October 12, 2014 - Proper 23

Neuf Pieces: "Prelude sur une Antienne" - Jean Langlais

Gloria: "Laudamus Te" - Francis Poulenc

This is the Hour of Banquet and of Song-Richard DeLong

Hark! Ten Thousand Harps and Voices - arr. Diane Bish

Hymns: #7 Ratisbon, #763 Raquel, #569 Russia

The music this week is a little bit all over the place but it all fits together well. The prelude and gradual anthem are from the late French Romantic literature while the postlude and communion anthem are settings of great but lesser known hymns.

The communion anthem is a setting of This is the Hour of Banquet and of Song by Horatius Bonar (1808-1899). Bonar was born in Edinburgh and ordained in 1837. In 1843 he joined the Free Church of Scotland. He gained fame as a religious writer with the publication of the “Kelso Tracts” in addition to this he has authored over 600 hymns. The text is set to a new tune by the American organist and composer Richard DeLong (1951-1994). DeLong attended Ashland College and did his graduate work at Southern Methodist University. DeLong was a successful recitalist and accompanist as well as being a respected composer. He received several prominent commissions during his career. This hymn anthem sets the four verses of Bonar’s Eucharistic hymn simply but elegantly first in unison then all of the men of the choir. The third verse is a meditative a cappella setting that eludes to the fleeting nature of our celebration here on earth while the final verse for unison choir with descant points to the banquet to be celebrated in heaven. This text is made even more poignant by the notation in the front of the anthem which reads: “On the day THIS IS THE HOUR OF BANQUET AND OF SONG was scheduled to go to press, word was received in this office of the death of the composer.” It seems his thoughts had already turned toward the heavenly banquet as he lost his battle with AIDS.

The postlude is a setting of Lowell Mason’s (1792-1872) hymn tune “Harwell” which is often coupled with the text from 1806 by Thomas Kelly (1769-1855), Hark! Ten Thousand Harps and Voices. Lowell Mason is considered the father of church music and music education in America. He spent his life studying and then educating teachers and musicians on the practice of teaching music and is also responsible for the introduction of music into the public school. This arrangement by the American organist Diane Bish (b. 1941). Bish has hosted, produced, and starred in the television series “The Joy of Music” for more than 25 years. This show takes her all over the world and features performances by world class performers on a variety of different organs. Known almost as well for her flashy costumes as for her flawless playing Bish remains a prominent recitalist throughout the US and Europe. This arrangement shows the wide variety of colors and sounds that are available to the organist and the different approaches that can be taken to text painting in a hymn arrangement.

The prelude is taken from Jean Langlais’s (1907-1991) Neuf Pieces written between 1942 and 1943. The piece was written as Langlais’s response to World War II. His publisher wanted him to write something that would include Gregorian chant and Lutheran chorale tunes. The seventh piece in the collection Prelude sur une Antienne incorporates the chant “vos amici mei estis” a text taken from John 15:14 “You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.” This simple yet haunting melody in 5/4 is set smoothly and quietly. A bleak but quiet commentary on the world that Langlais lived in at the time of the composition.

The gradual anthem also comes out of the French Romantic tradition but is a “preview” of the Poulenc Gloria which we will present in full on Sunday, November 2. I will do a full set of program notes for that piece then.

October 5, 2014 - Proper 22

Sonata No. 6: "Andante" - Felix Mendelssohn

The Creation: "Achieved is the Glorious Work"

                                                                            - F.J. Haydn

Teach Me, O Lord - Thomas Attwood

The Creation: "Chaos" - F.J. Haydn

Hymns: #628 St. Ethelwald, #431 Aldine, 

              #598 Mit Freuden Zart

The gradual anthem and postlude are both taken from Franz Joseph Haydn’s (1732-1809) monumental oratorio The Creation. Written between 1796 and 1798 this was Haydn’s response to hearing performances of Handel’s oratorios during his visits to England between 1791 and 1795. The text for the oratorio is taken from Genesis, Psalms and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Haydn was given a poem by Johann Peter Salomon but the actual author is unknown. Haydn turned the text over to Baron van Swieten who wrote both an English and German version of the libretto.  The work is in three acts with the first two depicting the six days of Creation and the third part takes place in the Garden of Eden with soloists singing the roles of Adam and Eve.

The postlude is the famous overture “Chaos” which depicts the universe prior to the six days of creation.  The piece creates a great deal of tension by delaying cadence points at phrase endings.  The gradual anthem,  “Achieved is the Glorious Work” is the final movement of part 2. The stately opening of this chorus is actually sung two movements before and followed by a trio for the three angel soloists. This iteration opens with the stately opening theme and then quickly moves into a large double fugue. The movement brings the first and second part to a close stating that the creation of the world is completed and that God alone reigns on high. During Arthur Poister’s time at Hendrick’s Chapel the choir would launch into this triumphal chorus anytime he played the opening Bb arpeggio.

The communion anthem was written by Thomas Attwood(1765-1838). Attwood received his early training as a chorister in the Chapel Royal and later traveled to Vienna to study with Mozart. In 1796 he was appointed organist of St. Paul’s Chapel and composer to the Chapel Royal. In 1823 he was appointed professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Among his student was John Goss, another English church composer. Attwood’s style and influence can be seen in the compositions of Goss. This simple setting of Psalm 119 is a prayerful request for God to teach us his ways that we will “keep them unto the end.”

The prelude is the final movement of the final sonata of Mendelssohn’s (1809-1847) Mendelssohn and Attwood were friends. Mendelssohn dedicated his three preludes and fugues to the London organist.  This meditative movement is a bit of a strange way to end a sonata but when you consider the genesis of these works it makes sense. These pieces were not conceived as sonatas by the composer but were grouped that way by Mendelssohn’s London publisher to make them more appealing to British audiences. 

September 28, 2014 - Proper 21

Missa Festiva - Flor Peeters

Dear Lord and Father - C.H.H. Parry

Hymns: #523 Abbot's Leigh, #686 Nettleton, 

              #477 Engelberg

Flor Peeters (1903-1986) was a significant figure in church music in the 20^th century. His compositional oeuvre was not limited to liturgical compositions but it was through the music of the church and for his own instrument, the organ, that he made his most important contributions. Peeters was educated at the Lemmens institute in Belgium and at the age of 20 became the youngest student to receive the Prix Lemmens-Tinel, the school’s highest honor. In 1923 he was appointed assistant organist and second organ teacher. Upon the death of Oscar Depuydt in 1925 Peeters took over for his former teacher as head teacher and first organist. Peeters taught at several prominent conservatories and institutes throughout Belgium as well as in Holland, something that became not only complicated but illegal during World War II. Peeters would use a false passport and trade his Belgian bicycle for a Dutch made model at the border so that he could continue teaching and act as a messenger between his Cardinal and the Dutch Bishop.  Peeters also offered late night organ recitals to Jews and other people of the resistance.

Seeing the drastic effects of the war, it is no wonder that this Missa Festiva is as haunting and at times as dark as it is. Written in 1947 this was a piece that fits perfectly within the confines set out by Pope Pius X in his letter on liturgical music from 1903. This piece is centered around Gregorian chant and utilizes the same musical material throughout making not a collection of standalone pieces but a through composed work based on the principles of classical tradition with the harmonic language of the time. The haunting opening theme of the Kyrie is very similar to the twisting line that the altos introduce in the Agnus Dei. The Gloria and Benedictus both open with ascending fifths and while the character of the two movements is quite disparate, the line of the latter feels almost familiar. It’s these harmonic and melodic similarities throughout the piece that tie this piece so tightly together.

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918)is one of England’s foremost composers of the late 19^th/early 20^th century.  He is perhaps best known for his setting of the William Blake poem, Jerusalem, and his anthem I Was Glad. Parry’s tune, Repton was originally 'Long since in Egypt's plenteous land'  an aria for contralto from the oratorio Judith. The text is taken from John Greenleaf Whittier’s (1807-1892) poem the Brewing of Soma. This hymn-anthem setting arranged by H.A. Chambers opens and closes with the full choir but it is in the internal verses that the real creativity of the anthem occurs. The men sing the second verse in a strong unison until the tenors soar upward on the line “rise up.” The soprano’s verse leads us away from the key without making us actually leave it before returning to a half cadence that leads us back to the key we are already in! The piece ends as quietly as it began with the organ fading to the same chords that open the piece.

September 21, 2014 - Proper 20

Aria - Flor Peeters

Israel in Egypt: "Egypt Was Glad" - G.F. Handel

Missa Festiva: "Agnus Dei" - Flor Peeters

Fanfare - Jacques Nicolas Lemmens

This week’s music delves into the traditions of Belgian music in the 19^th and 20^th century. The music of Belgium greatly influenced the great French organ tradition. The teaching of Jacques Nicolas Lemmens (1823-1881) led to the great French tradition. He was the teacher at the Royal Brussels Conservatory and counted both Guilmant and Widor among his students. It was also Lemmens’ playing and concertizing that led to an interest in the organ works of J.S. Bach. His excellent technique led to an increase in the standards of organ playing and furthered the study of church music. His Fanfare is a light bouncy piece which relies on staccato manual playing. There are also definite similarities between this piece and the famous Widor Toccata from Symphony No. 5.

Flor Peeter’s (1903-1986) studied at the Lemmens Institute and in 1925 became the professor of organ at the institute. Peeter’s career as teacher, organist, and composer placed him in a very prominent position in the world of church music. He was nominated as an advisor to the Vatican II Council, wrote the largest collection of chorales of any composer, and contributed greatly to the music of the organ as an editor and composer. His Aria, Op. 51 is one of his most popular works for the organ. It is just that, a song with the theme played on a reed solo and accompanied by the foundation stops has interesting color chords against a beautiful but winding melody.  The communion anthem is also by Peeters but more on that next week when we present the whole Missa Festiva.

G.F. Handel is known to us today primarily for his oratorios, the most notable one being Messiah. It is commonly accepted that Handel turned to oratorio when opera was not an option. In May of 1738 the sale of season tickets was opened and by July the season had to be called off due to lack of subscriptions. Handel realized that he had to rethink his plans and began writing Saul and Israel in Egypt.

The work came together rather quickly and was composed from back to front. Handel first composed what we know today as Part 2, The Song of Moses. Musicologist Richard Streatfeild believes that this was initially to be a stand-alone anthem. He then composed Part 1, the Exodus in four days. In the original composition these served as parts 2 and 3 with part 1 being a reworking of a Funeral Anthem written for the death of Queen Caroline which became Lamentations of the Israelites for the Death of Joseph. The text for this work is taken directly from scripture, primarily the books of Exodus and Psalms. Some researchers believe the libretto to have been assembled by Charles Jennens who also assembled the text for Messiah. Egypt Was Glad closes the first large scene of the Exodus and depicts the reaction of the Egyptians to the Israelites leaving. 

September 14, 2014 - Picnic Service

The Love of God - F.H. Lehman

He's Just the Same Today - Elwood Denson

The Love of God - V.B. Ellis

Hymns: If You Believe, Old 100th, Go Down Moses

This week’s music is centered around Southern Singing Convention style Shape Note Music. This is what I grew up on.  I was first exposed to this by my oldest brother who somehow encountered the early Bill Gaither Homecoming videos and brought them home for my parents and I to watch. This was the first time that I really experienced people singing in harmony and doing counterpoint. As a more educated musician I can now see the more rudimentary nature of this counterpoint but it was the first time that I personally experienced parts moving in separate directions. The first time that I realized what a group of singers was truly capable of.

As a teenager I attended the Stamps Baxter School of Music. For three years I attended Ben Speer’s Music School in Nashville and learned about theory and harmony and sight singing and conducting taught by such gospel greats as the Speer Family. It was here that I learned the seven note shape note system where each note in the scale has a different shape. This was designed to help teach sight reading to people that had no experience singing at all and is a really interesting system of music education that expands upon the four note Sacred Harp system of the 19^th century.

The gospel hymn The Love of God by F. H. Lehman is an early example of convention style singing. This hymn describes God’s love from the perspective of god’s unfathomable love. The third verse which we will be performing as the benediction was not written by Lehman but was written on the wall of an asylum. It is a beautiful poetic explanation of the infinite nature of God’s love.

He’s Just the Same Today was written by Elwood Denson, a cousin of the Gospel pioneers, the Speer Family. This piece in the style of a fast gospel song tells the story of three Old Testament heroes, Moses, Daniel, and David. This song reminds us that the same God that did all of these miracles in the Bible is that same God that we worship today.

Vesphew Benton Ellis (1917-1988) a Church of God minister and member of the Southern Gospel Hall of Fame (2001) wrote a number of gospel songs. His setting of The Love of God has been recorded by a number of gospel groups including the Stamps Quartet. This piece gives the altos a chance to take the lead. In quartet style music the “soprano” line was sung by the lead of the quartet. The female singers (if there were any) sang the alto line otherwise this was sung the by the first tenor. This is considered the standard for “Quartet style singing.” As a student at Stamps Baxter I sang alto and got to sing all of the best parts. This piece offers a view that is very similar to the Lehman but musically shows one of the styles that was very typical of convention music, a slow six eight with an alto melody which was prevalent in a great deal of the more “sentimental” songs.

These pieces tie together in that they all show the love of God, either through explicit explanation or through the works of God in the Old Testament. These are a testimony to the love that God has for his people and fits well with the text for the day. A nice way to get back into the season, by focusing on the essence of our faith. 

June 8, 2014 - Pentecost

Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit - William L. Dawson
Give Me Jesus - Larry L. Fleming

Hymns:Sweet, Sweet Spirit, Veni Sancte Spiritu

The music that we are singing this week is inspired by the African American tradition. The spirituals Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit and Give Me Jesus deliver simple statements of faith that will (hopefully) serve to remind us why we sing and what overall should serve to put things into perspective for us.

Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit was arranged by the African American composer, conductor and professor William L. Dawson (1899-1990). Dawson ran away from home at age 13 to enroll in the Tuskegee Institute. From there he was accepted at the all-white college, Horner Institute of Fine Arts where he earned his B.M. but was not allowed to walk across the stage. After completing further study at the Chicago Musical College and American Conservatory he taught public school in Kansas City. Then, from 1931-1956 He taught at the Tuskegee Institute where developed the choral program. This piece is filled with energy and while it doesn’t deal with the day of Pentecost it does cover the influence of the Holy Spirit which God sent to us when Jesus ascended into heaven to comfort us. The song also deals with the double meaning of many spirituals. It’s hard to read the last verse and not find the references to the Underground Railroad in the “train that runs but one way” that we “can’t be late for.” This high energy spiritual seems a fitting choice for the end of the choir season.

The communion anthem is a plaintive arrangement of the spiritual Give Me Jesus. The arrangement by Larry L. Fleming (1936-2003) is filled with quiet subtle detail and a fitting final piece for the season. This year has been a year of changes, ambitious projects and great achievements. This piece is a reminder of why we do what we do. “You can have all this world, give me Jesus.”  The simple arrangement is incredibly expressive and never obscures the text.  I think that this is a good piece to refocus ourselves as we go on break and relax for the next couple of months to ponder the nature of our ministry as a choir and to remember why we do what we do.

June 1, 2014 - Easter 7

Sonata No. 3 in c minor: "Adagio" - Alexandre Guilmant
The Lone, Wild Bird - David N. Johnson
Elijah: "Cast Thy Burden Upon the Lord"
                                                               - Felix Mendelssohn
Bryn Calfaria - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Hymns: #450 Coronation, #307 Bryn Calfaria, #182 Truro

The music this past week didn’t quite turn out to be what I had planned but I was pleased with the flexibility and adjustments that we made. Originally the plan was for French and English music but rather than Poulenc and Handel we presented Johnson and Mendelssohn.

The choir presented David N. Johnson’s (1922-1987) classic anthem The Lone, Wild Bird. Johnson received his initial training at the Curtis Institute before enlisting in the army in 1942. Upon his return he studied at Trinity University and then here in Syracuse with famed professor, Arthur Poister. In 1967 he succeeded Poister as professor of organ at Syracuse University where he served for only two years before moving to Arizona to teach at Arizona State University at Tempe. Johnson was inspired to right this piece after seeing a solitary bird miles from shore on a trip from Los Angeles to Bombay. He adapted the Henry  Richard  McFadyen poem “The Lone, Wild Fowl” and set it to the Sacred Harp tune “Prospect.” This piece is accessible and adaptable for choirs at every level and is well crafted, making it a standard of the choral canon.

Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord is a quartet from the first part of Felix Mendelssohn’s (1809-1847) epic oratorio Elijah. The simple chorale serves as a reminder to Elijah that God will provide for him and look after him despite his feelings of loneliness and abandonment. The chorus is accompanied very simply with strings and a solo flute arpeggio. As with many of the choruses from this work it’s hard not to turn my mind to the notion that this oratorio was performed in concentration camps during WWII. This must have served as a powerful reminder to the people that had lost all hope that God would provide for them.

The organ music of Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) occupies a unique place in the canon of organ literature. His pieces range from simple but colorful versets and pieces from the “Practical Organist” which are virtually sight-readable to large complicated sonatas and programmatic pieces. The “Adagio” from his Sonata No. 3 in c minor is a simple piece that exploits the lush strings and celestes (stops that are tuned slightly sharp to creating a soft undulating effect) of the Cavaille-Coll organs. The piece utilizes gradual shading of dynamics while employing the terraced dynamics which are an innate part of the organ’s design. The piece jumps from one manual to the next in increasing volume before reducing the dynamics to finish with only the softest stops of the swell division.

The postlude is Ralph Vaughan Williams’(1872-1958) setting of Bryn Calfaria, a Welsh hymn tune by William Owen (1813-1893). This piece is reminiscent of the large “praeludia” of the North German School opening and closing with large free gestures. The middle section is a much stricter fugue which moves from the soft stops of the choir to the high pitched stops of the swell before moving to the great and closing with the same gestures which began the work. This setting captures the majestic grandeur of this great hymn.