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 14th
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.