Credo - Jane M. Marshall
Hymns: #516 Down Ampney, #507 Julion,
#511 Abbot's Leigh
The two anthems for this
week's service both deal with Pentecost but not as the fiery rushing wind that
I grew up hearing about. Instead the main idea of these anthems is the comfort
that we were left with in the form of the Holy Spirit. These two pieces focus
on different aspects of comfort and where we can find it.
William Byrd (1540-1623)
was an English composer and organist that basically created the English
madrigal. His organ and virginal music put England on the map with keyboard
music. Byrd was educated by the great choral composer Thomas Tallis. The two
were granted a monopoly on print music by Elizabeth I. He began his career as
an organist in London but in 1577 moved to Harlington. As a devout Catholic,
Byrd preferred to be a bit further away from the government that persecuted
many of his
Catholic brethren. Byrd’s
compositional style has two very separate styles. The music that he composed
for the Catholic mass is highly polyphonic and very complex where as the
Anglican anthems focus on the text and are simpler having a more homophonic
texture. This anthem for the Proper of the Sunday after Ascension for five part
choir weaves text from John 14:18 throughout a tapestry of “Alleluias” and
builds to a climax on the line “And you heart shall rejoice.” The cascading
Alleluias simulate the “rushing wind” that the apostles encountered on
Pentecost in the upper room.
Jane Marshall’s (b.
1924) Credo is not the setting of the
traditional creed but is instead a setting of an inscription found in a Cologne
cellar where Jews hid during World War II mixed with Mark 9:24 “Lord, I
believe; help thou mine unbelief.” The text is beautiful for its simplicity but
the source of the text adds a whole other dimension to the feel of the piece. We
have all had times in our lives when “the sun is not shining” but to think of
that family hiding in the cellar not knowing what would happen to them. Jane M.
Marshall is one of the leaders of church music in the United States. Her
anthems My Eternal King and None Other Lamb are in the repertoire of
almost every choir in America. Marshall graduated from Southern Methodist
University and has made her career as a composer and teacher in the Dallas
area. In addition to her choral compositions, several of Marshall’s hymn tunes
have made their way into congregational worship throughout the world. The
anthem begins with the choir stating their beliefs in unison. This is followed
by a four part a cappella section and a restatement of the opening. All of the
melodies are combined at the end of the work and layered on top of one another
to form a wall of sound which gets progressively softer as the piece ends.
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