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Music Notes for August 11, 2024

Hymn of the Day: O Living Bread from Heaven ELW 542
Text: Johann Rist, 1607–1667; tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1827–1878, alt.
Tune: AURELIA, Samuel S. Wesley, 1810–1876

Phrase after phrase in “O living Bread from heaven” (ELW 542) complements this Sunday’s readings. Like Elijah, we too are strengthened to live and to serve God by serving others. The author Johann Rist (1607–1667) was a Lutheran pastor who, while serving in many situations of social calamity and personal agony, wrote nearly 700 hymns. The tune, AURELIA, was composed by Samuel Wesley, the grandson of Charles Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism.
— Gail Ramshaw

AURELIA (meaning "golden") was published as a setting for “Jerusalem the Golden” in Selection of Psalms and Hymns, which was compiled by Charles Kemble and Wesley in 1864. Shortly after, to the chagrin of some, it was paired with “The Church’s One Foundation”, a text by Samuel John Stone (1839-1900): Dr. Henry Gauntlett was apparently very annoyed by this match-up, as he thought Wesley’s tune was “inartistic, secular twaddle.” Though opinions vary concerning the tune's merits, it has been firmly associated with Stone's text since tune and text first appeared together in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Offertory: Carlisle, Charles Callahan (1951)

The hymn tune “Carlisle” was written by Charles Lockhart (1745-1815). He was first organist of the Lock Hospital, and was for some years associated with Martin Madan in the musical arrangements there. Though blind from infancy, Lockhart had a distinct musical gift, and was especially known for training children’s choirs. He published a set of hymn tunes about 1810 of which this was one. “Carlisle” was his most popular hymn tune and it can be found in 92 hymnals.

Charles Callahan is a well-known composer, organist, choral conductor, pianist and teacher. He is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pa., and The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. The serene and tranquil nature found in the “Carlisle” tune pairs well with the gentle, confident lyricism of Callahan’s compositions.

Opening Voluntary: Chorale Improvisation #51, Op. 66, “Schmücke Dich” Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

Having made substantial contributions to the organ and flute repertoires, Sigfrid Karg-Elert is well-known to organists and flutists. His music is colorful and impressionistic, but he also drew on the established ways of writing organ music - including works based on Lutheran chorales (hymn tunes).

This beautiful piece is a Choral-Improvisation based on the melody “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele”, a eucharistic hymn published in Berlin in 1649.

Closing Voluntary: “Scherzo” Alan Ridout (1934-1996)

Alan Ridout studied briefly at the Guildhall School of Music before commencing four years of study at the Royal College of Music, London with Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob. He was later taught by Michael Tippett, Peter Fricker and (under a Dutch government scholarship) Henk Badings.

He went on to teach at the Royal College of Music, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, the University of London, and at The King's School, Canterbury. He also broadcast musical talks on the radio.
He lived for much of his life in Canterbury, but after a serious heart attack in 1990 he moved to France.
Ridout was a prolific composer; the complete list of his works runs to 100 pages. His style is mostly tonal, though in younger life he wrote some microtonal works. His works include church, orchestral and chamber music, often intended for amateurs and children. Much of the church music came out of a collaboration between Ridout and Allan Wicks, organist and master of the choristers at Canterbury Cathedral which began in 1964.

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Music Notes for July 28, 2024

Hymn of the Day: All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name! ELW 634
Text: Edward Perronet, 1726-1792, sts. 1-4; J. Rippon, A Selection of Hymns, 1787, sts. 5-6
Tune: CORONATION Oliver Holden, 1765-1844

The first stanza of this hymn was printed anonymously in the Gospel Magazine (November (1779). Six months later the Gospel Magazine (April 1780) printed it again, this time with seven more stanzas by Edward Perronet and the title "On the Resurrection, the Lord is King." The hymn appeared once more in A Selection of Hymns (London, 1787) by John Rippen (1751-1836), There some stanzas were altered or completely changed. The title was "The spiritual Coronation," with a reference to Song of Solomon 3:11. Seven stanzas follow with titles: Angels, Martyrs, Converted Jews, Believing Gentiles, Sinners of Every Age, Sinners of Every Nation, Ourselves." With only minor modifications Evangelical Lutheran Worship uses as its first four stanzas the first four of Perronet from the Gospel Magazine and as its last two the last two from Rippon ("Sinners of Every Nation" and "Ourselves").

As with "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds" (ELW 620), the name of Jesus is associated with the imagery of the church as the bride of Christ from the Song of Solomon, but here the crowning on the wedding day is emphasized.

Edward Perronet came from a family of Huguenots who had fled from France to Switzerland and then moved to England, where Edward's father was an Anglican priest who sympathized with the Wesleys. In 1746 Edward and his brother became itinerant Methodist preachers. However, against the Wesleys' wishes, as one of these preachers he administered communion. In 1757 he published The Mitre, an intemperate satire on the Church of England, which further angered the Wesleys. He left them in 1771 to become one of the ministers of Selina, the Countess of Huntingdon. His attacks were not welcome there either, and he became a Congregational minister of a church near Canterbury. He wrote three volumes of religious poems.

John Rippon was born in England, joined the Baptist church at the age of sixteen, and the next year began to study for the Baptist ministry at the Baptist Academy in Bristol. In 1772, when he was twenty-two, he became the interim pastor at the Carter Lane Baptist Church in London. A year later he was made permanent and stayed for the next sixty-three years, until he died.

Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Frideric Handel, German born musicians and composers who did much to enrich our musical lives, are commemorated as musicians in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 28 July. In recognition of this, today’s Opening and Closing Voluntaries and Offertory feature music by each of these great musicians.

Offertory: Ich heb me in augen Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672)

Schütz was a Lutheran composer and church musician, one of the finest composers of the seventeenth century and of the church generally. He linked the evangelical and the catholic, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and the Italian and the German.

Writing large and small pieces of tonal splendor as well as ones with a more archaic and delicate flavor, his music was sometimes a result of being forced to work with reduced forces because of the Thirty Years' War. He set German and Latin texts very well; his skill at setting German ones is unsurpassed. Like Bach, his vocation was a choral, not a congregational one, though in the Becker Psalter he tilted in a congregational direction.

Heinrich Schütz wrote this music as the setting for Psalm 121 in his Becker Psalter. Using the rhymed psalm paraphrases of the Leipzig theologian Cornelius Becker that were published in 1602, he began the Becker Psalter in the early 1620s as the psalms at the morning and evening prayers of his choirboys at Dresden, for whom he also wrote table graces. After the death of his wife he completed these psalms and published them in 1628. They had been sung to hymn tunes. Schütz took over thirteen of those tunes and added ninety new ones. As usual, he conceived them with choral textual declamation. Hymnbooks understandably have not generally included these settings.

Opening Voluntary: Sonata #7 in F Major: Siciliana and Gigue Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1789)

George Frideric Handel was a composer of baroque music who was born in Germany but became an English citizen. His most famous works include his Messiah, Water Music, baroque Italian operas, and English oratorios. A hugely successful composer in his own lifetime, his last years were blighted by blindness. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Handel's Sonata #7 in F major for Recorder and Basso continuo, is thought to have been composed around 1725. This sonata is a favorite among flute and recorder players. Of the 15 or so sonatas for solo instrument and basso continuo composed by Handel that have at various times been lumped together under the title Opus 1, a full third were originally composed for the recorder. In fact, only the violin is more fully represented in the collection. They are all splendid examples of Handel's youthful craftsmanship. In many of these sonatas Handel either quotes or anticipates himself, and so it is no surprise that Handel adapted this Sonata in FM into an organ concerto for himself to play which probably indicates his own fondness of the work.

The Gigue is a joyous and infectious reworking of one of Handel's favorite instrumental themes. This kind of piece, also known under the Italian spelling Giga, is to be thought as the music to the lively baroque dance of the same name, which originates from the British jig.

Closing Voluntary: “Chorale Prelude: “Vater unser im Himmelreich (Our Father, who art in Heaven)” BWV 737, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Johann Sebastian Bach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic, and motivic organization, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures that he learned from his experiences abroad, particularly in Italy and France. Throughout the18th century, Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities. The 19th century saw the publication of some significant Bach biographies, and by the end of that century, all of his known music had been printed. Dissemination of scholarship on the composer continued through periodicals (and later also websites) exclusively devoted to him and other publications such as the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV, a numbered catalogue of his works) and new critical editions of his compositions.

The organ works of Bach can be broadly divided into two groups. First, there is a large assortment of pieces of all kinds which includes the famous Toccatas, Preludes and Fugues, the six Trio Sonatas, and numerous other pieces in various styles and forms. Second, there is the large corpus of Chorale Preludes. Many of these are miscellaneous compositions while others belong to collections which follow a plan with regard to their content and some of which were published in the composer’s lifetime. The latter is very significant because in the early 18th century a great deal of music still circulated only in manuscript form, either autograph manuscripts (in the composer’s own hand) or copies (frequently made by pupils). This setting of “Vater unser” employs a somewhat antique style in which imitative treatment of each phrase of the melody acts as a precursor to its presentation in the highest voice.

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Music Notes for July 21, 2024

Hymn of the Day: Build a Longer Table ACS 1062
Text: David Bjorlin, (1984)
Music: NOËL NOUVELET, French carol

 “If you have more than you need,” says a popular proverb, “it’s better to build a longer table than a taller fence.” In this proverb, writer David Bjorlin heard a resonance with the obstacles that refugees often meet when seeking safety far from their countries of origin. Bjorlin’s text uses the love of Christ as its model in calling us to respond to refugees with long tables, wide doorways, and safe refuges rather than with violence and exclusion. The tune is likely known with its pairing, “Now the green blade rises” (ELW 379).
— Gail Ramshaw

Offertory: Praeludium Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)

Girolamo Frescobaldi was an Italian organist and one of the first great masters of organ composition. He strongly influenced the German Baroque school through the work of his pupil J.J. Froberger. Frescobaldi began his public career as organist at the church of Sta. Maria in Trastevere in Rome, in 1607. He travelled to the Netherlands the same year and published his first work, a book of madrigals, in Antwerp. In 1608 he became organist at St. Peter’s in Rome, and, except for the period when he was court organist at Florence (1628–34), he remained at St. Peter’s until his death. Frescobaldi’s style is characterized by a dramatic inventiveness and a bold use of chromaticism, but these qualities were carefully subordinated to a logical, effective construction within the piece. He was one of the first to develop the modern principle of monothematic writing, which replaced the rapid presentation of a number of themes typical of the early ricercar and canzone. Much of Frescobaldi’s keyboard music was intended for the harpsichord, however one remaining publication, the Fiori musicali of 1635, consists of organ music intended for liturgical use.

Opening Voluntary: Resignation (My Shepherd You Supply My Need) David Evan Thomas (1958)

The music of David Evan Thomas is praised for its eloquence, lyricism and craft. Critics note the composer’s loving ties to tradition, expressed in a refreshing, contemporary voice. Performers appreciate the clearly executed scores and technical know-how. Listeners respond to the music’s warmth, playfulness and sheer invention.

Born in Rochester, New York in 1958, David Evan Thomas grew up as the fourth of five children in a musical family, the son of flutist John Thomas and Marian (Parsons) Thomas. He attended Penfield High School and the Eastman “Prep” Department, graduating with Honors in Trumpet and receiving encouragement in composition from David Russell Williams. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, he studied trumpet and composition and learned the basics of organ playing from Robbe Delcamp. While there, he conducted the Gilbert and Sullivan Guild and sang in the Alice Millar Chapel Choir under Grigg Fountain’s direction. As a master’s degree student at Eastman, he was awarded the Director’s Fellowship; he then taught at Montana State University/Billings through the 1980s. Thomas served as Dominick Argento’s assistant at the University of Minnesota, where he also taught composition and orchestration, receiving the PhD in 1996.

Closing Voluntary: Old Hundredth Piet Post (1919-1979)

Dutch Organist and Composer Piet Post spent his entire life in or near Amsterdam. Other than the church organist and teaching positions he held, little is known of his life. He mainly composed music for organ and choir.

One of the most famous melodies in all of Christendom, the Protestant doxology known as the Old 100th, is commonly attributed to Louis Bourgeois.

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Music Notes for July 14, 2024

Hymn of the Day: Lead On, O King Eternal ELW 805
Text: Ernest W. Shurtleff, 1862-1917
Tune: LANCASHIRE, Henry T. Smart, 1813-1879

With the encouragement of his fellow graduating classmates, Ernest W. Shurtleff wrote this text in 1887 for Andover Theological Seminary's commencement ceremonies. Winning immediate acclaim, the text was published in Shurtleff's Hymns of the Faith that same year. Since that publication it has appeared in many American hymnals.

Graduation is one milestone on our life's journey, a road sign that points to the future as much as it marks the end of formal education. Consequently, "Lead On, O King Eternal" is a battle call to go forward in Christian service. Initially laced with war imagery, the text moves on to biblical imagery-"deeds of love and mercy"-and concludes with a note of hope. The text has remained mostly unchanged since its composition. The only differences lie in the modernization of language, changing “thee” to “you,” etc. Its message is as urgent today as it was a hundred years ago.

Before studying at Andover, Shurtleff attended Harvard University. He served Congregational churches in California, Massachusetts and Minnesota, before moving to Europe. In 1905 he established the American Church in Frankfurt, and in 1906 he moved to Paris, where he was involved in student ministry at the Academy Vitti. During World War I he and his wife were active in refugee relief work in Paris.

The rousing marching tune LANCASHIRE was composed by Henry T. Smart and set to Shurtleff’s text in 1905. It is an easy melody to pick up. This song was written for young people, and was for many years a popular choice at youth camps and young people’s worship gatherings.

Henry Smart was a capable composer of church music who wrote some very fine hymn tunes (REGENT SQUARE, is the best-known). Smart gave up a career in the legal profession for one in music. Although largely self taught, he became proficient in organ playing and composition, and he was a music teacher and critic. Organist in a number of London churches, including St. Luke's, Old Street, and St. Pancras, Smart was famous for his extemporiza­tions and for his accompaniment of congregational singing. He became completely blind at the age of fifty-two, but his remarkable memory enabled him to continue playing the organ. Fascinated by organs as a youth, Smart designed organs for impor­tant places such as St. Andrew Hall in Glasgow and the Town Hall in Leeds. He composed an opera, oratorios, part-songs, some instrumental music, and many hymn tunes, as well as a large number of works for organ and choir. He edited the Choralebook (1858), the English Presbyterian Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), and the Scottish Presbyterian Hymnal (1875). Some of his hymn tunes were first published in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861).

Offertory: Petit Offertoire César Franck (1822-1890)

It took a Belgian composer to convince France of the value of German musical ideas. Before César Franck arrived in Paris, French Romantic music had been primarily a tradition of dazzling orchestral color and seductive harmonies. Franck was interested in the structural and expressive innovations of Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner. His music combines the best of the two approaches, its Gallic lyricism and harmonic color shaped through German structural ideas into powerful dramatic forms. His legacy to French music was complex and varied. Parisian organists took inspiration from his phenomenal improvisation skills. He also pioneered extended compositions for the organ, which would lead to even grander works by Widor and Vierne. His advocacy of Liszt’s cyclic forms would later influence Debussy and Ravel. But for audiences around the world, Franck will be best remembered for his exhilarating orchestral works. Although few in number, their character marks them out as the work of a master equally at home in both German and French musical traditions.

This work, from his mature period, was published in 1864 in the collection Cinq Pièces pour harmonium (Five Pieces for Harmonium), Op.23. It is a gentle pastorale.

Opening Voluntary: O Gott, du frommer Gott Max Reger (1873-1916)

Composed by Ahasuerus Fritsch (1629- 1701), DARMSTADT first appeared in his Himmels-Lust und Welt-Unlust (1679). The melody was altered when it was published in the 1698 Darmstadt Geistreiches Gesangbuch and in several other eighteenth-century German hymnals. The tune is also known as O GOTT, DU FROMMER GOTT (named after a text by Heermann) and as WAS FRAG ICH NACH DER WELT (named after an association with a text in the Darmstadt hymnal).

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and academic teacher. He was noted for his organ works, which use Baroque forms and was one of the last composers to infuse life into 19th-century musical traditions. He worked as a concert pianist, a musical director at the Leipzig University Church, a professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig, and a music director at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen. Reger first composed mainly Lieder, chamber music, choral music and works for piano and organ. He later turned to orchestral compositions.

Closing Voluntary: Prelude on “Richmond” Healey Willan

RICHMOND (also known as CHESTERFIELD) is a florid tune originally written by Thomas Haweis and published in his collection Carmina Christo (1792). Samuel Webbe, Jr., adapted and shortened the tune and published it in his Collection of Psalm Tunes (1808). It was reprinted in 1853 in Webbe's Psalmody. Webbe named the tune after Rev. Leigh Richmond, a friend of Haweis's. The CHESTERFIELD name comes from Lord Chesterfield, a statesman who frequently visited Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, for whom Haweis worked as a chaplain.

In all, Willan wrote and published 99 chorale preludes, almost all from 1950 or later. Most are in a traditional style and in forms derived from those found in the works of Bach, an indebtedness anticipated in the organ compositions of Willan’s influential British forebears, Parry and Stanford.

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Music Notes for July 7, 2024

HYMN OF THE DAY: O Christ, Our Light, O Radiance True  ELW 675
Text: Johann Heermann, 1585-1647; tr. composite
Tune: O JESU CHRISTE, WAHRES LICHTENSTEIN,  Gesangbuch, Nürnberg, 1676

Johann Heermann's own suffering and family tragedy led him to meditate on Christ's undeserved suffering. The only surviving child of a poor furrier and his wife, Heermann fulfilled his mother's vow at his birth that, if he lived, he would become a pastor. Initially a teacher, Heermann became a minister in the Lutheran Church in Koben in 1611 but had to stop preaching in 1634 due to a severe throat infection. He retired in 1638. Much of his ministry took place during the Thirty Years' War. At times he had to flee for his life and on several occasions lost all his possessions. Although Heermann wrote many of his hymns and poems during these devastating times, his personal faith and trust in God continued to be reflected in his lyrics. He had begun writing Latin poems about 1605, and was crowned as a poet at Brieg in 1608. He ranks with the beat of his century and is judged to be the finest hymn writer in the era between Martin Luther and Paul Gerhardt. Some indeed regard him as second only to Gerhardt. He marks the transition from the objective standpoint of the hymnwriters of the Reformation period to the more subjective and experimental school that followed him. His hymn texts are distinguished by depth and tenderness of feeling; by firm faith and confidence in face of trial; by deep love to Christ, and humble submission to the will of God. Many of his texts became at once popular, passed into the hymnbooks, and still hold their place among the classics of German hymnody.

OFFERTORY:  Charity: Berceuse (Homage to Louis Vierne) David Bednall (1979)

Celebrating French music through the channels of an English hymn tune, Charity: Berceuse reimagines Vierne’s classic with Stainer’s tune at its heart. Here we have a fine example of Bednall’s rich, romantically-infused harmonic vocabulary, leisurely unfolding.

And here, a fine example of some of David Bednall’s thoughts on the art of composing.

“One of the challenges for any contemporary composer is to discover a compositional style and language which has a distinct nature. The radical and far-reaching changes in 20th century music have brought us to a point where one might question what remains to be done. This, perhaps, has particular relevance to the continued use of tonality as a compositional force. My belief, which has been demonstrated by many composers since the advent of atonality, is that the tonal, or at least the poly-tonal world, is far from exhausted. What I admire most in the work of other composers, and have used as the main ingredients for my own compositions, are colour and texture. I believe these to be essential elements in establishing mood and atmosphere, and crucial in any successful and reflective setting of a text.”

OPENING VOLUNTARY: “Berceuse” from 24 Pièces en Style libre pour Orgue, Op. 31 Louis Vierne, (1870-1937)

This is Vierne’s classic gem which inspired today’s Offertory music. The most charming lullaby ever written for the organ?  Perhaps, but either way Louis Vierne's "Berceuse" from his 24 Pieces Written in Free Style (24 Pièces en Style libre pour Orgue) is a very soothing and calm lullaby.

Louis Vierne dedicated Berceuse to his daughter, Colette. The term “berceuse” is French for “lullaby” so perhaps when he played it he thought of tucking in his little girl. The lullaby has a warm and kind tonal language and is one of the highlights of this collection of 24 organ pieces.

Vierne is one of the most important French romantic composers for the organ, using the instrument as a means to perform ‘symphonic’ music, inspired by the new possibilities of the new organs built at the time.

The blend of styles in his organ music is unique with aspects of Romanticism combined with an impressionistic ‘pastel-like’ quality. Like many of his contemporary colleagues, Vierne felt a strong fascination with Wagnerian chromaticism.

There is a very sad story about this piece. It is dedicated. When the dedication to "à ma fille Colette" was published, Vierne had divorced from his wife who had quickly, while still married, preferred Charles Mutin. And, seeing the dedication, his former wife wrote to Vierne : "A ta fille ? Elle n'est même pas de toi !" (to your daughter ? But it's not YOUR daughter"). And still more cruel when one reads the dedication of Vierne's 2nd symphony: "A mon ami Charles Mutin" (To my friend Charles Mutin).

CLOSING VOLUNTARY: Toccata: Grosser Gott. Matthew H. Corl (1965)

Matthew H. Corl is a graduate of Westminster Choir College, where he received the Bachelor of Music degree in Church Music in 1987. He also studied organ at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD, and  served as director of music and organist at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Trenton, NJ.

Since 1987 Matthew has been organist and associate director of music at First United Methodist in Lakeland, FL, where he directs vocal and handbell ensembles for children and youth. Matthew has been a clinician for workshops and a published composer of works for organ, choir, handbells and instrumental ensembles.

GROSSER GOTT was set to the German versification in the Katholisches Gesangbuch. The German text is a paraphrase of the "Te Deum. ” Variants of the tune abound; the version found in the Psalter Hymnal came from Johann Schicht's Allgemeines Choralbuch (1819), and the harmonization came from Conrad Kocher's setting in his Zions Harfe (1855).

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Music Notes for June 30, 2024

Hymn of the Day: We Come to You for Healing, Lord ELW 617
Text: Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr (1923-2007)
Tune: MARTYRDOM, John B. Dykes (1823-1876)

MARTYRDOM was originally an eighteenth-century Scottish folk melody used for the ballad "Helen of Kirkconnel." Hugh Wilson (1766-1824) adapted MARTYRDOM into a hymn tune in duple meter around 1800. A triple-meter version of the tune was first published by Robert A. Smith (1780-1829) in his Sacred Music (1825), a year after Wilson's death. A legal dispute concerning who was the actual composer of MARTYRDOM arose and was settled in favor of Wilson. However, Smith's triple-meter arrangement is the one chosen most often. The tune's title presumably refers to the martyred Scottish Covenanter James Fenwick, whose last name is also the name of the town where Wilson lived. Consequently, in Scotland this tune has always had melancholy associations.

Hugh Wilson learned the shoemaker trade from his father. He also studied music and mathematics and became proficient enough in various subjects to become a part-time teacher to the villagers. Around 1800 he moved to Pollokshaws to work in the cotton mills and later moved to Duntocher, where he became a draftsman in the local mill. He also made sundials and composed hymn tunes as a hobby. It is thought that he composed and adapted a number of psalm tunes, but only two have survived because he gave instructions shortly before his death that all his music manuscripts were to be destroyed.

Although largely self-taught, Robert Smith was an excellent musician. By the age of ten he played the violin, cello, and flute, and was a church chorister. From 1802 to 1817 he taught music in Paisley and was precentor at the Abbey; from 1823 until his death he was precentor and choirmaster in St. George's Church, Edinburgh. He enlarged the repertoire of tunes for psalm singing in Scotland, raised the precentor skills to a fine art, and greatly improved the singing of the church choirs he directed. Smith published his church music in Sacred Harmony (1820, 1825) and compiled a six-volume collection of Scottish songs, The Scottish Minstrel (1820-1824).

Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr. lived most of his life in Gettysburg, PA. He attended Hughesville public schools, and was a graduate of Susquehanna University and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. He received additional advanced degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York and a doctoral degree at Southern California School of Theology at Claremont. He served as President of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg.

Rev. Dr. Stuempfle was the author of several books and numerous articles and lectures on preaching, history, and theology. He was also among the most honored and respected hymn writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

He began crafting hymns in his retirement. Himself suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, he wrote “We come to you for healing, Lord”, a hymn that brings the stories of the Bible into our situations of pain. Many of this hymn’s words and phrases, especially the image of “touch,” connect with today’s gospel.

Offertory: How Good, Lord, to Be Here John Behnke

Robinson, Joseph Armitage, D.D., Dean of Westminster since 1902, of Christ College, Camb. (B.A. 1881, M.A. 1884, D.D. 1896), sometime Fellow of his College, Norrisian Prof, of Div., Camb., Rector of St. Marg., Westminster, and Canon of Westminster, is only slightly associated with hymnology. His hymn text, "'Tis good, Lord, to be here" (Transfiguration), was written c. 1890. It was included in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, and supplies a long-felt want with respect to hymns on the Transfiguration.

Opening Voluntary: UNION SEMINARY (“DRAW US IN THE SPIRIT’S TETHER”) James Biery (1956)

Harold Friedell (1905-1958), who wrote the hymn tune UNION SEMINARY, was an American organist, choirmaster, teacher, and composer. At an early age, he served as organist at First Methodist Episcopal Church (Jamaica, Queens) and studied organ with Clement Gale and David McK. Williams. He later served as organist at Calvary Church (New York), organist and choirmaster at Saint John’s Church (Jersey City, N.J.), organist and choirmaster at Calvary Church (New York), and finally organist and master of the choir at Saint Bartholomew’s Church (New York). Friedell also taught on the faculty of the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music (New York).

Named for the School of Sacred Music at Union Seminary in New York City, UNION SEMINARY is a gently robust congregational tune illustrating Romantic tendencies that managed to continue in the twentieth century. It began in an anthem by Harold Friedell, who wrote it in 1957 for Percy Dearmer’s (1867–1936) text. It was extracted as a hymn tune and published in 1970.

Dearmer’s text is a celebration of Christ’s presence among those who are tethered by the Spirit at the Lord’s table and who pray that as disciples they may make their meals and living “as sacraments” by caring, helping, and giving.”

James Biery is an American organist, composer and conductor who is Minister of Music at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church (Presbyterian) in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, where he directs the choirs, plays the 66-rank Klais organ and oversees the music program of the church.

Biery’s setting of UNION SEMINARY is in 3 parts, or ABA. The A sections are based on a melody that he constructed from the hymn tune. He has changed the rhythm slightly, and has built the melody on the inverted form of the original tune. The middle section, combining the tune in its original key and rhythm with the tune a fifth below and a half-note apart, creates a delightfully off-center canon. Enjoy!

Closing Voluntary. Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven, John Behnke

LAUDA ANIMA is the hymn tune upon which today’s Closing Voluntary is based. John Goss composed LAUDA ANIMA (Latin for the opening words of Psalm 103) in 1868. Along with his original harmonizations, intended to interpret the different stanzas of the text, the tune was also included in the appendix to Robert Brown- Borthwick's Supplemental Hymn and Tune Book (1869). LAUDA ANIMA is one of the finest tunes that arose out of the Victorian era.

John Behnke, the arranger of both today’s Offertory and Closing Voluntary, considers himself a "church musician." His contribution to hymn-based organ music has been significant. He began playing the organ in high school and is still playing years later. He loves conducting a bell or a vocal choir, composing and arranging.

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Music Notes for June 23, 2024

Hymn of the Day: “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” ELW 756

In 1860 William Whiting, an Anglican layman who taught at a choristers’ school, wrote “Eternal Father, strong to save” for one of his students who was to sail from Britain to America. Popularly called the Navy Hymn, the stanzas pray for safety for travelers. We sing this trinitarian classic on Sunday not only for travelers, but for all of us who are always with the disciples on a boat during a storm. The tune was written for the text. For many Americans the hymn recalls the funerals of both Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and thus singing the hymn brings death to mind. This is not a bad thing: every Sunday’s worship is readying us for death.

Offertory: Lyric Piece Edward Greig (1843-1907)

Edvard Grieg published his Lyric Pieces in ten volumes, starting in 1867 with Op. 12 and finishing in 1901 with Op. 71. The 10-book collection includes several of his best known pieces. Even though the original publishing was made in several volumes, some editors treat the Lyric Pieces as a single set of works, numbering the 66 pieces in all.

Opening Voluntary: Blessed are Ye, Faithful Souls, Op. 122 (#6 from Eleven Chorale Preludes for Organ) Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Most listeners do not think of Johannes Brahms as a composer of organ music, for the works that first come to mind are the symphonies, concertos, piano pieces, songs, and chamber music - or perhaps the German Requiem. Yet, the very last compositions from the pen of Brahms were a set of 11 chorale preludes for organ, published posthumously in 1902. Curiously enough, his only previous compositions for this instrument originated much earlier.

In the 1850s, when Brahms was still a young pianist and composer, he mentioned his aspirations to become an "organ virtuoso". Although he found the complex instrument more difficult to master than he had anticipated, he began to compose for it in earnest. Among his first attempts were two preludes and fugues, a conscious emulation of a form developed in the Baroque era but filtered through Brahms's own harmonic language. He regarded both works as novice projects not worthy of publication and apparently thought that the manuscripts had been destroyed. They were discovered much later, however, and published in 1927, thirty years after his death.

After the 1850s Brahms abandoned composition for the organ, other than revision of older pieces for publication, but toward the end of his life and just before the impending death of his close friend Clara Schumann, Brahms once again turned his attention to the organ. The resulting Eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, finished in May and June of 1896, are a high point in German Romantic organ literature. Most are rather short and similar in format to pieces in the Orgelbüchlein, J. S. Bach's cycle of 45 chorale preludes for the liturgical year; that is, the phrases of the chorale melody, plain or embellished, are not separated by long interludes.

Closing Voluntary Gloria Patri Johann Erasmus Kindermann (1615-1655)

Johann Erasmus Kindermann was the most important composer of the Nuremberg school in the first half of the 17th century. He was born in Nuremberg and studied music from an early age; at 15 he already had a job performing at Sunday afternoon concerts at the Frauenkirche (he sang bass and played violin). His main teacher was Johann Staden. In 1634/35 the city officials granted Kindermann permission and money to travel to Italy to study new music. Nothing is known about his stay in Italy; he may have visited Venice like several other Nuremberg composers (Hans Leo Hassler, Johann Philipp Krieger). In January 1636 the city council ordered Kindermann back to take the position of second organist of the Frauenkirche. In 1640 he was employed as organist at Schwäbisch-Hall, but quit the same year to become organist of the Egidienkirche, the third most important position of its kind in Nuremberg after St. Sebald and St. Lorenz.

Kindermann stayed in Nuremberg for the rest of his life, and became one of the most famous musicians of the city and its most acclaimed teacher. Pachelbel was among his pupils. Most of his surviving works are vocal pieces that reflect the transition from older forms to the more modern use of concertato techniques and basso continuo and explore a variety of techniques from motets for choir without instruments to concertos for solo voices

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Music Notes for June 16, 2024

Hymn of the Day: "For the fruit of all creation" (ELW 679)
Text: Fred Pratt Green, 1903-2000
Tune: AR HYD Y NOS, Welsh traditional; arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872-1958

Originally called “Harvest Hymn,” this text is much more comprehensive than that title implies. It also deals with stewardship, thanksgiving, and God’s endless gifts that continue to astound us. It is set to a familiar Welsh tune whose name means “throughout the night.”

In England in the middle of the twentieth century, "God, who made the earth and heaven" was associated with the tune AR HYD Y NOS. In 1957 Francis Jackson wrote another tune for it, called EAST ACKLAM. Jackson's tune never caught on. John Wilson, a particularly able hymnologist who saw this lonely tune as a good one, suggested to Fred Pratt Green that he should write a text for it, "preferably on a harvest theme where new hymns were badly needed?" Green did as requested, and the hymn appeared in the Methodist Recorder in August 1970 as "HARVEST HYMN." Not surprisingly, since this is such an able text—about harvest, stewardship, thanksgiving, and the wonders of God that astound and confound us—it has since been included in many hymnals and sung widely. Ironically, however, it has been used more often with AR HYD Y NOS than with EAST ACKLAM. Lutheran Book of Worship (1978, #563) daringly joined it to SANTA BARBARA. Evangelical Lutheran Worship retains the same slightly modified text (Green's text originally began, “For the fruits of his creation) but joins it to this congregational tune in a very happy marriage.

Fred Pratt Green is perhaps best described as the twentieth-century hymn-writing version of Charles Wesley. He was born in a suburb of Liverpool, where his father ran a leather manufacturing business and was a Wesleyan Methodist and local preacher. His mother was an Anglican. As a child he worshiped in an Anglican Church. He wanted to become an architect but worked in his father's leather business for four years, developed an interest in writing, married Marjorie Dowsett, and became a Methodist minister and superintendent.

When he retired in 1969, he planned to spend his time doing pastels. That plan never materialized. He accepted an invitation to serve on the Working Party of the Methodist Conference in Great Britain to prepare a supplement to the Methodist Hymn-Book (which was published as Hymns and Songs). The committee asked him to write hymns for topics that seemed to be lacking, and hymn writing replaced water colors for most of the rest of his life. John Wilson and Erik Routley encouraged him.

Fred Pratt Green's poetic interests and abilities did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. When he came to the Finsbury Park Circuit in 1944, he made a pastoral call to Fallon Webb, the father of one of his Sunday school children. Webb, in spite of his arthritis, had an intense interest in poetry. When he discovered that Green had written some poems, he suggested that they each write a poem and criticize the other's work at their next encounter. They continued the practice weekly for the next twenty years, until Webb's death. Green was well prepared for hymn writing.

He produced a large number of hymns, many of which are included in denominational hymnals. He received an honorary doctorate from Emory University, served as vice president of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and was made a fellow of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. In addition to being a faithful pastor and remarkable hymn writer, he was an unusually humble man with a twinkle in his eye and a song in his heart.

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Music Notes for June 9, 2024

Hymn of the Day: Rise, shine, you people! Christ the Lord has entered ELW 665
Text: Ronald A. Klug, 1939, alt.
Tune: WOJTKIEWIECZ, Dale Wood, 1934-2003

Starting with this text from Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” Ronald A. Klug wrote this text originally purposed for the Epiphany season. Thankfully it has come to embrace an even wider purpose to “hurl your songs and prayers against the darkness.”

In addition to consulting, conducting and writing articles, Dale Wood composed over 300 musical compositions, from hymn tunes to a music drama with orchestra. When he wrote the tune for Klug’s text he gave it his family name, Wojtkiewiecz, which was simplified when the family came to the United States.

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Music Notes for June 2, 2024

Hymn of the Day: O Day of Rest and Gladness ELW 521
Text: Christopher Wordsworth, 1807–1885, alt.
Tune: German melody, 18th cent.; adapt. X. L. Hartig, Melodien zum Mainzer Gesangbuche, 1833

Christopher Wordsworth placed this as the first hymn in his Holy Year (1862) and titled it "Sunday." He had in mind Sunday in the Christian multilayered sense- first day of creation and therefore of light, "eighth" day of resurrection and new creation beyond history, and seventh day of rest and gladness when God rested. On this eucharistic little Easter when the church gathers around word and table to celebrate the wondrous mix of God’s graciousness, it sings “Holy, holy, holy,” which calls to mind the Sanctus.

ELLACOMBE is an anonymous tune that seems to come from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Roman Catholics. In close to our current version, it is found in Xavier L. Hartig's Vollständige Sammlung der gewöhnlichen Melodien zum Mainzer Gesangbuche (Mainz, 1833), where it was used for the text "Der du im heil'gsten Sakrament." It may have an antecedent in the Württemberg Gesangbuch (Württemberg, 1784) where it may have been associated with the text for which it was named in Lutheran Book of Worship (1978), AVE MARIA, KLARER UND LICHTER MORGENSTERN. The name ELLACOMBE "is evidently an English name given to this tune by an English editor, probably after a place or locality."

ELLACOMBE was the tune Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) used with this text, and it is the one The Hymnal 1982 (1985) and Voices United (1996) also used. LANCASHIRE is chosen in some other modern hymnals. ROTTERDAM was used in The Lutheran Hymnary (1918) and Service Book and Hymnal (1958). Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) used HERZLICH TUT MICH ERFREUEN. "The day of resurrection!" is obviously searching for a suitable modern tune! These all work, but none seems quite right. ELLACOMBE, LANCASHIRE, and ROTTERDAM are eighteenth- and post-eighteenth-century products. HERZLICH TUT MICH ERFREUEN is from the sixteenth century. Often matches of text and tune from across centuries like this work well. In this case they feel forced. The quite proper jubilance of the tunes obscures the more crucial and characteristic objectivity of the text. We await the skill of the composer who will create the appropriate tune.

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