Sunday Music Musings January 6, 2024

Last week we brought back Lessons and Carols in the tradition of Kings College Cambridge. (Watch our livestream here.) I always spend Christmas Eve morning listening to the live broadcast from England, but this year 10 a.m. found us American church musicians playing Advent IV! Luckily you can still catch the broadcast for a few week’s from BBC Radio. I highly recommend it! The Kings College always starts with one chorister singing Once in Royal David’s City as a solo broadcast live around the world. For this reason, all the singers have to be ready and they let the chorister know right before the service begins! Our tradition at Grace is to start our Christmas morning service like this, this year Annabelle Palmer did a great job although she was off-camera (watch here).

Our readers at Lessons and Carols all did a great job on the traditional King James language, including some young readers and Mayor Conley! I did not write a blog last week, as I was still in the throes of the season with First Night Morris that night, which went really well. You can read about it here. It was nice to get in some more Christmas, and we also celebrated Epiphany at Compline for Kids aka Pizza and Prayer on Wednesday.

Its exciting to have a lot of baptisms for this Sunday which is The Baptism of Jesus. There is a lot of music specific to this service.

A hymn for the Baptism of Christ is the 16th century German chorale Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (words by Martin Luther – “Christ our Lord came to the Jordan”) – found in our hymnal at #139. Although unfamiliar to us, it would have been well-known to the 17th century Lutheran, who may have recognized it despite the very ornamented quality of the great Buxtehude’s setting. Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637 –1707) was originally from Denmark, in 1668 he got a major position at the Marienkirche, Lübeck, Germany. In 1705, J.S. Bach, then a young man of twenty, walked 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck, and stayed nearly three months to hear the Abendmusik concerts and meet the famous organist and learn from him. In addition to his musical duties, Buxtehude, like his predecessor Tunder, served as church treasurer!

Our first hymn is What Star is this? to the tune PUER NOBIS, a melody from a 15th century Trier manuscript. The words by Charles Coffin (1676-1749) French teacher, and Rector of the University of Paris, celebrate the star and its guidance to seek Jesus, even today. We always sing this with a handbell peal, which is festive in proession!

The offertory is a setting of Howard Thurman’s wonderful poem below, incorporating the Epiphany tune Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern (How Brightly Shines the Morning Star) in the accompaniment.

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky has withdrawn,

When the kings see their prophecy rightly fulfilled,

When the princes and shepherds have gone;

Then the true work of Christmas begins.

to find the lost,

to heal the broken hearts,

to feed the hungry,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among all brothers,

to make music in the heart.

Howard Washington Thurman (1899 – 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. (Wikipedia) (below, detail from a stained glass window at Howard University.)

The composer, Mark Schweizer (1956-2019), was the founder of St. James Music Press in 1992. In addition to his work as a composer and editor, he was the author of the humorous Liturgical Mysteries and in demand as a clinician and conductor.

The presentation hymn Christ When for Us You Were Baptized (CAITHNESS) sets the gospel out straightforwardly in the words of American Bible scholar, priest and hymn writer Francis Bland Tucker (1895-1984).

Our service music (Sanctus and Agnus) is going back to our best known setting by David Hurd (b. 1950), composer, concert organist, choral director and educator who was at General Theological Seminary, New York City, for 28 years and is currently serving The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. You can read more about him in my February 20, 2021 blog.

I will play a set of variations on PUER NOBIS by French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist Nicolas-Antoine Lebègue (1631-1702) while the choir takes communion.

All the choirs and soloists of every age really love to sing the spiritual Wade in the Water on this Sunday. This spiritual of course has many layers of meaning, referring to Exodus and crossing the river Jordan to the promised land—and it was used by escaping slaves as warning to get off the trail and into the water when being tracked by slave-owners.

Our final hymn is Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, set to ES FLOG EIN KLEINS WALDVOGELEIN, a German folksong (“There Flew a Little Forest Bird”) adapted by H. Walford Davies (1869-1941) for A Students Hymnal 1923. The text is a paraphrase of the Epiphany psalm 72 versified by James Montgomery (1771-1854). According to Bert Polman at hymnary.org, “Montgomery, the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes.”

Sir Henry Walford Davies (1869 –1941) was an English composer, organist and educator who was highly influential as an Anglican church musician, writing chants and anthems (as well as orchestral and chamber works.) He began his career as a chorister at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. He studied composition with Parry and Stanford. Highlights of his stellar career include being appointed musical advisor to the BBC, organist and director of the choir at the Temple Church in London, becoming well known both as a soloist and as a teacher – the most celebrated of his pupils being Leopold Stokowski. On the death of Sir Edward Elgar in 1934, Davies was appointed to succeed him as Master of the King’s Music. Walford Davies setting of O Little Town of Bethlehem “Christmas Carol” was sung by the Adult Choir at Lessons and Carols and the 9 pm service, and introduced to me by former choir member Eleanor Wroath.

Our postlude is In dir ist Freude (In Thee is Gladness) from J. S. Bach (1685-1750)’s Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book), traditionally (liturgically) played for the New Year.  It has a joyful repeated leaping pedal figure and ascending and descending scales in the hands that sound like the pealing of many bells. My friend Chris also played it as the postlude at our wedding.