Hymn of the Day: Jerusalem, My Happy Home (ELW 628)
Text: F. B. P., 16th cent.
Tune: LAND OF REST, North American traditional; arr. hymnal version

This hymn is five stanzas - #11, 2, 17, 21 and 6 - taken from a twenty-six stanza English hymn found in a manuscript in the British Museum, c. 1616, where it is headed “A Song Mad [sic] by F:B:P. To the tune of Diana." Behind it lies the medieval Latin Liber Mediationum (which also lies behind "Ah, holy Jesus”). In Julian’s Dictionary William T. Brooke discusses this hymn at length. He gives the Latin, all twenty-six stanzas by F. B. P., points to a corrupted nineteen-stanza version from The Song of Mary the Mother of Christ (1601), and suggests a prior common but now unknown source. He gives another version of the hymn from The Glass of vain-glorie (1585). It has forty-four stanzas, most of which relate to the new Jerusalem, F. B. P., and the Liber Meditationum, but some of which paraphrase the Song of Solomon (which prompted "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds"). The best guess about the initials F. B. P. is that they may denote a Roman Catholic priest, and the "tune of Diana" is equally unclear.

This "originally pentatonic tune" was paired with "O land of rest, for thee I sigh!" in the 1836 Appendix of Samuel Wakefield's shape-note tune book called The Christian Harp (Pittsburgh, 1832). Herbranson linked his hymn with John Dahle's tune LUTHER SEMINARY, found in the Service Book and Hymnal (1958). In Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) it was paired with a more pensive tune by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) called PERRY, for which Kevin Norris wrote a chorale concertato. In Evangelical Lutheran Worship it gets a third tune. More than the first two, LAND OF REST highlights the motion and physicality of the text. If one finds such things significant, it also has a compound background beat whose three can be seen as reflecting or underscoring the trinitarian Three in whose name the church baptizes.

Offertory Anthem: “Unless You Lead Me, Love” Thomas Keesecker

Thomas Keesecker's setting of poetry by 13th cent. mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg invites us to dance and sing with the love that created the world. The music is not simplistic in its message or writing, and this anthem is a wonderful combination of metaphor, poetry, and beautiful melodic writing.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s ideas are inspiring in their own right, but are all the more amazing considering the era she lived in (1207-1282) – a time from which women’s voices are mostly lost in the mists of time. What seems today as a literary jewel, was a “stone of offence” back then, because a FEMALE Beguine composed writings with a theological content in vernacular German and not in Latin, and she referred to a divine authorization for her mission. Her criticism of church dignitaries, religious laxity and claims to theological insight aroused so much opposition that some called for the burning of her writings. How fortunate we are that her words survive so we can bask in her reflected light.

Thomas Keesecker has served as a musician in Lutheran and Roman Catholic parishes in Virginia, Montana, and Maryland. His award-winning choral music has been published by several publishers. His studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Catholic University School of Music in Washington, D.C. prepared him for a career in which he has mixed classical technique and jazz improvisation. During the last decade, he has explored the nexus of creativity and healing and its implication for liturgical musicians.

I cannot dance, Lord,
unless you lead me.
If you want me to leap with abandon,
You must intone the song.
Then I shall leap into love,
From love into knowledge,
From knowledge into enjoyment,
And from enjoyment
beyond all human sensations.
There I want to remain,
yet want also to circle higher still.

Opening Voluntary: “Melody” Richard Purvis (1913-1994)

Richard Purvis was an American organist, composer, conductor and teacher. He began playing the organ publicly at the age of 14 in churches and in the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. In addition to recitals and church services, Purvis played nightly recitals broadcast on the 7-rank style "E" Wurlitzer organ at the Chapel of the Chimes over local radio station KRE. His stage name was Don Irving and his theme song was “I'll Take an Option on You”.

He was admired as one of the finest organ improvisateurs in the U.S. In an era when so-called "romantic" music was out of favor with most composers, and atonal, serial music was considered the hallmark of serious composition, he was not afraid to write tuneful, accessible, richly colored, and even whimsical compositions that possessed commercial viability. He is especially remembered for his expressive recordings of the organ classics and his own lighter compositions for the instrument.

Closing Voluntary: “Puer nobis nascitur” David Schelat (1955)

PUER NOBIS is a melody from a fifteenth-century manuscript from Trier. However, the tune probably dates from an earlier time and may even have folk roots. PUER NOBIS was altered in Spangenberg's Christliches Gesangbüchlein (1568), in Petri's famous Piae Cantiones (1582), and again in Praetorius's Musae Sioniae (Part VI, 1609), which is the basis for the triple-meter version used in the 1987 Psalter Hymnal. Another form of the tune in duple meter is usually called PUER NOBIS NASCITUR. The tune name is taken from the incipit of the original Latin Christmas text, which was translated into German by the mid-sixteenth century as "Uns ist geborn ein Kindelein," and later in English as "Unto Us a Boy Is Born." The harmonization is from the 1902 edition of George R. Woodward's Cowley Carol Book. PUER NOBIS is a splendid tune with strong ties to both Christmas and Easter texts. So, if you might be asking yourself if I have been influenced by the commercial holiday decorations we now see everywhere, the answer is: no, the text I consider pertinent today is one based on the writings of Hildegard von Bingen, “O Holy Spirit, Root of Life”

David Schelat, recently retired Director of Music at First & Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, is president and artistic director of Market Street Music (MSM), a non-profit corporation that creates musical experiences for audiences and musicians in the Delaware Valley. For MSM, he produces Thursday Noontime Concerts and Festival Concerts, as well as conducts Center City Chorale (a community choir of downtown workers), and Mastersingers of Wilmington (a concert choir of professional and amateur singers). Committed to new music, Mr. Schelat has facilitated commissions by Bruce Neswick, Gerald Near, and James Bassi and has conducted a number of Delaware premieres of recent compositions. In addition, he has explored a significant amount of secular and cross-cultural choral literature with the choral ensembles of First & Central and MSM.