I couldn't help but notice that today (Thursday) is actually All Saints Day proper. Tonight we have our dress rehearsal for the All Saints Vigil on Saturday evening. It is appropriate that we sing this wonderful music tonight, not for a congregation or an audience, but for the Saints themselves. They are always with us and watching over us, and Saturday evening is our gift to them, as well as our opportunity to reflect and remember their presence in our lives.
As you should probably know by now, this is a very special weekend here at St. Paul's. In recognition of All Saints weekend, we are featuring a two part worship event over two days. Saturday evening, as previously mentioned, will be a service of reflection and remembrance featuring the St. Paul's Lutheran Church Chancel Choir and guest musicians from Wartburg College. Through selected readings, hymns, and affirming our baptisms, this service is meant to draw us closer to those who have gone from us.
For part two on Sunday morning, we will be joined by Dr. Lee Nelson and the Wartburg Choir for a celebration of Holy Communion, as well as celebrating the lives of those who we remembered and mourned for last night.
I don't believe I have looked more forward to a weekend here in my over a year at St. Paul's than I have for this weekend. I hope you will all be joining us for a wonderful weekend of worship. In Music Notes this week, I am going to combine both Saturday and Sunday services and discuss selections of both of them here.
PRELUDE
Psalm Preludes, op. 32, nos. 1 and 2- Herbert Howells
Howells wrote two sets of psalm preludes, each piece being a tone poem based on a particular psalm verse. The Saturday evening prelude is based on Psalm 37:11- "The lowly shall possess the land. They will delight in abundance of peace." The one for Sunday morning is no. 1, which comes from Psalm 34:6- "The poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles." The Saturday night prelude in particular has one of the most gorgeous endings in the organ repertoire.
Both of these settings are wonderfully expansive and evocative. Both start quietly with a certain motive and grow and expand to employ the full reaches of the organ, while developing and maintaining those same motives. The third of this set is similar in style and is based on Psalm 23:4, a piece I use a lot during the Easter season.
HYMNS (Saturday evening)
Christ, Mighty Savior
This hymn might be new to many in attendance tonight. No. 560 in the ELW, it has long been one of my favorite evening hymns. The first stanza depicts Christ as a beautiful, sonorous light giving radiance to the sunlight and glittering adornment to the stars. Stanza two is a stunning depiction of the twilight. The sun sets (mirror of daybreak), and choirs of stars appear to hallow the nightfall.
Stanza three puts the focus on us in the church, as we sing to the glory of God during evening worship. Stanza four is a prayer that we be forgiven for our offences, be granted strength for our hearts and rest for our bodies.
Stanza five is the first moment in this service where I get a lump in my throat. "Though bodies slumber, hearts shall keep our vigil, forever resting in the peace of Jesus, in light or darkness worshiping our Savior now and forever." It is the first time we directly acknowledge those who have departed from us, and brings us into a feeling of reflection.
Baptized and Set Free
This hymn was introduced to me this summer, and it quickly found a place in my heart as one of my favorites (an arrangement for choir and organ is in the works!). This Saturday it will be a response to our affirmation of baptism, and will be led from the piano.
The structure of this is so amazing. As much as I love John's Borning Cry (we're using it at this service!), it charts a very specific path through birth, growing up, adulthood, marriage, and death. What this hymn does that is so unique and wonderful is that by stanza four, it brings us all together no matter what point we are at in life or what age we are. Stanza one starts with our baptism itself as by being washed with water, we are freed from sin and shown the glorious fountain. In stanzas two and three, we are nourished by food and water as we grow, being able to live through the support and love of an ever gracious God.
Finally in stanza four, we all come together... men, women, young, old, as we join in this wonderful song of thanksgiving, being set free by our baptisms.
O Christ The Same
This glorious hymn has been used several times since I have been here. I believe it is inspired by Hebrews 13:8 (Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.) which will be read immediately before the singing of it.
It is one of the few hymns in the hymnal that actually goes to a completely different key area for the middle two phrases. The key message in this hymn comes from the last line of each each stanza...
"We bring our thanks for all our yesterdays."
"We bring our thanks for this the present hour."
"We bring our thanks for all that is to be."
You Are Mine/I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry- arr. Nick Klemetson
This is a combination of two much loved hymns. The congregation and most of the Chancel Choir will be singing You Are Mine, with a quartet singing John Ylvisaker's timeless hymn. Both of these hymns are sung from the same perspective (God/Jesus), so they naturally go together. With some slight modifications to both melodies, they meld together beautifully. For congregation members, just be aware that there is an extra measure of rest following the first phrase of You Are Mine (which I will indicate during the introduction and with my hand at the piano).
HYMNS (Sunday morning)
Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones
The Wartburg Choir will introduce this wonderful tune with bell ringing and a series of Alleluias. Stanza three is the primary reason for this hymn's inclusion in our All Saints celebration. We call for our souls in endless rest to respond, along with patriarchs and prophets of the past. In addition, they are joined by the twelve apostles, martyrs, and of course, all of our saints triumphant.
For All The Saints
As closely bonded as this text and tune are, it wasn't always that way. This processional hymn for All Saints was originally set to a tune titled SARUM by Joseph Barnby (this tune was much more pedantic, very similar to the tune MARYTON (see ELW 818).
Thankfully, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed this tune in the mid 1900's to be included in the English Hymnal 1906. It was then later published in other hymnals and has become one of the greatest tunes of the 20th century. The tune, SINE NOMINE (literally "without a name") was a departure from other English tunes of the time. Most tunes were written in four part harmony and instructed to be performed that way. SINE NOMINE was meant to be sung primarily in unison, though Vaughan Williams did include a harmonization for the interior stanzas. The original eleven stanzas has been trimmed to eight for the ELW, and we will sing them all this morning.
O Day Full Of Grace (v. 5)
"When we on that final journey go that Christ is for us preparing, we'll gather in song, our hearts aglow, all joy of the heavens sharing, and there we will join God's endless praise, with angels and saints adoring."
I really don't think much else needs to be said than the words themselves to describe our sending hymn.
CHORAL ANTHEMS (Saturday evening)
Selig Sind (from Ein Deutsches Requiem)- Johannes Brahms
The beautiful first movement of the Brahms Requiem will be sung Saturday night while the congregation is lighting candles to remember those who have departed.
The choir has done an absolutely fantastic job learning this very difficult piece. It contains primarily two musical ideas. The first is based on a constant pulse on a low note for the text "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." The second section picks up a bit in tempo for the text "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." The mini phrases in each part climax on a high note on the word "freuden" which means "joy."
The Church's One Foundation- John Ferguson
This functions as the "hymn of the day" on Saturday evening, and has both congregational and choral components. John Ferguson's arrangement does a fantastic job of bringing this text to the forefront, particularly the three interior stanzas.
Stanzas three and four are especially effective. Stanza three, which is congregational, features an extremely dissonant, exciting organ part, where harmonic clashes and cluster chords symbolize the "schims rent asunder" and "heresies distressed" in the text. Additionally, one of the trumpet parts is displaced by several measures, creating even more of a disjunct feeling.
As this stanza concludes, it mellows. The cry of "How long?" in the third stanza is continued in the women's voices, as they sing these words repeatedly in three-part, parallel triads. The voices come together in a brilliant example of text painting on the line "She waits for peace forevermore."
The final stanza and its descant cannot really be described in words. You'll just have to hear it for yourself, but, don't be surprised if you close your eyes and see those "saints before us" standing around and amongst you.
The Kontakion- Rupert Lang
When I plan programs, it is usually a single piece or hymn that gives birth to an idea, and in the case of Saturday's program, Rupert Lang's Kontakion was the piece. "Give rest unto your servants..." is how the congregational antiphon begins.
The piece slowly develops, climaxing on a stunning set of "alleluias" based on the antiphon melody. Following the choral coda, the choir will then recess in silence and darkness, leaving only the candles that were lit at the beginning of the service on the altar.
CHORAL ANTHEMS (Sunday morning)
As I mentioned, we are wonderfully blessed to have the Wartburg Choir joining us this Sunday morning. In addition to the psalm refrain and a special choral hymn introduction I have prepared for them, they are also offering three anthems.
Gaudete- arr. Steven Sametz
If you are familiar with the medieval carol "Gaudete," you might be wondering, "Why is Wartburg Choir singing a carol about the birth of Christ on All Saints Sunday?"
Well, if you think about it, the birth of Christ made everything we do and everyone we celebrate possible. Thanks to the birth of Christ, it enabled us, our baptisms, our confirmations, our faith development, and finally our deaths, where we then join Christ and all the saints triumphant.
This carol has been arranged for choir many times, and the Wartburg Choir is offering one of the more difficult settings in existence. The carol, being a renaissance dance, is already quite complex rhythmically, but is made even more so by the arranger's strategic lengthening and shortening of certain phrases. When these rhythmic complexities are spread across four parts (and more), it makes it an incredible choral feat to pull off. The piece ends with the carol on parallel fifths, extending the sopranos all the way up to a high C.
O Day Full Of Grace- arr. F. Melius Christiansen
Thanks to the works and efforts of F. Melius Christiansen, nearly all of the other Lutheran choral programs are now in existence. Edwin Liemohn, an early conductor of the Wartburg Choir, was of course mentored and taught by FMC (several of his arrangements reflect that).
O Day Full Of Grace is, in my humble opinion, the finest of all the Christiansen arrangements. No finer musical representation of a sunrise can be found than in the first two verses of this hymn. For the final verse, it breaks into Christiansen's characteristic style of placing the cantus firmus in the men's voices, or the "pedals (F. Melius was an organist, after all)." Meanwhile, the four part women's texture is very polyphonic and serves to decorate the wonderful text where the world awakes with life and spirit.
Roll Jordan, Roll- Stacey V. Gibbs
For their third piece, the choir will offer Detroit-based composer Stacey Gibbs' arrangement of Roll Jordan Roll. Due to my lack of knowledge on this piece, I will refrain from commenting on it, but it will lead brilliantly into the communion hymn "On Stormy Jordan's Banks I Stand (Bound for the Promised Land)."
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Can you believe that's not even EVERYTHING this weekend? We are truly blessed with such a wonderful community of faith that is able to come together and offer such an inspiring weekend of worship. I hope you will all join us this weekend for All Saints!
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