Music Notes for March and April

The gem of liturgical worship is hymnody and each one has a story. Recently we sang these two hymns at the Processional and the Sequence. First the story, then the title-

Robert Robinson (1735-1790) was eight years at his father's death and struggled for sobriety in his youth. At 17, Robert and some of his drinking buddies attended a George Whitfield revival meeting and the Evangelist’s words haunted him for years- “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”Three years later, as a minister preparing a sermon, Robert wrote Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The music for the hymn was composed by Asahel Nettleton in 1813. As a processional hymn, this text makes us keenly aware of what our liturgy has in store for us in Word and music.

Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) had a long and fruitful career as a hymn writer. This particular hymn uses a poetic device called, hypotyposis—or lifelike description in order to feel that we are witnesses to the crucifixion. Made even more emphatic is the choice of haunting music- The Third Tune by Thomas Tallis. You may recognize the tune from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. To mock your reign, O dearest Lord is a hymn that has the same purpose as the St. John Passion of J. S. Bach- To mute our daily nuisances and awakening us to salvation by putting us in the moment of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

The season of Lent, Holy Week and Easter takes us through the entire range of human emotion and spiritual revelation. The music is selected to amplify this vast range. Palm Sunday’s choral anthems portray Christ’s Passion. We will sing Pie Jesu from Luigi Cherubini’s, Requiem and Henry Purcell’s Thou knowest Lord the secrets of our hearts, a text from the Book of Common Prayer’s Burial service.

Austere music continues during Holy Week. On Maundy Thursday we sing Mozart’s final composition, the simple yet transcendent Ave Verum

corpus. On Easter we burst into joy. The great Easter hymns with Brass, timpani and organ are the core of the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. The anthem is If ye be rise again with Christ by Orlando Gibbons.

Our concert series continues after Easter. Please join Voces Solis, Choral Artists in Residence at St. Paul’s on April 10 at 7:00 pm as they present Words: Obsession of the Genius and the Fool. Featured works include Benjamin Britten’s inimitable Rejoice in the Lamb set to Christopher Smart’s famous poem Jubilate Agno written during his confinement in St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics. Other explorations of words in music will include Anders Edenroth’s Words, composed for The Real Group, and John Tavener’s Mother of God, Here I Stand, which serves as the focal point for his 7-hour All Night Vigil.

Admission for this event is just $10, and there will be a wine and cookie reception following the concert in the Parish Hall. Voces Solis is a recognized 501c3 organization, and any charitable giving is fully tax deductible. Ask Bryan Sable how to support their mission of spreading the love of choral music around the Southwestern Pennsylvania region!

I wish to thank the Worship Commission and Vestry for their endorsement of our purchase of a new set of timpani funded by Friends of Music. The new set of two drums is more modern in construction and the larger drum is twenty nine inches in diameter yielding lower tones. The old set of timpani, originally donated to us from St. Francis in the Fields in Louisville, KY, was sold to a church in the North Hills so the drums’ musical soul continue to sound to the glory of God!

Doug Starr