March 8, 2015 - Lent 3

I Will Arise - Gwyneth Walker

Ave Verum - Charles Huerter

Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit - J.S. Bach

Prelude au Kyrie - Jean Langlais

Hymns: #574 St. Petersburg, #51 Decatur Place, 

              #518 Westminster Abbey

This week’s music was written by two American composers. One piece is a setting of a Southern Harmony hymn and the other a setting of a 14^th century Eucharistic hymn. Both pieces are personal statements of faith that play into the introspective nature of the Lenten season.

I Will Arise is a setting of a Southern Harmony tune arranged by Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947). Walker was born in New Canaan, Connecticut and holds degrees from Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. In 1982 she resigned from her position at Oberlin to focus on composition full-time.  Walker wrote Three Folk Hymns in response to attending worship services at several small protestant churches. The pieces were premiered by the North Guilford Congregational Church Choirs in 2006. 

The pieces are simple in nature and were written to be easy enough for the average small church choir. I Will Arise is arranged so that it can be sung in many different combinations. The hymn tune “Restoration” was first paired with text by Joseph Hart (1712-1768) in William Walker’s 1835 Southern Harmony. Walker preserves the style and tradition of the hymn by adding a harmony above the melody rather than below it and by adding heavy accents. In this presentation I have broken up who has the melody and the harmony in different verse. The piece ends by adding a soprano descant.

There are so many settings of Ave Verum, perhaps the best known is the Mozart. This setting was written by Charles Huerter (1885-1974) a Brooklyn born composer and teacher. He studied piano and composition at Syracuse University. Ave Verum was written for the Syracuse Festival Chorus and their director Howard Lyman. The piece is simple and homophonic with a lot of similarities to the setting by W.A. Mozart’s. It’s gentle, prayerful nature has some endearing qualities.  

Continuing with my Lenten exploration of the music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) this week I am playing Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit from the Clavierubung III often called the “German Organ Mass. This monumental piece is a collection contains a prelude and fugue, 21 chorale preludes and 4 duets. The chorales are settings of the parts of the Lutheran mass and catechism. The piece is bookended by the “St. Anne” prelude and fugue in Eb. This Kyrie is the first of six settings of the Kyrie, three for manuals and pedals and three for manuals only. They set the tree separate verses of the Kyrie that reflect prayers to each person of the trinity. This setting is of the text:

O Lord the Father for evermore!

We Thy wondrous grace adore;

We confess Thy power, all worlds upholding.

Have mercy, Lord.

by Martin Luther. The piece is written in stile antico form with long note values and strict counterpoint. This collection reflects some of Bach’s most complex writing for the organ. The chorale tune is placed in the soprano in long notes while the lower two voices and pedal play florid counterpoint based on the first phrase of the chorale tune. 

The prelude was written by Jean Langlais (1907-1991), a blind organist and composer. The piece is taken from his Hommage à Frescobaldi, op.70. This eight movement work written in 1951 is his second organ mass. Langlais added three movements to the five movement mass. The final movement, Épilogue, uses the opening theme of Messa della Madonna from Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali. Anne Labounsky writes: “Although each movement is short, several of them demonstrate his ideal of mysticism: to draw the listener into a state of contemplation…through the suspension of time.” This simple Kyrie places the plainchant melody in the pedal played on a 4’ stop.  The manuals play on soft 16’ and 8’ string stops.  This simple prayer opens this piece in a soft and rather mystical way.