September 23, 2012 - Proper 20

"Lobe den Herren den machtigen Konig" Op. 65 No. 58
                                                               -Sigfrid Karg-Elert

All-Night Vigil Op. 37: "Blazhen muzh"
                                                         - Sergei Rachmaninoff

"Steal Away" - arr. Nicholas White

Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter BWV 650
                                                                             - J.S. Bach

Hymns: #480 Kingsfold, #408 Mit Freuden Zart,
              #390 Lobe den Herren

The music this week is filled with quiet excitement. There are very few overt statements of joy but the pieces are happy nonetheless. The quiet statements of the two choral anthems bear even more power than the few fortissimo passages that they contain. The Bach and Karg-Elert settings are spritely dances but are played on some of the softer stops of the organ.

The prelude and postlude are both settings of the closing hymn, Lobe den herren. The two settings complement one another very nicely. The first is a setting by Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) from his Opus 65, 66 Chorale Improvisations; the second is the setting by J.S. Bach of Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter, a setting of Lobe den Herren from the Schübler Chorales. The hymn first appeared in a German hymnal in 1665. In 1680 Joachim Neander altered the tune to fit his text Lobe den herren den machtigen Konig. The tune was set by Bach in cantatas 55 and 137, it has also (as can be seen here) been the inspiration for numerous chorale preludes.

The setting by Karg-Elert is a real tour-de-force. It employs many of the new technoligcal advances of the organs of the time including settable combination action to change the stops and the use of the rollschweller, a wheel the organist engages with his or her foot to add or subtract stops to create a crescendo or diminuendo rapidly. This setting moves back and forth between three different ideas. The first is a playful filigree in the right hand over left hand chords and long pedal points. This playful figure opens and closes the work on the light 8’ and 4’ stops of the organ. The other two ideas are similar and differ most in the registration. Both are dissonant, fully harmonized phrases of the chorale tune. The first is played on a soft principal and the cromorne, a light and buzzy reed stop. The second, on full organ, is achieved by opening the crescendo pedal (modern day rollschweller) fully. Karg-Elert was educated at the Leipzig Conservatoire and later taught there himself. His compositional output is immense but he is best known today for his organ works. It is obvious that someone educated in Leipzig, a city filled with the influence of J.S. Bach; and educated at a school founded by Felix Mendelssohn, one of the great proponents of the music of Bach would be intimately familiar with the master’s works. The figuration in the left hand of this chorale owes a great deal to the setting by Bach written 150 years earlier.

Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden BWV 650 is the sixth and final chorale in the collection known as the Schubler Chorales, named for Johann Georg Schubler, the engraver and publisher whose name appears on the title page of the work. Five of the six are known to be arrangements of movements of Bach’s cantatas. It is likely that the BWV 646 also comes from a cantata but that the source cantata has been lost. Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter auf Erden is an arrangement of an alto aria from Cantata 137: Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren. The alto soloist sings a rather simple statement of the chorale which is placed in the pedal in the organ transcription and played on a 4’ stop to sound an octave higher. The left hand of the organ version plays a bouncy continuo line while the right hand dances above the chorale tune playing the violin obbligato which Karg-Elert later appropriated for his own setting of the chorale.

The gradual anthem is excerpted from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s (1873-1943) Op. 37 All Night Vigil. This third movement, Blazhen muzh (Blessed is the man) is for eight part a cappella choir. One of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church is that no instruments are used.  This piece was one of Rachmaninoff’s favorite works. The fifth movement was sung at the composer’s funeral. The piece was written in less than two weeks in 1915 to benefit the Russian war effort. The piece is often mislabeled Vespers but only the first six movements are taken from the Vespers service. The All-Night Vigil in the Russian Orthodox tradition encompasses the services of vespers, matins, and the first-hour services. The work is verse and response. The altos and tenors of the choir sing a verse and the full choir responds with “Alliluia.” The movement ends with the Gloria Patri followed by three statements of “Alliluia, Glory to Thee, O God” which get progressively softer.

The communion anthem is the much-loved spiritual, Steal Away set by Nicholas White. This spiritual is viewed by many historians as one of the many spirituals that expressed the feelings of the singer while at the same time giving instructions to the slaves on how to escape. The listener is told that God calls by the thunder when the green trees are bending. Dr. Raymond G. Dobard of Howard University suggest that this is the perfect time for slaves to escape because the rain will wash away their tracks and their scent making them harder to find. This arrangement was commissioned by the First United Methodist Church Lubbock, TX for their choir tour in England. It was written be renowned organist and composer Nicholas White (b. 1967.) White serves as Director of Chapel Music and Organist at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. He has performed throughout the country and received many prestigious commissions. This arrangement illustrates the singer “stealing away” by starting the choir on a single note and then branching out from there to fuller and fuller chords. The music becomes more ferocious on the verses with strong unisons first from the women and then the men before returning to the line “I ain’t got long to stay here.”