Christ the King

For the punctuation of the 2007-2008 liturgical year, I have chosen a musical exclamation point – the Vaughan Williams ‘Antiphon’ – to frame our worship today.

The last of the ‘Five Mystical Songs,’ originally for big, big chorus and orchestra, the title ‘Antiphon’ refers to a statement, usually sung between sets of verses of a Psalm in order to clarify and delineate the message…

Contributions of Women

This morning is one of our “special focus” liturgies, dedicated to the ‘contributions of women…’

Strictly speaking, gender [just like race and age and sexual orientation] is an inadequate musical descriptor:

· What does female music sound like?
· Can you identify music composed by a gay man?
· How does a piece reflect age? Maturity?

There are, of course, no answers to these patently rhetorical questions. But on a day like today, when the focus is on gender, there are, happily, virtually unlimited choices – and excellent ones at that…

At every point in history, there have been good pieces and bad pieces [and everything in between…] written by men and women. The musical

This morning, Matthew Dirst offers a sonata from his recent recital tour: the E-Flat Trio of Johann Ludwig Kerbs (1713-1780), the student of J.S. Bach who, despite never having held a significant post […he was desperate enough at one point to take a job which paid in food…!], never being a ‘court’ composer, and having never been commissioned for a single piece, composed an excellent body of work – much admired today.

All Saints

Trumpets seem appropriate for today…

As does quiet reflection…

The celebration of our brothers and sisters who have gone on into the hereafter naturally combines these disparate emotional states – triumph and wonder – into one rich, life-enhancing perspective. And so, this morning, we oscillate back and forth between the two…

The 4th or 5th century Christian Hymn, Te Deum Laudamus [We Praise Thee, O God…], is so verbose that most musical settings of it qualify for the teasing moniker – ‘Tee-Dium…’

The greatness of Purcell’s music lies in his ability to reveal the songlike subtleties of the English language through his setting of it, as well as in his mastery of instrumental form and balance and texture…

Americana

Our All-American musical offerings today start with a movement by Margaret Sandresky, who, like any good Southern lady, has kept information with respect to her date of birth a closely guarded secret… A celebrated teacher of Music Theory and Composition, she is Professor Emerita of Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC – also her alma mater. ‘L’homme armé is the name of a French secular song from the Renaissance – about an ‘armed man’ – and was then as well known as, say, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ is today. A tune with an interesting structure and topography, it has been used by composers as the basis for contrapuntal treatment in every age since.

There’s more than one way to choose appropriate music for World Communion Sunday, and today we’re combining two: Place and Practice; Geography and Creed…

Matthew starts with movement from one of the sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), the third of five sons of J. S. Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. Know by his initials, C. P. E., he took the fine training [one presumes] from his Father and forged a style and a career all his own. Along with other transitional composers, this style, which links the Late Baroque with the more refined and less ornate Classical period, is called ‘Rococo,’ a term derived also from the visual and decorative arts which is rather difficult to describe, but easy to frame: at best: highly refined and overtly stylish – at worst: fussy and pretentious and shallow. Where do you think this piece lies?

Matthew begins with a piece of William Selby (1738-1798), a British-born composer who emigrated to Boston in 1771 […can you imagine living in Boston at that time…?] where he held forth at the King’s Chapel and at Trinity Church, Copley Square. His musical life was extremely active – including many concerts of secular music as well as the church work…

Dame Ethel [Mary] Smyth (1858-1944) [rhymes with ‘lithe’], composer and suffragist, was the sort of lady referred to, patronizingly, as a ‘formidable woman…’ Trained in Germany, she wrote mostly for the theatre – operas – and had good success with ‘Der Wald,’ produced by the MET in 1903, and ‘The Wreckers,’ an opera widely produced in England in the early part of the 20th century. She was created ‘Dame Commander’ of the British Empire for her work in the Suffrage Movement – not only was she an outspoken leader of the effort, but she also wrote and conducted [sometimes with a toothbrush] the ‘fight songs’ heard in the streets…

We’ll be working our way backwards in time today – with music mostly British…

Richard Webster, while born in the U.S.A, might as well be British… He is as finely-tuned an Anglophile as there ever was, who in his 30 years as Organist/Choirmaster of St. Luke’s Church in Evanston, IL established a vibrant, English-style [boy choirs, Victorian choral literature, prim and proper everything…] program, including a great deal of work with the Royal School of Church Music, helping that august organization establish a strong foothold in the educational life of many Americans. He is currently on the staff at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in Boston – where he writes music and runs marathons.

We finish checking in with our College-bound musical St. Philippians this morning by bidding Betsy Flowers ‘Godspeed’ on her way to the wilds of Cambridge, MA – M.I.T. Class of 2012.

Following Matthew’s playing of a virtuoso piece of the American composer John Cook, Betsy begins our focus on forgiveness by singing the tune of J.S. Bach which the editors of the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 used to set a remarkable poem of John Donne (1572-1631), the Jacobean poet, priest and lawyer whose sensual and ringing insights, though dead serious, were never far from a wink and a nod. Note the wry personalization of these intercessions with the pun between ‘done’ and ‘Donne…’ I will be freely adapting the accompaniment from the Bach harmonization.

You would think that setting the native tongue would come naturally to all composers; but, alas, it isn’t so. Whether from over-familiarity [breeding contempt or boredom] or from a simple preference for the power of sound over the power of syntax, a great deal of music for the church, in English by British composers especially, is pedestrian, awkward, angular or a little bit of each. I’m pleased to offer three very happy exceptions to this embarrassing truth – three vocal pieces where the words take proper precedence and drive the very soul of the music, making the language sound, in its declamation, organic and true.

This week, the organ and choral music come from the pens of four established and interesting composers, running through the service in chronological order:

The Sunday closest to July the 4th presents an annual ‘crisis of planning’ in the lives of conscientious and liturgically minded people. How do you reconcile the militaristic viewpoints of most of the ‘patriotic’ musical literature with the Gospels’ core pacifism? What about ‘Separation of Church and State?’ What about the very real need we have to express our National Identity as integral to our faith[fulness]? Aren’t we ‘one nation under God…?’ Why worry about it at all? Aren’t these points a bit precious and properly the realm of over-educated navel-gazers…?

We here in the Music Department are still a bit shaken from the sudden loss of our dear, dear Ruth Taylor; and so this morning’s selections reflect a certain emotional reality:

-clinging to our Christian belief in the hereafter whilst coping with the
significant sadness of such a loss…

We begin today with a transcription of the second movement of the Haydn Symphony No. 10 – a highly ornamented, gently rolling piece in three quarter time. The unambiguously titled genre ‘Four Hands Piano,’ is just that – two players, four hands, one piano – and is something that achieved great popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an entertaining and refined pastime for amateur and listener alike. This is distinct from ‘Duo-Piano,’ meaning two players, two pianos in ensemble – the texture we’re using for the accompaniment of the Hymnody during our time here in Fellowship Hall.

Johann Krebs (1713-1780) is most famous for having been a pupil of J. S. Bach, and a good one, at that – and the lessons learned were put to excellent use in a set of chorale preludes for organ and ‘obligato’ [Italian; from the adjective for ‘fixed’] instrument. We hear two of them today – each based on Lutheran Hymn-tunes – and set in the same format: An organ trio texture [one voice for the right hand, one for the left, and one for the feet] with the tune singing, happily, in between…