April 27, 2014 - Easter 2

Sonata III: "Awake, My Treasure" - Paul Hindemith
Elijah: "Be Not Afraid" - Felix Mendelssohn
Messiah: "But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell"
                                                                          - G.F. Handel
Chaconne in C - Dietrich Buxtehude

Hymns: #192 Vreuchten, #193 Puer nobis,                       
              #209 St. Botolph

This week is a bit of a German extravaganza as we prepare to sing Mendelssohn’s epic oratorio, Elijah. We will present a preview of this, using the chorus “Be Not Afraid” as our gradual anthem. We are also traveling backwards through time chronologically with our composers starting the morning with Hindemith then moving through Mendelssohn and Handel before ending with Buxtehude.

The prelude is the second movement of Paul Hindemith’s (1895-1963) Organ Sonata III. The third of his three sonatas for organ was written in 1940 after he had fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the US moving first to Buffalo, NY and then to New Haven, CT to teach at Yale. Unlike the first two sonatas, the third is based on German folksongs with each movement bearing a line of text as its title. “Awake, my treasure,” the second movement  is a song taken from the 15^th century Locham Book. Hindemith sets this in his way with winding lines that are, at times angular and still somehow gentle.  The song that this is best on is a song of two lovers that meet and must part at the breaking dawn. I however, in reading the title immediately associated it with the resurrection. It seems for me (if in title only) a fitting open to the second Sunday of Easter.

Traveling back in time almost 100 years from Hindemith’s sonata we come to Felix Mendelssohn’s (1809-1847) oratorio, Elijah. This biblical drama tells the story of God’s prophet Elijah and his mission to get the Israelites to renounce the false gods of their rulers and to turn to the one true God.  Part two of the oratorio opens with the soprano aria “Hear Ye, Israel” (see the post from 1/19/14 for more on this aria) and then the choir explodes with the further affirmation that God, thy help is near. This chorus takes its text from Isaiah and the Psalms, beginning with large thick chords and full orchestra before changing to a faster tempo, a minor key, and a fugue that reminds the hearer that although things are bad in the surrounding world, God’s people need not be afraid.

Mendelssohn’s oratorio was greatly influenced by the large choral works that preceded it by many different composers but one of the most notable composers of oratorio is obviously Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), and probably his most well-known piece, Messiah is where the tenor aria “But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul in Hell” is taken from.  Messiah is an oratorio on the life of Christ and takes us from the Old Testament prophecies of his birth to his incarnation. Part two, where this aria is found, opens with the prophecy of his death and moves then to his resurrection.  This text from Psalm 16 is set as a light tenor aria (although in other editions it has been assigned to a soprano). This piece reminds us that even though Christ was put to death, his soul was not allowed to languish in hell. It is further reinforcement of the promise of “Be Not Afraid.”

The postlude takes us back a bit further still in the history of German music to Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707). One of his best-known organ works, The Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne is  a joyful piece with three very distinct sections. The third (my postlude) is the chaconne. A chaconne is a set of variations over a repeated harmonic progression. There is often but not always a repeated bass line, but that is not required. These short variations grow in rhythmic intensity allowing the piece to build. The fact that the piece is in C and is built around the lowest note the organ can produce (low “c “in the pedal)adds gravitas and grandeur to this celebratory piece of North German Organ Music.

This tour of the history of German music (sort of) will be continued next week as we present Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah with choir(s) and orchestra. This is an event not to be missed.

April 20,2014 - Easter

Prelude in C BWV 531 - J.S. Bach
If Ye Then Be Risen With Christ - C.V. Stanford
The Day Draws On With Golden Light - Edward Bairstow
Carillon-Sortie - Henri Mulet

Hymns: #207 Easter Hymn, #191 Lux eoi, #199 St. Kevin

As in previous years the Easter service will open with the music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) which has been a constant throughout the season of Lent.  This piece embraces the joyful and celebratory nature of Bach’s writing. This early Prelude in C, BWV 531 resembles the music of Buxtehude and Bohm more than the more complex writing of Bach. The piece opens with an extended pedal solo which gives way to arpeggios and scales that are little more than broad sweeping gestures that lead from one harmony to another.  The freedom of this piece captures the improvisatory nature of Bach’s organ writing. Pieces like this were seldom conceived as literature to be presented in a church or concert setting and more as an example of an improvisation that the organist would perform. In fact, pieces like this were often designed to be played while the orchestra was tuning for a performance. The prolonged harmonies allow the players to tune to the organ while it is holding a static pitch.

The postlude is the Carillon-Sortie by Henri Mulet (1878-1967). Mulet was a rather eccentric composer who is all but forgotten. Of his 88 years of life he only composed for 15 and spent the last thirty years of his life in seclusion. It is difficult to imagine that such a reclusive man would have crafted such an overtly joyful piece.  Like many French carillons, the piece has a repeated figure on top of a broad and stately melody line. This piece builds rhythmically going from sixteenth notes as the accompanying figure to 32^nd notes. The piece captures all of the joy of Easter.

The choir anthems are both by English Romantic composers. The gradual anthem was written in 1883 by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). Stanford was born in Ireland to a Protestant lawyer. He was educated at Queen’s College Cambridge. In 1874 he traveled to Germany and then France but he still returned to England to conduct various projects. Staonford went on to teach music at Cambridge and composition at the Royal College of Music. Stanford wrote for every major idiom and counted such greats as Bridge, Holst, and Vaughan Williams. His writing has the influence of his German training and his Celtic upbringing synthesized into a well crafted and very singable piece. If Ye Then Be Risen with Christ takes the tune “Salisbury” as part of its thematic material. The piece opens with a lovely rising line that is passed through the choir. The sopranos then introduce the next section of the piece which is then taken up by the rest of the choir. The A section returns which is followed by a section of “Hallelujah”s  which takes us to the end of the piece.

The communion anthem is English organist Edward Bairstown (1874-1946). The Day Draws on With Golden Light . This hymn with has a text by Ambrose of Milan (340-397). The piece is a rather simple anthem in unison or two parts featuring the men of the choir and the women of the choir alternating between melody and harmony. The organs colorful accompaniment leads the choir through a lilting melody in ¾. The piece builds to the middle before tapering back to the quietness in which the piece began.

April 13, 2014 - Palm Sunday

The Passion According to Saint Matthew
                                                               -Howard Boatwright

Howard Boatwright’s setting of “The Passion according to St. Matthew” follows  the form and character of a great many passion settings; the best known of which is probably the monumental setting by J.S. Bach.  Other composers including Telemann, Handel, Schutz, and Pärt have drawn on the dramatic readings from the Gospel for settings of this story as well.

Howard Boatwright composed this passion setting in 1962 for the choir of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, New Haven, Connecticut. This church has a longstanding tradition of high quality music and counts Charles Ives among its past organists. A conversation with retired tenor soloist, Jim Shults, who studied the piece with Howard revealed that the hymn tune PETRA was included because it was Helen’s favorite. Shults also shared that while coaching with Howard for the role of the Evangelist that Howard told him he had written the role for the Yale professor and renowned Bach tenor, Blake Stern who would sing both the Boatwright and the Bach St. John Passion in New Haven.

The work is structured like the Bach setting with the Evangelist (a solo tenor) taking us through the events of the day with the text of Matthew 27:1-54 as the source material. Other characters including Pilate, Pilate’s Wife, Jesus, and Judas help to share their part of the narrative. The choir and congregation participate in the drama by taking responsibility for many of the day’s events singing hymns drawn from The 1940 Hymnal and set by Boatwright.  The piece is a dramatic and emotional setting of this familiar text exploiting Boatwright’s understanding of the passion form and of dissonance to capitalize on the turbulent nature of the text.

April 6, 2014 - Lent 5

Aus tiefer not schrei ich zu dir - Georg Bohm
Cantata No. 38: Wenn meine Trubsal als mit Ketten
                                                                              - J.S. Bach
Verily, Verily I Say Unto You - Thomas Tallis

Hymns: #665 Michael, #508 Nova Vita,
              #715 When Jesus Wept

The music this week is old. Very old. This is the one week in Lent that I am not playing Bach for the prelude or postlude, but instead we are singing a movement from cantata No. 38. Fear not though, I found a lovely chorale prelude by Georg Bohm (1661-1733) on Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir to play. Bohm was an organist and composer that is largely credited with developing the chorale partita, a piece which consists of a set of variations on a chorale tune for a solo keyboard instrument. In 1700 J.S. Bach traveled to Luneburg where Bohm served at the Johanniskirche and it is widely believed that Bach studied with Bohm between 1700 and 1702. This piece based on a chorale tune first published in the Teutch Kirchenampt is much cheerier than the Martin Luther tune of the same name. The first of two partitas is for manuals only and is a simple contrapuntal four part setting. The second places the chorale in the left hand fragmented against a swirling figuration in the right hand.

Cantata No. 38 is based on the familiar Martin Luther tune, Aus tiefer Not, or Out of the Depths.  This cantata for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity has for its fifth movement a trio for soprano, alto and bass. The text is:

When my troubles like chains
link one misfortune to another,
then my Savior will rescue me,
so that it all suddenly falls from me.
How soon the morning of comfort appears
after this night of anguish and worry!

Which I think works very well as a glimpse of things to come in the next two weeks. The nice part about this verse is that despite the minor key and the mention of things that are bed, there is a great deal of hope which is something that we can’t do without during these last few days of Lent.

The communion anthem is Thomas Tallis’s (1505-1585) setting of John 6:53-56. In this modal piece Tallis plays around with tonal ambiguity leading us back and forth between minor and modal in this, mostly homophonic motet. Tallis’s use of text painting is evident in the second section when the voices alternate singing that “I [GOD] will raise him up at the last day. It is an honest and rather stark setting of the basics of the Eucharist. Something that I find is very important to think on during these few weeks as we search our hearts to make them fitting for his Kingdom. This is a good example of the beauty of how we worship.