March 30, 2014 - Lent 4

Sheep May Safely Graze - J.S. Bach
Brother James' Air - Gordon Jacob
Beautiful Savior - F. Melius Christiansen
My Shepherd, Lord - Randall Debruyn

Hymns: #677 London New, #645 St. Columba,
              #490 Houston 

The music this week is all centered around the idea of Christ as the good shepherd with the beloved 23^rd psalm as one of the central texts of the day.

Sheep May Safely Graze (Schafe können sicher weiden) from J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 208. The piece in its original form was written for soprano, continuo and two recorders as part of the secular cantata “All that I love is the merry hunt” which Bach presented to Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels as a part of his birthday celebration. In the original aria the singer tells us that sheep may graze safely under the care of a good ruler, in that case, the Duke. In our setting the Good Shepherd is watching over his sheep. During the 1940s this piece became E. Power Biggs signature piece. He played it at the conclusion of each of his radio recitals for sixteen years. This arrangement uses solo flutes to play the recorder obligato with the softer foundation stops of the swell division taking up the soprano line.

Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) was a renowned composer and teacher. He studied with Charles V. Stanford and counted among his own pupils at the Royal College of Music the likes of Imogen Holst and Malcolm Arnold.  This a cappella setting of the Scottish hymn tune, “Marosa” treats the hymn simply but creatively. The first two verses are set with the melody in the soprano and the lower three parts singing lush harmonies. The men of the choir take the melody for the third verse while the sopranos and altos sing an ornamented line on top of it. The fourth verse reverts to a melody in the soprano this time with the lower three voices singing “Ahs” underneath. The fifth and final verse is filled with big, strong chords that lead to a strong, stirring finish.

The communion anthem is another a cappella hymn arrangement, this one by the conductor and arranger F. Melius Christiansen (1871-1955). He was born in Norway and moved to the United States in 1888. He studied at Augsburg College and in 1901 was recruited to work with the St. Olaf Choir making them one of the foremost a cappella choirs in the country. This tune was used by Franz Liszt in his oratorio “The Legend of St. Elizabeth.”  This arrangement exploits the abilities of the St. Olaf choir to sing a cappella music. The arrangement opens with lush, full eight part chords in a sustained hum. This gives way to the men of the choir continuing the hum under an alto solo. The women enter in unison on the tune for the final verse with a climactic conclusion.

The postlude is a setting of Marosa called “My Shepherd, Lord” by Randall Debruyn (b. 1947), the English language editor of missals for OCP. This piece is a grand but meandering setting of the tune commonly associated with the text “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need.” The piece wanders like a lost sheep through various keys and moves between major and minor before the entrance of the pedal that leads to the final verse played in a stately and grand fashion.

March 16, 2014 - Lent 2

Three Pieces: "Meditation" - Camille Saint-Saens
I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes - Leo Sowerby
Justorum animae - Camille Saint-Saens
Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 623 - J.S. Bach

Hymns: #401 Leoni, #489 Tallis' Ordinal, #147 Bourbon

The music this week is eclectic drawing from the American school, the French Romantic period and, of course, the music of J.S. Bach. The pieces have a bit of give and take with contrasting sections that illustrate the drama that is inherent in the text but always return to the simple calmness. A fitting message for our busy lives; that despite the storm we are currently facing there will be a return to the calm that we once knew.

The prelude and communion anthems are by the French Romantic composer, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). Saint-Saëns is perhaps best known as an orchestral composer having written such treasures as Carnival of the Animals and Danse Macabre; but spent much of his career as a church organist at La Madeleine in Paris. Justorum animae is an offertory piece for the Feast of All Saint’s. The text is taken from chapter 3 of the Book of Wisdom and is a very comforting text. The A section has the choir singing in lush four part homophonic writing on the text which translates as: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God and the torment of death shall not touch them.” The organ is playing a simple bass line in the pedals undergirding the voices. The tenors introduce the B section stating that “In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die.” The organ plays a bit more hear as the choir wanders far away from the home key of F major ending in the key of Db. The choir cuts off and the organ continues with a rather awkward pedal line which does not really help the choir to find F major again for the return of the A section where the choir again brings comfort with the line “but they are in peace.”

Saint-Saens wrote very few pieces for the organ and the prelude for today, Meditation, is taken from a set of three pieces not for the organ but for its cousin, the harmonium. The harmonium is a reed organ which, like the pipe organ has stops and is capable of playing different sounds based on the stops the performer chooses. The harmonium is also capable of very subtle dynamic shading based on a pair of knee levers that control the volume. This piece exploits the harmoniums ability to add all of the stops with the pulling of one lever and to then illicit various degrees of shading based on the manipulation of the knee levers. The opening of the piece utilizes the harmonium’s split keyboard. Unlike the organ, the harmonium has only one manual like the piano but the performer can choose to have the same sound across the compass of the keyboard or to use contrasting stops to allow for two distinct voices.  The piece goes through sections of loud, chromatic lines and dulcet tonal phrases before winding to a peaceful close.

The gradual anthem is by the great American organist and church music composer, Leo Sowerby.  Sowerby (1895-1968) studied at the American Conservatory of Music and from 1927-1962 served as organist at St. James’ Episcopal Church (in 1955 named a cathedral). In 1946 he received the Pulitzer Prize in music for his cantata Canticle of the Sun. After retiring from St. James’ he went to Washington DC to direct the newly founded College of Church Musicians. His choral music is often very demanding, haven been written for some of the top church choirs in the country. This setting of Psalm 121 for choir and organ opens with an alto solo that before the choir comes in on the third verse of the psalm. After the choir sings the fourth verse, the entire alto section takes up the opening solo line while the other sections provide an organ-like accompaniment. The sopranos then take up the second half of the theme as the altos rejoin the rest of the ensemble. A faster B section sets verses five and six before the alto soloist returns with a slightly altered version of the original melody sung at the opening and a final choral “amen.”

This week the postlude is J.S. Bach’s chorale from the Orgelbüchlein, Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 623. This chorale is one in thanksgiving for the sacrifice of Christ which, though a little premature at this stage is applicable to the gospel lesson for the day. This brief setting shows Bach’s use of motif in his use of a recurring lower neighbor tone (think do-ti-do) in the lower three voices’ accompaniment of the chorale tune. The final line of the chorale is one asking for solace in our final hour. This piece is a happy conclusion to the service but it is understood that the happiness and comfort was borne through pain and suffering.

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.

March 9, 2014 - Lent 1

Aus tiefer Noth BWV 687 - J.S. Bach
Elijah: "He That Shall Endure to the End"
                                                              - Felix Mendelssohn 
Mass No. 2 in G Major: "Agnus Dei" - Franz Schubert
Prelude and Fugue in d minor: "Prelude"
                                                               - Felix Mendelssohn

Hymns: #150 Aus der tiefe, LEVAS #188 It is Well,
              # 143 Erhalt uns, Herr

The music this week comes from German (and Austrian) masters from the Baroque to the Romantic period. During Lent I have, again, chosen to feature the music of J.S. Bach. This is a constant source of inspiration and surprise. I find that no matter how much of it I play and how much I listen to I am constantly able to find something new in the way that Bach has treated the texts that he sets, be it for organ or for choir. There are so many extra-musical elements inside the music of Bach that I am constantly intrigued by that I am able to play the same piece over and over and never get bored. At times his music can be more meaningful for the performer than the listener but the informed performer can glean a great deal of inspiration from the music as well.

The prelude is J.S. Bach’s setting of Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir BWV 687 from his monumental work Clavier-Übung III. This piece, sometimes called the “German Organ Mass” was composed between 1735 and 1736 and published in 1739. It is a collection of which is bookended by the Prelude and Fugue in Eb (St. Anne) and contains twenty-one chorale preludes and four duets. The work runs the gamut from “simple” chorales for manuals only to the much more complex six-part setting of this chorale (BWV 686) with a double pedal part. The first nine chorales are based on the Lutheran mass while the next twelve are the Lutheran catechism. Aus tiefer falls in the section on penitence as the singer asks God’s help and forgiveness. This setting of Psalm 130 by Martin Luther appears many times in the work of Bach and other German composers including Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) who used it in his third organ sonata.
In an effort to lighten the load on the choir (which hardly seems possible this time of year) I have been program movements of Mendelssohn’s Elijah which we will be performing for this year’s Celebration of the Arts. He That Shall Endure to the End is the Act II chorus that falls after what I usually think of as the best known part of the work. Elijah is exhausted and dejected and the trio of angels sings Lift Thine Eyes followed by the full choir singing He Watching Over Israel. An angel of the Lord appears to Elijah to tell him that must go to Horeb and Elijah responds that he wishes God would demonstrate his power and the angel instructs him to Rest in the Lord. The choir closes this scene with the simple yet powerful chorus He that Shall endure to the end shall be saved.  This text made me think of the stories of Jewish prisoners performing Elijah in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Despite the fact that Mendelssohn was a Jewish born composer and the grandson of a rabbi and that the statue of him in Leipzig had been destroyed during the Nazi regime, there were clips of a performance used in a propaganda film by the Third Reich. This text is even more poignant with the idea that a performance of this work at the camp had to be cancelled because the entire chorus was put on a train to Auschwitz. It is not difficult to see why this text and this story would resonate with the imprisoned Jews at the concentration camp.
In addition to his choral works, Mendelssohn wrote symphonies, concertos, and keyboard works. Although his organ works are few in number (three preludes and fugues and six sonatas) they occupy a prominent place in the canon of organ literature. The preludes and fugues were not necessarily pieces that were conceived in pairs but rather were the outgrowth of Mendelssohn’s improvisations at the console. At the urging of Thomas Attwood, a renowned English organist he agreed to have them published and (like the Bach preludes and fugues) they were paired based on key with little regard to whether they matched stylistically. This prelude is a free virtuosic piece reminiscent in some ways of the free North German praeludium of Buxtehude. The sweeping gestures and arpeggiated chords cause the piece to rely on harmonies rather than a melodic idea for their basis. It is an emotional piece and lends itself to the beginning of Lent.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), like Mendelssohn lived only a very short time but contributed greatly to music history with his symphonies, choral and chamber works and especially his lieder. His Mass No. 2 in G Major D167 was composed in just five days during the first week of March in 1815 for his parish in Liechtenthal. The Agnus Dei features the soprano and bass soloists alternating with the choir adding its petition for mercy “miserere nobis” and for peace “dona nobis pacem.”