Hymn of the Day: “When We Are Tested” ACS 922
Text: Ruth Duck (1947)
Tune: SLANE, Irish traditional

A prayer based on the temptation of Christ, this text set to a traditional Irish tune calls to mind whole Bible stories with single words or short phrases: “wrestle” in Genesis 32, “bread” and “stone” in Matthew 7, “food that sustains” in Exodus 16, and “by night and by day” in Exodus 13, thereby situating the struggle to be faithful within the biblical narrative. From that struggle the hymn calls upon God who nourishes, lifts, teaches, and holds us.

Ruth Duck is a United Church of Christ pastor, professor, feminist, practical theologian, and hymn writer.

Offertory Anthem: “I’m So Glad” R. Nathaniel Dett (1882- 1943), BBV arr.

Robert Nathaniel Dett was a Black Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor. Born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, he moved to the United States with his family and had most of his professional education and career there. During his lifetime he was a leading Black composer, known for his use of African-American folk songs and spirituals as the basis for choral and piano compositions in the 19th century Romantic style of Classical music. “I’m So Glad” is one of these choral compositions, originally part of his collection for the Hampton Singers.

Dett's most important work began in 1913 at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. He trained the choir at that traditionally African-American school to a new level of musical excellence. His 40-voice Hampton Singers performed at Carnegie Hall in January 1914. Dett rose to the position of director of the Music Department at Hampton in 1926, the first black to hold that job. That same year, Oberlin Conservatory awarded Dett an honorary Doctor of Music degree, another first for an African American. On December 17, 1926, the 80-voice Hampton Choir assumed national prominence as it performed by invitation at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The unaccompanied program contained Dett's trademark mix of repertoire--early English music, works from the Russian liturgy, Christmas carols, and arrangements of spirituals.

In 1930 the choir achieved another milestone as it embarked on a European tour under the auspices of George Foster Peabody, a philanthropic patron of the arts and Hampton Institute trustee. En route to New York, the group sang for President Herbert Hoover on the White House lawn. The choir of 40 select voices went on to impress audiences during its six-week tour of seven countries.

After earning his master's degree in 1932, Dett resigned from Hampton and moved to Rochester, New York. He died in 1943 while serving as choral advisor for the United Services Organization and touring with a women's choir in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1973 his piano works were collected and published as a volume.

Dett's most enduring musical legacy survives in his numerous arrangements of folksongs and spirituals, most written for the Hampton Choir.

I'm so glad trouble don't last alway.
[Refrain:] Oh, my Lord, oh, my Lord, what shall I do?
Make more room, Lord in my heart for Thee. [Refrain]

Opening Voluntary: “Troubled Water” Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

Margaret Bonds was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. One of the first Black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her popular arrangements of African-American spirituals and frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes. As a composer well acquainted with the greats of the Harlem Renaissance and schooled in Western composition at Juilliard, Margaret Bonds binds these elements of her background in Troubled Water (1967). The piece takes its cue from the Classical sonata form and uses the spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’ for the primary theme.

Closing Voluntary: “Toccata on GREAT DAY” Adolphus Hailstork (1941)

Adolphus Hailstork (actually Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III) has always been aware of what he calls his dual cultural heritage: born in Rochester, NY, and raised in Albany, the son of a chef, he received his primary musical education in the Episcopal Cathedral of All Saints and was introduced to the classical tradition, including of course, his fellow Episcopalian Samuel Barber, and other contemporary Americans. As he says below, he was insulated from the developing civil rights movement in his earlier education. His B.A. in music, from Howard University (1963) and his initial postgraduate study at the Manhattan School (1964–1966, where he was taught by David Diamond, one of the leading lights of the mid-century American symphonists, and Vittorio Giannini, who remained a tonality-based composer in an academic world heavily dominated by serialism and other non-tonal compositional processes) and a nine-week study course with Nadia Boulanger in France, sound idyllic, in a way, shelters from the storm and stress of American Culture.

But a reckoning came, as he says, when he got out of the army (he served in West Germany) in 1968. And while the story of that development is fascinating, the richness and breadth of the musical influences make Hailstork’s music exciting. There are the mid-century symphonists and the eventful, forward push of that style, devoid of excessive rhetoric, but also Episcopalian music, spirituals, stories from black history, references to iconic musicians like Still, and more. Hailstork’s eminence and the quality of his music deserve more time on America’s and the world’s concert stages.