A Celebration of Creation and the Gift Of Land
You may have immediately noticed that the title of Music Notes this week is slightly different. Normally, I use the title of the Liturgical week for the heading each week. If that were the case this week, it would be the "Second Sunday after Pentecost."
However, due to the NE Iowa Synod gathering this weekend at Wartburg College, our worship here will be lay led, focusing not on the Lectionary readings, but rather a group of readings focusing on creation, nature, and stewardship of our land. For example, the opening prayers are based on Matthew 6 (Consider the lilies of the field...). The first reading is from Genesis, where God hands down the punishment to Adam and Eve for tasting of the forbidden fruit. Symbolically, this is a warning to us to be good stewards of our earth and environment. Our Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus explains that seed will either flourish into grain or die depending on where it falls. Our music this week reflects these readings and ideas.
HYMNS AND SONGS
Lord, Your Hands Have Formed (Opening Hymn- 9:00 AM)
The general message of this hymn is that God constantly renews everything around us. Nature is such a fresh entity. The smell of dew in the morning, flowers and trees coming back to life each year, everything is made fresh and vibrant by the grace of God, which is why each stanzas of this hymn close with the line "... signs that you make all things new." While the hymn is primarily about the renewal of nature, the Christological aspect is present at the conclusion. The entire third stanza builds from God rolling out the land where we build not only our earthly homes, but our homes for Christ.
This beautiful song is a folk tune from the Philippines. There are so many beautiful melodies from around the world. Eastern melodies in particular, which are based on pentatonic scales (play the five black keys on a piano for how a pentatonic scale sounds), are particularly singable and very well suited for use in hymnody. The calm, gentle lilt matches this text beautifully.
God, The Sculptor Of The Mountains (Hymn of Praise - 9:00 AM)
I was introduced to this hymn by its author, John Thornburg, while I was at St. Olaf. Initially, I was not convinced at all, but as it has grown with me and I have grown in spirit, it has become one of my favorites.
The cohesion of the hymn is very impressive, and difficult to portray easily in prose. Rather, I can demonstrate its form using a little diagram...
Stanza One (based on creation): God as creator - womb of all creation - shapes the formless
Stanza Two (references Exodus of the Israelites): God as leader - fount of all deliverance - leads the sightless
Stanza Three (Gospel Of Matthew): God as steward - host at every table - feeds the hungry
Stanza Four (Life of Christ): God as Christ - present every moment - meets the searching
If you study the hymn with this guide, you'll see the correlations pop out at you. Much like the opening hymn, the final stanza adds a Christological component. Each of the four opening petitions describes beautifully the stages of Christ's life (unexpected infant, calm determined youth, table-turning prophet, resurrected truth).
Musically, the tune is kind of like a fuse. It steadily burns upwards for the first four petitions of each verse, before finally igniting on a high D at the climax of both text and melody on the word "you" (which he interestingly chooses not to capitalize).
We Plow The Fields And Scatter (Hymn of the Day - 9:00 AM)
This hymn comes in two forms in our ELW. We did the other version here at St. Paul's during Holden Evening Prayer this year. The tune is from the Latin American folk tradition and is set in F minor.
Contrasting that is the tune we are singing today. Set in A major and composed in 18th century Germany, it is difficult to find two tunes that are more contrasting than these two. Both tunes work in their own way though. The tune we use today is a joyful march of thanksgiving for the stewardship of God. While it may be us that that tills the soil and plants the seed, it is God that brings sun, water, snow in winter, warmth in summer, breezes, sunshine, and the water of life in the form of rainfall to enable those seeds to flourish. It is all summed up with the refrain...
"All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above. We thank you, Lord, we thank you, Lord, for all your love."
For The Fruit Of All Creation (Closing Hymn - 9:00 AM)
This hymn of thanksgiving was penned by Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000), who was a British methodist pastor and hymn writer. While a majority of his most famous texts appear in the United Methodist Hymnal from 1989, we were lucky enough to have this lovely hymn spill over into the ELW.
While the majority of this hymn is thanking God for the gifts (nature or otherwise) that we have received from God, there are some very profound thoughts that close this hymn and our worship this Sunday. "For the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us, most of all that love has found us, thanks be to God." Wow. How true, yet how interesting it is to be thankful for things that are either too large or too awe-inspiring to comprehend.
OTHER SERVICE MUSIC
While most Sundays we sing a liturgy throughout the service comprised of various musical and liturgical elements, we are taking a different approach this week due to our worship being lay led.
Our Kyrie uses the traditional Kyrie text, and will be surrounded with prayers inspired from Matthew 6. The Gospel Acclamation comes from the Hasidic Jewish tradition of music and will bookend the Gospel. How appropriate that the Gospel reading ends with the words, "Let anyone with ears listen."! And our Offertory this week will be the first two stanzas of the hymn Praise and Thanksgiving, which are two aspects of our faith that we share with God along with our monetary offerings.
In addition, soprano Emma Rathe will provide our offering music, singing an arrangement of the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." The piano accompaniment, arranged by Richard Walters, is comprised of a lot of open fifths and rather "primal" harmonies. This style hearkens back to the original style of music that this hymn was born from. Early American tradition has a lot of these types of sound, and this arrangement, along with vocal embellishments, is a very pure, yet modern, example of that style.
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
The Sunken Cathedral- Claude Debussy (Prelude - 9:00 AM)
Claude Debussy's compositional style is beautifully represented in his series of 24 preludes. This prelude, titled The Sunken Cathedral, represents an enormous church building rising from the murky waters and soaring through the air before sliding back down and returning to its original and final resting place.
This action is depicted beautifully through the music. The opening fifths of the piece represent the church bells sounding (due to it being the prelude, I'll be able to use our actual church bells as an extension of these depictions). When the music modulates to B major and picks up speed, you can hear the church rising from the depths. The large, sonorous chords towards the middle of the piece is actually the church organ playing. As the piece concludes, this same motive is heard again, only from underwater, with a murky ostinato sounding in the lowest depths of the piano. The piece concludes as it began, with the church bells sounding from under the water.
Improvisation on WIR PFLUGEN (Postlude - 9:00 AM)
I have improvised my service music before, and several people have asked me what I think about as I am doing it. I'll try to explain my ideology a little bit.
When I do an improvisation, there are two elements to consider. The first is the natural musical element, which is already present in the tune. The improvisation of the music is usually best when the improv itself fits the style of the original tune. The second element is the text of the hymn. Typically, a text will already be in accordance with its tune, so there are always certain elements to search for to depict certain words or ideas in each text.
In the case of this hymn, I see myself using some sort of march-like, melodic ostinato surrounding fragments of the tune. We will see how it materializes on Sunday!
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