May 26, 2013 - Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day

Partita on "Holy, Holy, Holy" - Geoffrey Stanton
The Battle Hymn of the Republic - arr. Peter Wilhousky
Trinitarian Blessing - K. Lee Scott
Double Fugue on "My Country Tis of Thee"
                                                            - John Knowles Paine

Hymns: #362 Nicaea, #366 Grosser Gott, #608 Melita

In selecting music this week I tried to be sensitive to both observances taking place. This was Trinity Sunday according to the church year but also Memorial Day. It is my personal feeling that both are too important to ignore so the music was split evenly with the prelude and communion anthem celebrating the Trinity while the gradual anthem and postlude were selected for Memorial Day.

The prelude is an excerpt from Geoffrey Stanton’s Partita on “Holy, Holy, Holy” written as part of the Marilyn Mason music collection. Stanton is Director of Music at Bethlehem United Church of Christ in Ann Arbor, Michigan and a part time instructor at Eastern Michigan University. Stanton is an accomplished recitalist on organ and synthesizer. He is a respected authority on synthesizers and electronic music, a topic which he has written a book on and lectured on. The two movements that I chose for this service are very different. The first is a bluesy setting in 12/8 and in minor filled with grace notes and a very rhythmic pedal motif. The registration that he calls for evokes the sound of the Hammond organs of the 1960’s and 1970’s more than the classical pipe organ of today. The second partita is quiet and reflective with the pedal playing a beautiful ornamented melody while the hands sustain chords.

The communion anthem is Trinitarian Blessing by K. Lee Scott (b. 1950). Scott has served as adjunct faculty for The University of Alabama School of Music, The University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Music and Samford University School of Music. He has received numerous commissions and has over 300 works published including choral anthems and hymns. His Trinitarian Blessing opens with a gentle soprano solo and then moves into a lush four part setting. This is followed by a restatement of the opening solo for full choir with the men echoing the women before the final statements of “joy unending.”

When it comes to patriotic choral music the first piece that comes to mind for me is Peter Wilhousky’s (1902-1978) arrangement of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. This hymn written in 1862 by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) a very well educated woman at a time when this was neither encouraged nor celebrated. Howe married in 1843 but the marriage was not a happy one. Her husband was oppressive and did not want her work to go public. In 1852 the couple separated and Howe published her work which shed light on “the intimate affairs of a ‘real’ man and women.” She became an abolitionist and was heavily involved with John Brown’s revolution. She went on to be a well-respected theologian and writer. Wilhousky’s arrangement of the Battle Hymn is one of the best loved and most widely performed settings of this hymn. In addition to this piece he also added English text to the Carol of the Bells.

The postlude is a double fugue ( a form in which there are two fugue subjects each individually developed and then combined) on My Country Tis of Thee by the American composer John Knowles Paine (1839-1906). Paine was born into a musical family and spent time in Europe as a student. Upon returning he made a name for himself as a recitalist before being appointed Harvard’s first professor of music. This piece is typical of Paine’s writing. Paine combines spritely passages for the manuals and fast pedal passages including a solo for the pedals. The work reaches a climax and the theme is played on the first restatement of the theme.