March 5, 2014 - Ash Wednesday

Sorrow and Gladness - Alice Parker
Denn es gehet - Johannes Brahms
Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ - J.S. Bach

Hymns: #411 St. Thomas, #149 Old 124th

The music for Ash Wednesday was varied from being quiet and reverent to hopeful to dramatic and dark. It encompassed all aspects of the season ahead and helped to set the tone for the forty days ahead.

This year, as was the case two years ago I have decided to spend some of my own devotional and practice time with the works of J.S. Bach (1685-1759). The postlude this evening was his setting of Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 639. This setting of Johann Agricola’s hymn is among the most popular pieces in the Orgelbuchlein. The chorale tune (as is the case in most of these pieces) is played in the soprano in tastefully ornamented quarter notes while the left hand plays arpeggiated sixteenth notes against the throbbing eighth note pedal line; a real treatise in maintaining different rhythms for the organ student. The text of the first verse is:
Lord, hear the voice of my complaint,
To Thee I now commend me,
Let not my heart and hope grow faint,
But deign Thy grace to send me.
True faith from Thee, my God, I seek,
The faith that loves Thee solely.
Keeps me lowly,
And prompt to aid the weak,
And mark each word that Thou dost speak Translation by John Christian Jacobi

This seems fitting as we move into a time where we must seek God and examine our lives. I thought it an appropriate ending to the service and beginning to our Lenten journey.

The gradual anthem is Alice Parker’s (b. 1925) setting of the Gracia Grindal (b. 1943) poem Sorrow and Gladness. Grindal is Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric at Luther Seminary where she began teaching in 1984. In addition to her work there she has served on many committees on hymnody and his done extensive research on the connections between theology, culture and hymnody. This original tune by Alice Parker, Robert Shaw’s longtime collaborator and a prolific composer and highly respected conductor has much in common with the folk hymn arrangements that Parker wrote with Shaw earlier in her career. It is an a cappella setting of a melody with much resemblance to an early American hymn tune. The added two part descant on the last verse is the crowning moment of the piece as the two parts soar over the rest of the choir.
One of Johannes Brahms’ (1833-1897) final compositions was his Op. 121 Vier Ernst Gesänge (Four Serious Songs)written in 1896. In March of 1896 his close friend Clara Schumann suffered a stroke and, in anticipation of her death Brahms turned to the scripture and to music for consolation. The piece, however is dedicated to the German Symbolist painter, sculptor, print maker and writer, Max Klinger. The first of these four “Denn es Gehet” takes its text from Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 and alternates between a plodding lyrical melody and a dramatic section with running triplet figures in the piano that seems to have more in common with Wagner than Brahms. The piece reminds us that we are no better than the animals and that we, like they, are made of dust and will return to that dust.