September 30, 2012 - Proper 21

Suite No. 7 in g minor HWV 432: "Andante" and 
                                                   "Passacaille" - G.F. Handel
Messiah HWV 56: "If God Be For Us" - G.F. Handel
Elijah Op. 70: "He Watching Over Israel"
                                                               - Felix Mendelssohn

Hymns: #546 Siroe, #509 Nun Danket all und Bringet,
             #344 Sicilian Mariners

Three of this week’s four pieces are by the same composer (and incidentally are in the same key – this part was an accident.) The prelude and postlude are taken from the seventh of G.F. Handel’s (1685-1759) “Grand Suites” for harpsichord. The prelude is the “Andante” and the postlude, the “Passacaille from Suite No. 7 in g minor HWV 432. The gradual anthem is taken from the third part of Messiah, the soprano aria If God Be For Us. Although the communion anthem is not by Handel, his influence is clearly present in the piece. He Watching Over Israel from Felix Mendelssohn’s (1809-1847) epic Elijah Op. 70. complements the Handel very well.

The two movements of Suite No. 7 which serve as bookends to the service are perhaps the two most dissimilar movements in the suite. The tenderness of the Andante is a stark contrast to the fire of the final variations of the Passacaille. The Andante is a simple two part piece in binary form. The right hand plays a lyrical ornamented melody above a continuo like bass line. The Passacaille is a piece that I first encountered as a harp student. It is a set of sixteen variations built on a repeated chord progression. This movement has more in common with the traditional definition of the chaconne in that it is not a piece built on a repeated bass line but rather a repeated chord progression. It is also not in triple meter, one of the other characteristics of both the chaconne and passacaille. Each variation becomes more rhythmically active and propels the work to an exciting climax with both hands playing arpeggiated sixteenth notes all the way to the end of the movement.

If God Be For Us, is one of the lesser known, frequently cut movements in Messiah. Alfred Mann refers to it as “the epilogue to the epilogue.” The aria is sandwiched between two choruses, But Thanks be to God and Worthy Is the Lamb which leads into the “Great” Amen. This puts a great deal of pressure on the soloist to hold the audience’s attention going into the big finale of the work. The aria is essentially a series of rhetorical questions sung by the soprano. “If god be for us, who can be against us” is really a clever line which asks and answers its own question. The soprano basically gets to have a whole conversation with herself. This coupled with the communion anthem and the gentle prelude makes for a day of comforting music.

Mendelssohn’s anthem brings about a more serene image of the God that the soprano sings about in the Handel aria. However, this chorus is not without its turmoil. The opening theme is one of the most beautiful melodies in the whole oratorio but unlike the trio that the angels sing before this chorus, this piece makes no effort to gloss over the suffering. The comfort comes from the idea that God has a plan for helping us deal with that as well. If we are grieving he will rejuvenate us. This is reminding us that sometimes things are bad but that God will be there to restore us – and better yet he is always there to do this for us. He does not sleep. I think that in order to truly appreciate this chorus you have to consider both the aria and the trio which precede it. At this stage of the oratorio Elijah has given up and wants to die. God sends a trio of angels to comfort him but then we get this chorus. I think that Elijah must have needed not one message of comfort but like so many of us, he needed to hear it twice – the second time in a different way to truly grasp it.

This is something to think about as you hear the music this week. Both anthems bring comfort although in different ways. It is my hope that they make you think about something from a different point of view and that you can then draw on this somehow. I know that for me hearing the same phrase a different way can make all the difference.

September 23, 2012 - Proper 20

"Lobe den Herren den machtigen Konig" Op. 65 No. 58
                                                               -Sigfrid Karg-Elert

All-Night Vigil Op. 37: "Blazhen muzh"
                                                         - Sergei Rachmaninoff

"Steal Away" - arr. Nicholas White

Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter BWV 650
                                                                             - J.S. Bach

Hymns: #480 Kingsfold, #408 Mit Freuden Zart,
              #390 Lobe den Herren

The music this week is filled with quiet excitement. There are very few overt statements of joy but the pieces are happy nonetheless. The quiet statements of the two choral anthems bear even more power than the few fortissimo passages that they contain. The Bach and Karg-Elert settings are spritely dances but are played on some of the softer stops of the organ.

The prelude and postlude are both settings of the closing hymn, Lobe den herren. The two settings complement one another very nicely. The first is a setting by Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) from his Opus 65, 66 Chorale Improvisations; the second is the setting by J.S. Bach of Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter, a setting of Lobe den Herren from the Schübler Chorales. The hymn first appeared in a German hymnal in 1665. In 1680 Joachim Neander altered the tune to fit his text Lobe den herren den machtigen Konig. The tune was set by Bach in cantatas 55 and 137, it has also (as can be seen here) been the inspiration for numerous chorale preludes.

The setting by Karg-Elert is a real tour-de-force. It employs many of the new technoligcal advances of the organs of the time including settable combination action to change the stops and the use of the rollschweller, a wheel the organist engages with his or her foot to add or subtract stops to create a crescendo or diminuendo rapidly. This setting moves back and forth between three different ideas. The first is a playful filigree in the right hand over left hand chords and long pedal points. This playful figure opens and closes the work on the light 8’ and 4’ stops of the organ. The other two ideas are similar and differ most in the registration. Both are dissonant, fully harmonized phrases of the chorale tune. The first is played on a soft principal and the cromorne, a light and buzzy reed stop. The second, on full organ, is achieved by opening the crescendo pedal (modern day rollschweller) fully. Karg-Elert was educated at the Leipzig Conservatoire and later taught there himself. His compositional output is immense but he is best known today for his organ works. It is obvious that someone educated in Leipzig, a city filled with the influence of J.S. Bach; and educated at a school founded by Felix Mendelssohn, one of the great proponents of the music of Bach would be intimately familiar with the master’s works. The figuration in the left hand of this chorale owes a great deal to the setting by Bach written 150 years earlier.

Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden BWV 650 is the sixth and final chorale in the collection known as the Schubler Chorales, named for Johann Georg Schubler, the engraver and publisher whose name appears on the title page of the work. Five of the six are known to be arrangements of movements of Bach’s cantatas. It is likely that the BWV 646 also comes from a cantata but that the source cantata has been lost. Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden is an arrangement of an alto aria from Cantata 137: Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren. The alto soloist sings a rather simple statement of the chorale which is placed in the pedal in the organ transcription and played on a 4’ stop to sound an octave higher. The left hand of the organ version plays a bouncy continuo line while the right hand dances above the chorale tune playing the violin obbligato which Karg-Elert later appropriated for his own setting of the chorale.

The gradual anthem is excerpted from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s (1873-1943) Op. 37 All Night Vigil. This third movement, Blazhen muzh (Blessed is the man) is for eight part a cappella choir. One of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church is that no instruments are used.  This piece was one of Rachmaninoff’s favorite works. The fifth movement was sung at the composer’s funeral. The piece was written in less than two weeks in 1915 to benefit the Russian war effort. The piece is often mislabeled Vespers but only the first six movements are taken from the Vespers service. The All-Night Vigil in the Russian Orthodox tradition encompasses the services of vespers, matins, and the first-hour services. The work is verse and response. The altos and tenors of the choir sing a verse and the full choir responds with “Alliluia.” The movement ends with the Gloria Patri followed by three statements of “Alliluia, Glory to Thee, O God” which get progressively softer.

The communion anthem is the much-loved spiritual, Steal Away set by Nicholas White. This spiritual is viewed by many historians as one of the many spirituals that expressed the feelings of the singer while at the same time giving instructions to the slaves on how to escape. The listener is told that God calls by the thunder when the green trees are bending. Dr. Raymond G. Dobard of Howard University suggest that this is the perfect time for slaves to escape because the rain will wash away their tracks and their scent making them harder to find. This arrangement was commissioned by the First United Methodist Church Lubbock, TX for their choir tour in England. It was written be renowned organist and composer Nicholas White (b. 1967.) White serves as Director of Chapel Music and Organist at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. He has performed throughout the country and received many prestigious commissions. This arrangement illustrates the singer “stealing away” by starting the choir on a single note and then branching out from there to fuller and fuller chords. The music becomes more ferocious on the verses with strong unisons first from the women and then the men before returning to the line “I ain’t got long to stay here.”

September 16, 2012 - Proper 19

Concert Variations on the "Austrian Hymn"                                                             - John Knowles Paine

The Heavens are Telling - Ludwig van Beethoven
Christus Factus Est - Anton Bruckner

Hymns:#409 Creation, VF#60 Julion, #522 Austria

The music for this Sunday comes from the Austrio-German tradition. It seems to have worked out that this week two of the three hymns are attributed to Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809). The prelude and postlude are both taken from a piece that is based on Austria, the closing hymn. The choir is singing The Heavens are Telling (not the Haydn from The Creation, but the Beethoven arrangement) and Bruckner’s Christus Factus Est.

The prelude and postlude are taken from John Knowles Paine’s Concert Variations on the “Austrian Hymn.” The piece is a theme followed by four variations and a concluding fugue. The fugue will serve as the postlude for Sunday. The hymn tune is present in a highly ornamented form in the subject. This winds its way through a four voice texture with episodes before a long “C” pedal point gives way to a pedal cadenza which takes us to the triumphal full voiced reentry of the hymn tune.

For the prelude I am playing two of the other four variations, the third which is a quiet meditation in a minor key, and the first which presents the tune in the right hand with the left hand and pedal dialoguing back and forth on a jaunty rhythmic motif.

John Knowles Paine (1839-1909) is one of the first great American organists and is attributed with introducing the organ works of J.S. Bach to the U.S.  He was born to a family of instrument makers in Maine. In 1856 the families business was destroyed in a fire. This tragedy combined with the death of his father soon after caused Paine to have to raise the money for his studies in Germany by giving recitals. By 1859 he had earned enough money to move to Berlin where he studied with Karl August Haupt. He returned to the US in 1861 and settled in Boston at the West Church, a position that he held for just a few months. The 23 year old Paine was appointed organist and choirmaster of Harvard’s Appleton Chapel. Paine established a well-respected music program at Harvard which set itself as a model for other university music programs despite the fact that he himself never earned a college degree.

The gradual anthem is an arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) Opus 48, No. 4 Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur. This is the fourth in a “bundle” of six songs on texts by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715-1769), an 18^th century poet and novelist of the German Enlightenment. He was educated at the University of Leipzig and became highly regarded for his writings which simply and clearly taught their readers a moral. Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur (The Glory of God in Nature) remains one of his most popular pieces to this day. These pieces were originally composed for voice and piano in 1801 or 1802 and dedicated to Count Johann Georg von Browne, one of Beethoven’s early Viennese patrons. The setting for choir and organ features the choir switching back and forth between passages sung heartily in unison with softer lighter lines in four parts while the organ fills out the chords underneath.

The communion anthem is Anton Bruckner’s (1824-1896) setting of Christus Factus Est, the gradual for Palm Sunday. This piece was dedicated to Father Otto Loidol of the Benedictine Monastery of Kremsmünster to whom Locus Iste was also dedicated. This is more symphonic in style than Locus Iste. In this motet the singers climb through various keys to reach a climax only then to drop back down and begin again. His imaginative use of text painting is evident through such things as his treatment of super omne nomen (above all names). By having the sopranos climb by half step to their highest note in the piece while the altos leap up a tenth he illustrates the exaltation of Christ vocally. The beauty of this piece is in its rich harmonies and stark dynamic contrasts. It requires a great deal of sensitivity and musicality but is at the same time incredibly moving and rewarding to both singer and listener.

For further discussion of Bruckner see the post for June 10, 2012.

September 9, 2012 - Proper 18

Cantate Domino - Hans Leo Hassler
Strengthen For Service - Richard Proulx
Unto Thee, O Lord - Virgil T. Ford
God Be In My Head - H. Walford Davies

Hymns: Ash Grove, Land of Rest, Dona Nobis

St. Augustine is credited with saying: “When you sing, you pray twice.” The music this Sunday is a set of four prayers, set to music. It is our first Sunday with choir and as they trickle back after summer vacation these prayers came to mind as texts to focus us for our ministry this season. We also needed everything to be a cappella as our season starts with an outdoor service and picnic. The music for this week spans 500 years and crosses cultures and countries. Rather than skipping the prelude and postlude they have been replaced by a choral introit and benediction.

Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) was one of the most highly respected and talented German organists of the Late Renaissance. He was born into a musical family and his first and only teacher as a child was his father Isaac, the town musician and organist of Nuremberg. In 1584 Hassler became the first German composer to visit Venice where he studied with Andrea Gabrieli. He returned to Germany a year later to be the private organist to Count Ottavianus Fugger of Augsburg where he stayed until 1600. He then became the organist of the Frauenkirche and the director of the Nuremberg town band. In 1608 he accepted a position as the organist to the Electoral College. Late in his life ill health forced him to stop composing. He died in 1612 of consumption. Cantate Domino is a setting of the traditional Catholic introit for the fourth Sunday after Easter and is taken from Psalm 96. The motet was first published in Sacri concentus in 1601, the collection which also featured the melody which would come to be known as the Passion Chorale, or O Sacred Head Now Wounded. The piece is well suited for this opening Sunday as well as the beautiful outdoor setting. The piece opens with the choir stating that the whole world needs to sing a new song to God. As is typical of a piece from this time period we then move to a dance-like section in triple meter before a final, more forceful statement to close the piece. This celebratory motet is a piece which, strictly speaking is not a prayer but rather a song of praise.

The gradual anthem was written by the church composer and organist, Richard Proulx (1937-2010). Proulx spent much of his career at the Cathedral of the Holy Name in Chicago, IL where he ran the concert series, Music for a Grand Space, and also oversaw the installation of two new organs. Prior to serving here he spent many years working in Seattle, WA. His more than 300 compositions include sacred and secular choral music, song cycles, operas, instrumental music and music for congregational singing – some of which is included in The Hymnal 1982. The anthem Strengthen for Service is a setting of text from the Syriac Liturgy of Malabar by Ephraim of Syria (306-373). Ephraim was born to wealthy parents and after a wrongful imprisonment as a child decided on a monastic life, retreating to the mountains to later become assistant to St. James of Nisibis. The text is from the Liturgy of Malabar, a community in Kerala, India made up of people which are culturally Hindu, but their religion is Christianity. This musical setting by Proulx accentuates the poetry of the text. His careful melodic lines and delicate but unstable harmonies highlight every word of Ephraim’s prayer. This is another piece that seems an appropriate invocation for the new year.

Unto Thee, O Lord is Virgil T. Ford’s haunting setting of Psalm 25. This setting by Ford, through the use of quiet harmonies and careful unisons depicts the longing that the text implies. The anthem opens with repeated chords over a descending bass line. After this the rest of the lower parts act as support for the soprano melody which is answered by the tenors. The piece pushes and pulls both harmonically and in dynamics before the restatement of the first line in octaves by the sopranos and tenors. The piece ends with a final statement of “I trust in Thee” cadencing in B major.

H. Walford Davies(1869-1941) was also born into a family of musicians. He started his training as a chorister at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor and in 1890 enrolled in the Royal College of Music where he studied with Parry and Stanford. In 1895 he was appointed teacher of counterpoint at the Royal College. He held numerous church and academic positions, most importantly the position as music director at Temple Church where Leopold Stowkowski was his assistant. Most of Davies compositional output was sacred but perhaps his greatest contributions were his radio broadcasts on music. This setting of God Be In My Head from the Sarum Primer is perhaps the quintessential setting of this text. The simple harmonies and sensitive chord structure make it a joy for the singer and listener. Davies speech rhythm method of singing the Psalms comes into play here as well with the freedom and fluidity of rhythm that is necessary for the performance of this prayer.

September 2, 2012 - Proper 17

Prelude on "Abbott's Leigh" - Carl D.N. Klein
Ten Biblical Songs Op. 99: "I Will Sing New Songs"
                                                                   - Antonin Dvorak
Symphony No. 9 in e minor Op. 95: "Largo"
                                                                   - Antonin Dvorak
St. Denio - Gerald Near

Hymns: #423 St. Denio, #213 Middlebury,
              #291 Wir Pflugen, #782 Abbott's Leigh

The music for this week was chosen for one of two reasons either it is based on a hymn for the day (which were chosen to fit the Lectionary texts for the day) or it represents a new beginning which is what this first Sunday in September has always symbolized for me. The prelude and postlude are a bit mismatched but I think that it offers an interesting way of tying the service together. The prelude is based on the closing hymn and the postlude is based on the opening hymn. I have placed the pieces according to their character rather than proximity to the hymns that they are based on but I think that it works to unite the themes of the service.

The prelude serves to foreshadow the piece to come which is a hymn about going out into the world “Gracious Spirit, give your servants” by Carl P. Daw Jr. (b. 1944). This hymn to the Holy Trinity was written for the Consecration of the Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Connecticut. The hymn, however starts with an invocation of the Holy Spirit and the last verse is a doxology. This is justification enough for me to stretch the tune to use it for the prelude. This setting of Abbott’s Leigh was written by Carl D.N. Klein (b. 1963), a church musician that received his training from Mansfield University and later the Eastman School of Music. This Prelude and Chorale (of which I am playing the prelude) is a simple and ethereal setting that uses only 8’ stops. There is a syncopated repeating motive in the pedal with suspensions that move downward stepwise without ever really resolving in the left hand. Above all of this is the hymn tune played on a solo flute. The piece works well as a quiet invitation to worship before the more declamatory Introit.

The Introit is from the pen of Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). Dvorak was a church organist, composer, conductor and teacher. The music of Dvorak reflects his Czech heritage but also encompasses the musical influences of the countries he visited and worked in. Both the Introit and the Communion music were written while Dvorak was living in New York City (1892-1895). He was brought to the US by Madame Jeannette Meyers Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory of Music, to be the school’s director. His tenure at the school was short lived due to complications over his salary, increased recognition in Europe, and incredible homesickness. In 1895 he returned to his professorship at the Prague Conservatory. His years in the United States, however, were some of his most productive. It was during this time that he wrote the Biblical Songs, his Cello Concerto in b minor, a string quartet and quintet and his Symphony No. 9.

The 10 Biblical Songs, Op. 99 were probably written in response to the death of Tchaikovsky and von Bullow, both close friends of the composer. Although Dvorak spent much of his early career playing and composing for the church, he was uncomfortable writing on religious subjects. He chose the texts for these pieces from the Psalms and set them in a way that highlights the imagery of the poems. The composer reworked the first five for orchestra, the second set was orchestrated after Dvorak’s death. I Will Sing New Songs seems like an appropriate piece to hear on the last Sunday before choir resumes. It serves as an opening psalm from the choir and for the congregation as we prepare as a church to dive back into the year as the summer winds to a close. In the song the soloist and organ alternate with the solo line changing character and dynamics to fit the mood of the text. The organ interludes remain unyielding, coming in with the same joy and (tempered) excitement at the end of the piece that it had at the beginning.

Since we were already on a Dvorak kick I simply could not resist programming the much loved Largo, from Symphony No. 9 in e minor “From the New World”, Op. 95. This symphony, which was to be his last, was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered December 16, 1893 to rave reviews. There are various stories and opinions about the “New World” connections with this piece. Some people believe that Dvorak was setting melodies he had heard in the US, others believed that he was drawing on the influences of Native American and African American music, still others think that he just made it all up and that it sounds more Czech than American. I am not even going to attempt to posit an opinion on this. I just think that the English Horn solo in the second movement of the piece is among the most beautiful melodies ever written – mainly due to its simplicity. An organ transcription of this piece can hardly do justice to the original orchestration but there is a so much color that can be found in the various stops of the organ that, if viewed as a piece of organ music, even the most devout purist can appreciate the music that is played even while lamenting the medium that is used. The transcription is reasonably faithful to the original orchestral version but does edit out a portion of the c# minor part of the movement. The back and forth between the reed solo and the full foundation stops of the organ make for a satisfying reading of one of the most beautiful pieces of the symphonic literature.

The postlude is a setting of the opening hymn, St. Denio by Gerald Near (b. 1942), a highly regarded church composer. He studied with the great Leo Sowerby and with Leslie Bassett. His contributions to the organ literature and to choral music are of the highest quality. He is a recipient of the McKnight Foundation Fellowship and has had pieces commissioned by the American Guild of Organists. He is currently the Director of Aureole Editions. This setting of St. Denio starts and ends with full organ. In between the three parts dance along in a jaunty 6/8 meter that builds as it goes and ends with thick chords played on full organ over a double pedal line.