Sonata in Eb: "Andante" - Horatio Parker
O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem - John Goss
The Collection/Serenity - Charles Ives
Symphony of Spirituals: "Toccata and Fugue"
- Joel Raney
Hymns: #375 DU LEBENSBROT, #550 RESTORATION,
#676 BALM IN GILEAD
The music this week is primarily American with the exception
of the gradual anthem which is very British. The pieces are all centered around
the idea of peace, but in some ways they are about different types of peace.
O Pray For the Peace
of Jerusalem is taken from the larger work Praise the Lord by the British organist and composer John Goss
(1800-1880). Goss came from a musical family and started his career as a
professional musician at an early age. His father was the organist of a small
parish church and at an early age Goss was appointed a chorister of the Chapel
Royal. He studied the organ with the renowned Thomas Attwood, a student of
Mozart and the organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1821 Goss married and was
appointed organist of Stockwell Chapel where he served until 1824 when he took
a similar post at St. Luke’s, Chelsea. In 1827 he was appointed to a position
at the Royal Academy of Music which he held until 1874. In 1838 Attwood died
and Goss was appointed organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a post he held until
his retirement. In addition to his duties at the cathedral and the academy he
also taught at St. Paul’s school where one of his students was John Stainer who
later succeeded him at the Cathedral. Much of Goss’s music has been relegated
to obscurity but his church music is still performed today. O Pray for the Peace opens with a
mournful bass line that is passed up through the vocal parts and with a refrain
that describes the fate of those that love the Lord. This back and forth
continues and the anthem concludes with a quiet final chorus in major.
The prelude was written by the American composer Horatio
Parker (1863-1919). Parker, like Goss, came from a musical family. His mother
was an organist and his father an architect. In 1877 Parker took his first
music lessons from his mother and later studied composition with George
Chadwick. It was Chadwick’s recommendation in 1882 that sent Parker to Munich
to study with the organist/composer Josef Rheinberger. Upon returning to the
U.S. in 1885 he occupied several positions in NYC. In 1893 Parker moved his
family to Boston where he assumed duties as organist at Trintiy Church, Copley
Square where he stayed until 1902. In 1894 Parker was elected to the Battell
Professorship of the Theory of Music at Yale. Parker was tremendously
successful as a composer and teacher. Among his students were David Stanley
Smith, Roger Sessions, Quincy Porter and Charles Ives. Parker’s 1908 Organ Sonata in Eb Op. 65 in four
movements begins with a sonata form structure followed by two song form
movements and ending with a large fugue. The second movement, Andante has a lovely singing melody
played on the oboe with a flowing left hand accompaniment. This then moves to a
B section on the Vox Humana, a unique stop named for the human voice. This moves
to a third section which is a fugue played on the string stop of the great. The
opening theme returns and again proceeds to the material played on the vox
humana as the piece draws to a quiet close.
As I said in the previous section, one of Parker’s students
was Charles Ives (1874-1954). For the communion anthem I have combined his 1919
composition Serenity from Seven Songs for Voice and Piano and The Collection from 114 Songs. Serenity is a peaceful song that is only 27 measures
long. Of those 27 measures, 16 are the same. From a compositional standpoint this
piece is very similar to Holst’s Neptune
from The Planets. Ives considered
this piece to be “namby-pamby” and “nice” despite the fact that this
composition brought him a great deal of notoriety. The Collection is a 1920 setting of Kingsley labeled by the composer for “the organist, the soprano,
and the Village Choir.” Typical of Ives’s early writing this utilizes an early
hymn tune with some twisting and unusual harmonies at the outset but it is very
traditional once the voice comes in. These two pieces provide an interesting
contrast about God. The first focuses on praising God while the second finds serenity
through the love of God.
The postlude is taken form Joel Raney’s Symphony of Spirituals. Joel Raney (b. 1956) was
Artist-in-Residence at the First Presbyterian Church of River Forest, Illinois,
and currently serves as Minister of Music at the First Baptist Church of Oak
Park, Illinois. He studied at the University of North Alabama and Julliard and
is in demand as a composer and clinician. This piece is a toccata on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot with staccato
chords in the hands and the melody in the feet followed by a fugue on Promised Land which concludes with a
coda on the first piece. This work for piano and organ features a number of well-known
spirituals and combines them for the two instruments in a masterful way. This
movement for organ only concludes the piece in a triumphant fashion and leads
the listener to an image of peace at the end of life. These two pieces paint a
picture of a chariot that takes the singer to the Promised Land and invites the
listener to join.
These pieces cover peace from a prayerful desire for the chosen
people of God to the peace that only God can grant and the notion that this
peace may not be found until we reach the end of our journey. It is my hope
that as we move back into the church year and the busy seasons of life that we
may all find peace now and look forward to the peace that will come.
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