Hymn of the Day: Lead Me, Guide Me, ELW 768
Text: Doris Akers, 1922-1995
Tune: LEAD ME, GUIDE ME, Doris Akers

LEAD ME is representative of the first generation of African American gospel music, a generation that began with Thomas Dorsey and includes gospel artists such as Roberta Martin, Lucie Campbell, Kenneth Morris, Theodore Frye, and Doris M. Akers. The core of this style is improvisation. Thus the printed notes are intended only as guides to the creativity of singers and accompanists.

Doris M. Akers wrote both text and tune of this African American gospel hymn in 1953 in Oakland, California. The text is an earnest plea for an intimate walk with God, who is asked to lead, guide, and protect the believer. The deeply personal stanzas emphasize that divine guidance is essential because of our lack of strength, our blindness, and Satan's temptations. Only God can lead us on the narrow path and through all the complexities and challenges of earthly life. Like many of the psalms, this text pours out the yearning of the individual Christian, a prayer that reminds us of the words of Psalm 4.

Doris Akers was a biracial African-American gospel music composer, arranger and singer and is considered to be "one of the most underrated gospel composers” of the 20th century. She had an active career as singer, choir director, and songwriter. She wrote her first song at age ten and after that time composed more than five hundred gospel songs and hymns. Known for her work with the Sky Pilot Choir, she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001.

Offertory Anthem: “How Lovely Are the Messengers” Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

“How Lovely Are the Messengers,” by Felix Mendelssohn, is from Saint Paul, the first of Mendelssohn's oratorios. It refers to Paul and Barnabas as ambassadors of the Christian Church. The composer oversaw versions and performances in both German and English within months of completing the music in early 1836. The libretto "after words of holy scripture" was begun in 1832. The composer with pastor Julius Schubring, a childhood friend, compiled passages from the New Testament, chiefly the Acts of the Apostles, and the Old, as well as the texts of chorales and hymns, in a polyglot manner after Bach's model. Composition of the music started in 1834 and was complete in early 1836. During Mendelssohn's lifetime, St. Paul was a popular and frequently performed work. Today it is regularly performed in Germany and well disseminated in both of its original languages through an array of complete recordings.

How lovely are the messengers that preach us the gospel of peace.
To all the nations is gone forth the sound of their words,
Throughout all the lands their glad tidings.

Opening Voluntary: “Now Let Us All Loudly” Healey Willan (1880-1968)

This is a very exuberant setting of the hymn tune “Now Let Us All Loudly” (Nun preiset alle), text and music by Matthäus Apelles von Löwenstern. Löwenstern’s hymns, thirty in all, are of very varied worth, many being written in imitation of antique verse forms, and on the mottoes of the princes under whom he had served. In the original editions they were accompanied with self-composed melodies. When or where they were first published (cir. 1644) is not clear.

Long-lived composer Healey Willan is best known for his liturgical music, though his output of more than 800 works includes most genres: opera, symphony, chamber, organ, piano, band, incidental scores, song, folk-song arrangements, and much else. More than half of those 800 efforts were sacred works for choir and organ, used for Anglican church services. Stylistically, Willan was a conservative whose music divulged the influence of Wagner and post-Romanticism in general. Born in England, he migrated to Canada and there became probably the most influential composer of liturgical music of his time. His influence spread across North America, spilling over into the musical traditions of most major denominations. Although Willan's compositions are not commonly encountered in the concert hall, renewed interest in his liturgical music since the 1990s offers hope to his admirers that even his concert music may enjoy rediscovery.

Closing Voluntary: Allegro assai vivace from Organ Sonata #1 in F Minor, Op. 65, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Felix Mendelssohn’s six Organ Sonatas, Opus 65, were published in 1845. Mendelssohn was well known and respected for his diversified improvisations and a seemingly endless varieties of new ideas, and it added new dimensions to what one normally heard played on the organ at the time. These qualities are evident in the organ sonatas, which were commissioned in1844 as a set of voluntaries, or preludes, and published in 1845. In fact, all of the music in these Sonatas was composed between August,1844, and January, 1845, so it is not surprising to find certain general characteristics appearing, almost like a recurring theme, throughout all six sonatas, which unifies the whole collection.