I always find a Sunday in Epiphany to celebrate the great chorale WIE SCHŐN LEUCHTET DER MORGENSTERN. This will be found in the prelude, postlude and as the final hymn. This tune ("How Brightly Shines the Morning Star") is attributed to Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608). As hymnary.org puts it Nicolai "lived an eventful life–he fled from the Spanish army, sparred with Roman Catholic and Calvinist opponents, and ministered to plague-stricken congregations." Both "Wake Awake" and "How Brightly Shines" were written during a time of plague, while he was Lutheran pastor in Unna, Westphalia. The prelude by German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel (1653 –1706) sets the chorale tune very clearly in the pedals, and elaborates on each phrase in the upper parts.
We are so excited to have more kids singing in our Chapel Choir and to sing Give Light on Sunday. Magpie – the folk singing and social justice duo Greg Artzner & Terry Leonino are the authors of this wonderful song. Now based in Auburn, NY they also work with school groups, museums, and are known for environmental music.
We are practicing a lot of Anglican Chant in preparation for our residency at Wells Cathedral in the UK this summer. The chant for Psalm 147 is by Henry Lawes (1595-1662), who was a Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal until English Civil War and the the Commonwealth put a stop to church music. He remained a composer of secular music and was famously friends with John Milton. In England we sing more old-fashioned translations (King James or Prayerbook 1662) including this favorite of choirboys, verse 10:
"He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse, neither delighteth he in any man's legs."
(I believe the gist of this is that God is not pleased with war and warriors- although it is hard not to giggle.)
The offertory is a setting of the spiritual Walk with Me Lord by Dr. Rosephanye Powell (b.1962) who has been hailed as the most performed and published African-American woman composer of choral music internationally. She holds degrees from Florida State University, Westminster Choir College, and Alabama State University. Dr. Powell's research has focused on the art of the African-American spiritual, the art songs of William Grant Still (the arranger of last week's offertory), and voice care concerns for voice professionals. She travels the country and internationally presenting lectures and song demonstrations, and serving as a workshop clinician, conductor, and adjudicator for solo vocal competitions/auditions, honor choirs, and choral workshops and festivals. We will be taking this piece to England to represent! I love that as well as being a spiritual setting, it has an independent and rather jazzy organ part.
I wrote a lot about Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) and the Presentation hymn tune MCKEE here during pandemic when I had time. Please click and read about this important African American composer and his relationship with the Episcopal church.
The fraction anthem is Sing My Soul His Wondrous Love by the twentieth century American composer Ned Rorem (1923- 2022). It is beautiful and tuneful but full of "crunchy" harmonies for the choir. Rorem is well-known for his large catalogue of vocal works, especially hundreds of art songs, and his literary works including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism. He won a Pulitzer Prize, a GRAMMY Award, and also wrote three symphonies, four piano concertos, chamber music, ten operas; choral works; ballets and other music for the theater. During his lifetime, Rorem was honored with a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968).
The beautiful text is Anonymous, found a Baltimore Collection, 1800, in 3 stanzas; the American Prayer Book Collection, 1826, in the 4 stanzas that Rorem uses. It is found in several hymnals, including the 1982, #467, set to a rather pedestrian tune called ST. BEES.
At communion we will sing I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, the tune HOUSTON (and words) by Kathleen Thomerson (b. 1934). It was written in the summer of 1966 after a visit to the Church of the Redeemer in Houston. Because an airline strike cancelled her mother's travel plans and a heat wave was making St. Louis unbearable, Thomerson decided to drive her mother back to Houston. This hymn came to her as she anticipated visiting her "brothers and sisters in Christ at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston." Thomerson holds degrees from the University of Texas, she also studied at Syracuse University, with Flor Peeters at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, and with Jean Langlais in Paris. She worked as the music director of University United Methodist Church in St. Louis, and taught organ at the Saint Louis Conservatory and at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and she has also worked as organist and music director at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas. The hymn is simple but not simplistic and I always teach it to the trebles every year if not twice a year.
Our last hymn will be the grand and fully harmonized (by J. S. Bach (1685-1750) How Brightly Shines the Morning Star, (WIE SCHÖN) with another German Baroque postlude on the tune by Andreas Armsdorff (1670 – 1699). You really need a big full choir and some congregation to pull off these big chorales, so please sing out (and notice the basses having a particularly good time!). As always kids and families are encouraged to come up tot he organ and see what I do with my feet!
No comments:
Post a Comment