Hymn of the Day: Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness ELW 488
Text: Johann Franck, 1618–1677; tr. Lutheran Book of Worship
Tune: SCHMÜCKE DICH, Johann Crüger, 1598–1662

This text is often considered the best and most popular of the Lutheran chorales for the Lord's Supper. The dominant tone is one of deep joy enhanced by a sense of awe. We express joy and praise for "this wondrous banquet" (st. 1), and we show reverence in receiving Christ (st. 2). Thankful for "heavenly food" and drink (st. 3), we rejoice in Christ's love for us and in its power to unite us (st. 4).

Johann Cruger composed the hymn tune specifically for the text. Johann S. Bach used this tune in his Cantata 180; he and many other composers have written organ preludes on the melody.

Offertory: “Hungry Feast” David Cherwein (1957)

In recent weeks Pastor has remarked on the recurring references to “bread” in the readings. And in the music we have sung or heard, “bread” has certainly been well represented, including today’s three organ pieces.

Ray Makeever (1943) wrote this hymn text and music for a communion liturgy, after hearing Gordon Lathrop speak about the eucharist as a hungry feast—hungry for a word of peace, hungry for a world released from hungry people of every kind, and hungry that the hunger cease. It was first published in With All Your Heart: Songs and Liturgies of Encouragement and Hope (1984).

Opening Voluntary: “Bread of Life” Seth Bingham (1882-1972)

Seth Bingham was born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the youngest of four siblings in a farming family that soon relocated to Naugatuck, Connecticut. After extensive childhood activities in church music, he studied organ and composition with Harry Benjamin Jepson and Horatio Parker at Yale University, gaining a B.A. in 1904. Taking time also to study in Paris with Alexandre Guilmant, Vincent d'Indy and Charles-Marie Widor, Bingham earned his B.Mus. from Yale in 1908, and subsequently taught theory, composition and organ at Yale from 1908 to 1919. Beginning in 1913, he was organist and choirmaster at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, a position he held until his 1951 retirement. He was an associate professor at Columbia University from 1922 to 1954, received an honorary doctorate from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1952, and lectured at the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary from 1953 to 1965.

William F. Sherwin (1826-1888) composed this tune, BREAD OF LIFE, for Mary Artemisia Lathbury's hymn in 1877, the same year the text itself was written, and the two were published together the next year in Chautauqua Carols. It is a quiet and meditative tune that fits the stream of what Sherwin's teacher Lowell Mason considered a "chaste" European model with "scientific improvement" and "correct" tunes.

Closing Voluntary: “Holy Manna” Wilbur Held (1914-2015)

The tune HOLY MANNA was composed by William B Moore (1790-1850). He was born, possibly in TN. Having contributed tunes to Wyeth’s Repository (1810), he is known for his tunebook Columbian Harmony (1825). He also composed and arranged several tunes in William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835).

HOLY MANNA is most often found paired with the text “Brethren, we have met to worship.” The tune’s name comes from this text, where the last two lines in each of its five stanzas is some form of “holy manna will be shower’d all around.”

Wilbur Held was born in the little Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. Dr. Held’s mother was an accomplished violinist, and there was always music in his home and his church. But piano lessons were poorly practiced, and the decision to get serious about music didn’t happen until after graduation from high school when he enrolled at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, studying organ with Frank van Dusen and theory/composition with John Palmer. After getting serious he did pretty well, and midway in his studies he became Leo Sowerby’s assistant at St. James Church–an association that lasted seven years. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the conservatory.
In 1946 he joined the faculty at the Ohio State University, where he became Professor of Organ and Church Music and head of the keyboard department. He remained in this position for over 30 years, and for most of that time was also organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio.