)
• I Choose Love – Mark A. Miller (21st Century)

Instrumental Music

• Solemn Melody – H. Walford Davies (1869-1941)
• Prelude in B-flat – Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
• Toccata in D Minor – Max Reger (1873-1916)

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

• Hymn 475 - God himself is with us (TYSK)
• Hymn 605 - What does the Lord require (SHARPETHORNE)
• Hymn R 255 - Give to our God immortal praise (DUKE STREET)
• Hymn 488 - Be thou my vision (SLANE)
• Hymn 676 - There is a balm in gilead (BALM IN GILEAD)
• Hymn 390 - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (LOBE DEN HERREN)

This Sunday the choir is singing a very simple but powerful anthem written by Mark A. Miller, a Associate Professor of Church Music and Composer In Residence at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Written in response to the tragic massacre at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina in June 2015, this anthem represents our solidarity to love in the midst of pain, of war, of brokenness. We choose love. We choose community. What better way to share this message than through powerful song?  I have been humming the tune all week, and allowing the words to wash over me and nurture my soul. I hope they will do the same for you:

In the midst of pain, I choose love.
In the midst of pain, sorrow falling down like rain,
I await the sun again, I choose love.

In the midst of war, I choose peace.
In the midst of war, hate and anger keeping score,
I will seek the good once more, I choose peace.

When my world falls down, I will rise.
When my world falls down, explanations can’t be found,
I will climb to holy ground, I will rise.

In addition to his post at Drew, Miller is a Lecturer in the Practice of Sacred Music at Yale University and Minister of Music of Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey and Composer in Residence of Harmonium Choral Society in NJ. From 2002-2007 he was Director of Contemporary Worship at Marble Collegiate Church and from 1999-2001 was Assistant Organist and Music Associate at the Riverside Church, both in New York City. Since 1999 he has travelled to every part of the country delighting congregations with the power and joy of music making. Mark received his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Yale University and his Master of Music in Organ Performance from Juilliard.

Music for September 15, 2019

Vocal Music

• I Sought the Lord – David Ashley White (b. 1944)

Instrumental Music

• Sonata II: Ruhig Bewegt – Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
• Messe pour les Convents: X. Chromhorne sur la Taille – François Couperin (1668-1733)
• Sonata II: Lebhaft – Paul Hindemith

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

• Hymn 377 - All people that on earth do dwell (OLD 100TH)
• Hymn 470 - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy (BEECHER)
• Hymn 708 - Savior, like a shepherd lead us (SICILIAN MARINERS)
• Hymn R 217 - You satisfy the hungry heart (GIFT OF FINEST WHEAT)
• Hymn R 277 - What wondrous love is this? (WONDROUS LOVE)
• Hymn 410 - Praise, my soul, the King of heaven (LAUDA ANIMA)
• Psalm 51:1-11 (1-4, 7-8, 11a)- Tone VIIIb

Thomas Jackson Oldrin
August 10, 1996 ~ August 6, 2017

22 years ago, when I first came to Good Shepherd, we had a young mother singing in our choir with a toddler. As the dad wasn't a church goer, she would bring the young boy with her to church on Sunday, and he would sit in the loft with us. People in the congregation down below began to look for his round, cherubic face pressed up against the glass which use to be in the choir loft rail. But life happened, and a divorce brought about a move from the suburb of Kingwood to the inner loop of Houston, and thus a move from Good Shepherd to Palmer Memorial. We missed young Thomas' growing up, and his subsequent battle with cancer, but we kept up through our friendship with his mother, Sarah and social media. Thomas won his battle with cancer, but lost his war with depression. He passed away in August of 2017.

Our mutual friend and church musician/composer, David Ashley White, wrote a beautiful anthem which he dedicated to Sarah Emes and her son, Thomas Oldrin. With a text by an anonymous poet, the anthem was premiered by the Palmer choir and published by Selah Publishing Co. in June 2018. Sarah gave copies of the anthem to Good Shepherd so that we, too, could sing in memory of Thomas.

The Opening and closing voluntaries are from the second organ sonata of Paul Hindemith, one of the principal German composers of the first half of the 20th century and a leading musical theorist. He sought to revitalize tonality—the traditional harmonic system that was being challenged by many other composers—and also pioneered in the writing of Gebrauchsmusik, or “utility music,” compositions for everyday occasions. He regarded the composer as a craftsman (turning out music to meet social needs) rather than as an artist (composing to satisfy his own soul). As a teacher of composition he probably exerted an influence on most of the composers of the generation that followed him. He was one of the first composers to offer classes in Film Music

In 1935 at the invitation of the Turkish government, Hindemith moved to Turkey to oversee the organization of musical life there. It was during this time that he helped Jewish musicians escape to Turkey. At the outbreak of World War II, he emigrated to the USA. After a series of lectures at Yale University, he became a part of the permanent faculty, where he founded the Yale Collegium Musicum for historically based performances. He became a US citizen in 1946.

Hindemith was not an organist, and found the instrument uninspiring because it could not "breathe." Nevertheless, his three Sonatas, with their mastery of counterpoint, clarity of form, bold harmonic language and deeply expressive treatment of melody, are recognised as among the great works of modern organ literature.

Music for September 8, 2019

Vocal Music

• Teach Me, O Lord – Thomas Attwood (1765-1838)

Instrumental Music

• Prélude, Opus 15, no. 5 – Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
• From God Shall Naught Divide Me, BuxWV 220 – Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
• Tuba Tune in D Major, Op. 15 – C. S. Lang (1891-1971)

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

• Hymn 400 - All creatures of our God and king (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn 675 - Take up your cross, the Savior said (BOURBON)
• Hymn 635 - If thou but suffer God to guide thee (WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT)
• Hymn - I have decided to follow Jesus (ISSAM)
• Hymn R 206 - Holy, holy (HOLY HOLY)
• Hymn 423 - Immortal, invisible (ST. DENIO)
• Psalm 1 – Tone VIb

Thomas Attwood (unknown painter)

Two weeks ago the Good Shepherd Choir sang an anthem by Mozart, and the week before we featured music by Mendelssohn. Today we sing an anthem by an English composer who bridged the two, Thomas Attwood. Attwood was organist at St. Paul's Cathedral in London from 1796 until his death. He began his musical career as a chorister in the Chapel Royal. The Prince of Wales, later George IV, sent him to Italy to study music when Attwood was 18, and then on to Vienna, where he became a student and friend to Mozart. Mozart told a friend, "I have the sincerest affection for Attwood, and i feel much pleasure in telling you that he has imbibed more of my style than any other scholar I have ever had." (1) Today's anthem, Teach Me, O Lord, dates from 1797, and exhibits much of Mozart's style. It has many of the same melodic and harmonic characteristics of Ave Verum, Mozart's miniature masterpiece.

Later in his life, Attwood became a close friend to the young composer Mendelssohn. During Mendelssohn's first trip to London, he suffered a knee injury in an accident, and spent the latter part of his recuperation in Attwood's home at Beulah Hill in Norwood. Following a second stay at  Norwood in 1832, Mendelssohn dedicated his Three Preludes and Fugues for the Organ (Op. 37) to Attwood.

(1) Wienand, Elwyn A. and Young, Robert H., The Anthem in England and America, The Free Press, 1970, p. 248 

Music for September 1, 2019

Vocal Music

• Bread of the World – Carlton Young (b. 1926)

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

• Hymn 376 - Joyful, joyful, we adore thee (HYMN TO JOY)
• Hymn R 141 - Come, ye sinners, poor and needy (ARISE)
• Hymn - Through north and south  (LAAST UNS ERFREUEN)
• Hymn R 148 - Brother, let me be your servant (SERVANT SONG)
• Hymn R 29 - He is Lord (HE IS LORD)
• Hymn 477 - All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine (ENGELBERG)
• Psalm 112 – Tone Va

Carlton Young

I am away this weekend, mourning the last gasp of summer. In my stead, Rob Carty will be playing the organ, and the choir will sing a setting of the hymn Bread of the World in Mercy Broken, set to the early American tune, CHARLESTOWN, by the Methodist composer Carlton R. Young. This tune was a folk tune included in a 1799 tunebook, The United States Sacred Harmony. (You guessed it; it was discovered in Charleston, South Carolina.) This tune is in our hymnal, but set with a completely different text, "All who love and serve your city."

Young wrote this arrangement for Christ Memorial Lutheran Church here in Houston. A native of Hamilton, Ohio, he was a teacher, editor, composer and conductor, with the unique distinction of serving as editor of two revisions of hymnals for Methodists: The Methodist Hymnal, 1966; and The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989.

The opening hymn is that great hymn, Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, with its tune from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Here are some notes on the hymn from the website Hymnary.com.

Henry Van Dyke’s brilliant hymn of praise has many layers that add to the beauty of his text. As hymnologist Albert Bailey writes, within Van Dyke’s text, “creation itself cannot conceal its joy, and that joy is appreciated by God the center of it all; likewise all nature fills us with joy, caused fundamentally by our recognition of God as the giver” (The Gospel in Hymns, 554). We experience joy on many levels: we witness the joy expressed by Creation, we bask in the joy of God as He delights in us, and we experience our own joy as we reflect on all God has done for us and through us. We have all heard this line over and over again, but it’s worth repeating: we rush through life too quickly to stop and be filled with joy. We allow the phone calls we have to make, the laundry we need to fold, the paper we need to write, and the porch we need to fix get in the way of simply stopping, looking around, and being filled with joy and gratitude at the world God has given us. It’s a world where we have people to call, children to clothe, knowledge to express, and parties to host. And more so than anything, even when it seems to be crumbling around us, it’s a world redeemed by Christ. What can we raise to our Savior but this outburst of joy?

ODE TO JOY or HYMN TO JOY is the adaptation of Beethoven’s famous final movement in his Ninth Symphony into a melody fit for congregational singing. Around 1908, Henry Jackson Van Dyke wrote his text to be “sung to the music of Beethoven’s ‘Hymn to Joy.’”  It is a tune of grandeur and, fittingly, joy. It almost begs to be sung in a fast, upbeat manner; Jerry Jenkins writes, “the tune is so reminiscent of sprightly harpsichords that the words begin to bounce, and suddenly I’m singing it the way it was meant to be sung – at least in style” (Hymns for Personal Devotions, 132).

The only point of contention about this tune revolves around one note. In Beethoven’s symphony, there is a pick-up note into the third line – many try to imitate this. Paul Westermeyer argues that using this syncopated rhythm allows the congregation to sing music “in its integrity” (Let the People Sing, 202). Austin Lovelace, however, argues that “syncopation is a stumbling block to congregational singing and does nothing to make the hymn easier to sing or understand” (Let the People Sing, 202). In this case, Lovelace is probably right. 

Hymnary.org, Featured Hymn: "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" Sat, 08/17/2019

Music for August 25, 2019

Rally Day

Vocal Music

• Laudate Dominum – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Marion Russell Dixon, soprano

Instrumental Music

• Galliard on “Gather Us In” – James Biery (b. 1956)
• Come Sunday – Duke Ellington (1899-1971), arr. Craig Curry
• Toccata on “Gather Us In” – Donald M. VerKuilen III (b. 1994)

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

• Hymn 8 - Morning has broken (BUNESSAN)
• Hymn 523 - Glorious things of thee are spoken (ABBOTT’S LEIGH)
• Hymn 493 - O for a thousand tongues to sing (AZMON)
• Hymn 297 - Descend, O Spirit, purging flame (ERHALT UNS, HERR)
• Hymn 304 - I come with joy to meet my Lord (LAND OF REST)
• Hymn 685 - Rock of Ages (TOPLADY)
• Hymn R 149 - I, the Lord of sea and sky (HERE I AM, LORD)
• Psalm 71:1-6 - Tone VIIIa

A quick search on the internet of the word “Rally” led me to images of cars: specifically race cars. Other suggestions on Google refine the search to either “school” (as in “pep rally”), political (as in Trump),  or protest (again, as in Trump). No matter which direction you take your search, you are looking at a high-energy event, with lots of noise and excitement.

So, naturally, when planning the music for this Sunday, the day we call “Rally Day,” I would normally look at music of a more upbeat, celebratory nature. This is true of the organ voluntaries, and many of the hymns we will sing this Sunday.

Marion Russell Dickson

It is not true, however, of the choir’s anthem, a setting of Psalm 117. With just two verses and sixteen words in Hebrew, it is the shortest of all the Psalms. We are singing Mozart’s sublime setting of the text, taken from his Vesperae solennes de confessore (Solemn Vespers for a Confessor), written in 1780 as a Vesper service for the Salzburg Cathedral. It is for soprano solo, sung by Kingwood’s own Marion Russell Dickson; the choir quietly enters at the conclusion of the psalm with the Gloria Patri, and the Marion will rejoin them at the Amen. 

I thought the contemporary hymn ,"Gather Us In (hymn 14 in Renew),  would be a great hymn for Rally Day. We don't know it (yet) as a congregational hymn, so I have found two organ pieces based on this American hymn to "frame" our worship service. 

The opening voluntary is a galliard (a lively dance in triple time) by the Michigan organist James Biery. Biery is Minister of Music at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church (Presbyterian) in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, where he directs the choirs, plays the organ, and oversees the music program of the church. Prior to this appointment Biery was music director for Cathedrals in St. Paul, Minnesota and Hartford, Connecticut.

The closing voluntary is another setting of the hymn "Gather Us In, by the young composer Donald VerKuilen III. This is a toccata which was one of the winners of the 2016 American Guild of Organists New Music Competition, which was premiered here in Houston. A native of Appleton Wisconsin, VerKuilen is a graduate of The Oberlin Conservatory. He has studied performance and improvisation with Marie-Louise Langlais, former professor at The Conservatoire de Paris and widow of the famed organist Jean Langlais. VerKuilen currently serves as Director of Music at Saint Rocco Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio.

Duke Ellington

The communion voluntary is a piano arrangement of Duke Ellington's song, "Come Sunday." Originally part of his instrumental jazz suite Black, Brown and Beige (1943), a musical history of African Americans, Ellington added text to this instrumental theme in 1958 and the song became a standard at his sacred jazz concerts.

I thought of this piece while reading the Gospel for this Sunday. Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath, and is criticized.  Jesus answered his critics, "...ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 

African American scholar William McClain notes the importance of Sunday to African Americans, even in secular music: “To the Christian Sunday is, or should be, another Easter, in which God’s victory in Christ over sin and death are celebrated in work, word, song, prayer, and preaching. After all, even [slave] masters and owners tried to be more human on Sunday.” [1]

The song is ultimately about the providence of God in all our lives. The refrain addresses God directly, “Lord, dear Lord above, God Almighty, God of love,” and then makes a petition, “please look down and see my people through.” The stanzas point to hope and heaven, concluding that “With God’s blessing we can make it through eternity.”

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, please look down and see my people through.
I believe that God put sun and moon up in the sky.
I don't mind the gray skies
'cause they're just clouds passing by.
Heaven is a goodness time.
A brighter light on high.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
And have a brighter by and by.
Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love, please look down and see my people through.

[1] Hawn, C. Michael, History of Hymns: “Come Sunday” reflects Duke Ellington’s faith & sacred jazz tradition retrieved August 22, 2019 (https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-come-sunday-reflects)