Epiphany is so short this year (watch out—Ash Wed. is Valentine's Day and you don't want to miss the Allegri at church—so celebrate the night before and eat all the chocolate you want!). Anyway, cramming all the good Epiphany music into fewere Sundays had made this week especially rich (and this blog especially long).
Our prelude is a setting of Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (REPTON), (today's communion hymn) by Martin Hotton (b. 1946), organist and choirmaster at All Saints' Pavement, the medieval 14th century guild church of York, England. This setting sets out the tune in a solo flute over strings, with a counter melody of staccato notes that reminds me of "drop they still dews of quietness" part of the poem.
The opening hymn is SALZBURG, by Jacob Hinze (1622-1702) as harmonized by J.S. Bach. According to Bert Polman on hymnary.org "Partly as a result of the Thirty Years' War and partly to further his musical education, Hintze traveled widely as a youth, including trips to Sweden and Lithuania. In 1659 he settled in Berlin, where he served as court musician to the Elector of Brandenburg from 1666 to 1695. Hintze is known mainly for his editing of the later editions of Johann Crüger's Praxis Pietatis Melica, to which he contributed some sixty-five of his original tunes." This hymn a tune is used for many texts including "At the Lamb's High Feast."
This Epiphany hymn, Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, has 3 verses by priest and writer Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885) nephew of the great poet, William Wordsworth. The fourth verse, about Transfiguration, is by American (Virginian) priest and writer F. Bland Tucker (1895-1984). Thus the hymn covers all of the "manifestations" of Jesus as God in Epiphany. I'll will play a setting of the tune by Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) at communion. I looked up the whole partita on this tune, sometimes used for "Alle menschen mussen sterben" ("all men must die") and found a very chromatic and tortured movement to share!
The Song of Praise is about the calling of the disciples, They Cast their Nets in Galilee (Hymnal #661) to the tune GEORGETOWN by David McKinley Williams (1887-1978). Such a sad and serious hymn has always been a favorite of our children's choirs, who somehow recognize its profundity.
Williams was born in Wales, and began his career in church music as a chorister in the choir of the Cathedral of St. John, Denver. In 1908 David McKinley Williams went to New York to serve as the organist of Grace Church Chapel. He moved to Paris in 1911 for study with some of the best known French organists of the time. He served in the Royal Canadian Artillery in World War I and returned to his New York position in 1920. After only six months, he was appointed organist and choirmaster of St. Bartholomew's Church, New York where he served until his retirement in 1947. There he developed one of the most outstanding music programs in the USA and also headed the organ department of the Juilliard School of Music while serving on the faculty of the School of Sacred Music, Union Theological Seminary. He also served as a member of the Joint Commission on Church Music and the Joint Commission on the Revision of the Hymnal that produced The Hymnal (1940). His other hymn tunes in The Hymnal 1982 include Malabar: Strengthen for Service (Hymn 312), Canticum refectionis: This is the hour of banquet and of song (Hymn 316).
The text is by William Alexander Percy (1885-1942) a lawyer, planter, and poet from Greenville, Mississippi. You can read more about Percy's fascinating life here, including his French-catholic mother, senator father, friendships with William Faulkner and Langston Hughes and his influence on the Episcopal university, Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Many years ago, I asked Mother Vicki McGrath (All Saint's Milligton-her husband and daughter grew up in the Grace Choirs) to write us another verse about the calling of some women disciples, which we always include:
Martha and Mary were Jesus' friends
They served their Lord and guest
With faith and spices to his tomb
They came when hope had passed.
Speaking of women, the anthem, Christ Hath No Body Now on Earth But Ours sets a text by Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Christ Has No Body
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
The composer changes "yours" to "ours" for her choral work. We sang this in January of 2019 with combined choirs from St. John on the Mountain and Christ Church, Short Hills when we installed Mother Susan Ironside as the 16th rector of Grace Church, Madison almost exactly 5 years ago. I thought it was important to have a woman composer represented, and found the words inspiring.
Canadian composer Kathryn Rose is also a composer, pianist, horn player and serpentist who was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and now lives in the UK. Kathryn is studied contemporary sacred choral composition with Paul Mealor at the University of Aberdeen. She is passionate about accessibility and community inclusion in music at all levels, and uses crowdfunding to make her choral music available online (find it a cpdl.org).
For the Presentation hymn there are two settings of the text by Henry Ustick Onderdonk (1759-1858). Onderdonk was born in New York, educated as a medical doctor, later studied theology under Bishop Hobart; ordained in 1815. He was rector of St. Ann's, Brooklyn, until 1827 when he was elected bishop coadjutor of Pennsylvania, becoming bishop in 1836 upon the death of Bishop White. The text is a paraphrase of Revelations 15, The Song of the Redeemed. The tune I usually use is LYON (#531) but I accidentally used #532, also a good and singable tune, OLD 104th, fomr its number in The Whole Book of Pslams 1621,
The communion hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (see prelude) contains one of my favorite lines of all time "reclothe us in our rightful mind." I often feel the need to pray those words! The pairing of this text by the American Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) with the beautiful tune REPTON by England's most beloved Victorian composer C.H.H.Parry (1848-1918) has actually made this into one of England's most beloved hymns.
Whittier began life as a Massachusetts farm-boy and shoemaker, and subsequently became a successful journalist, editor and poet. Devoted to social causes and reform, Whittier worked passionately for a series of abolitionist newspapers and magazines, was active politically and a prolific poet. This text comes from his poem "The Brewing of Soma," a ritual drink Vedic priests used in an attempt to experience divinity. The poem concludes that rather than the trappings of music (!) incense and trances, the divine is found in silence (very Quaker) and in the "still small voice of calm."
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry was an influential 19th-century English composer, whose influence as a teacher was profound, including among his students Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and John Ireland. (From Wikipedia): Parry originally wrote the music for what became Repton in 1888 for the contralto aria 'Long since in Egypt's plenteous land' in his oratorio Judith. In 1924 George Gilbert Stocks, director of music at the Repton School set it to 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind' in a supplement of tunes for use in the school chapel. Despite the need to repeat the last line of words, Repton provides an inspired matching of lyrics and tune. In the Grace Church Choir, Parry is also referred to as "Eleanor's ancestor" from a former member of the choir, Eleanor Wroath, who moved back to England, but stays in touch!
The choir knows everything is "my favorite!" But truly, our rousing final hymn has always been a favorite of mine, ever since I began organ in the 8th grade. Although it is relatively hard for a brand new organist I am pretty sure it was the second hymn I learned—because I wanted to! When I ask the choristers "what country is this tune from?" they often just shout out "Wales" because there are so many good tunes! This tune is known as TON-Y-BOTEL, or Ebenezer in some of the 212 hymnals in which it appears. Another clue to its Welsh heritage is the name of the composer, Thomas John Williams (1869-1944). Williams was in the insurance business (like Charles Ives!) but studied with David Evans at Cardiff and later was organist and choirmaster at Zion Chapel (1903-1913) and Calfaria Chapel (1913-1931), both in Llanelly, in southeast Wales. Ton-y-botel means "tune in a bottle" from a legend that it was found on a Welsh beach in a bottle.
At the time I learned this hymn from the 1940 hymnal, it was to the words "Once to Every Man and Nation," by Massachusetts poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). The stirring text was a favorite of many a romantic among us, but did not make it into the 1982 hymnal on theological grounds. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide/In the strife of truth with falsehood for the good or evil side." But no. Lucky for us God's grace and forgiveness is extended more than once a lifetime. (Lucky for nations too!)
But lucky for hymn lovers we find this tune set to two texts in the 1982 hymnal, #527 "Singing Songs of Expectation" and today's hymn #381 Thy Strong Word did Cleave the Darkness. Both of these strong texts stand up to the strong tune. Author Martin H. Franzmann (1907-1976) was an American Lutheran clergyman, theologian and author who wrote and translated numerous hymns. Originally from Minnesota, he began his career teaching at Northwestern, and ended it at Westfield House, the theological college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England, in Cambridge, England. The extended imagery of light, and God's word as a beacon in the darkness, makes it a great Epiphany hymn.
The postlude by Healey Willan (1880-1968) is a wonderful, tortured, late romantic, fugal approach to this tune. (I am sure he was picturing Lowell's text.) Neo-romantic, stylistically conservative Healey Willan is best known for his liturgical music, though his output of more than 800 works includes opera, symphony, chamber, organ, piano, band, incidental scores, song, folksong arrangements, and much more. Over half of his works are Anglican church music. Born in England, he migrated to Canada and there became probably the most influential composer of liturgical music of his time. His influence spread across North America, spilling over into the musical traditions of most major denominations. Those of us familiar with the Episcopal church of the 1940 hymnal, or Rite One services, are very familiar with his service music.
I play from a score left to me by Helen E.J.Thomas, my presecessor (she was here 50 years) and it feels very timeless to sit under the plaque in her honor playing a piece I know she played here.
If you read this far congratulations and thank you!
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