Music Spotlight (Sunday, August 15, 2021)

Prelude:
"Pasticcio" by Jean Langlais

I remember the moment I fell in love with this little piece. My professor, Chris Anderson, played it as the prelude during chapel one afternoon during my Perkins Seminary years. He played it much slower and quietly than the organist in the recording below. His delicate, articulate interpretation evoked such mystique and simple joy for worship. The experience made me think of God's humble creatures--like caterpillars, garden spiders, or birds--commencing their lifecycles in spring. Right after chapel, I bolted to the music library to find a copy. Of course, the one and only copy was checked out...by Prof. Anderson. Thus, I had to wait my turn.

[Langlais] dedicated [Organ Book, 1957] to Jacqueline Marchal, the only daughter of his first teacher, André Marchal, on the occasion of her marriage to the Swiss avant-garde composer Giuseppe Englert. “Pasticcio,” the final piece in the collection, celebrates the newlyweds with a delightful pastiche of early dance music....These pieces are surprisingly easy, yet richly varied in mood and treatment. They have originality, distinction and expressive power – qualities utterly lacking in hundreds of worthless attempts by “short and easy” writers. READ MORE.

Opening Hymn:

#410 "God Is Calling Through the Whisper" (W ZLOBIE LEZY)

[Mary Louise Bringle, in her 2003 text,] posits that God is speaking to us in our modern age. God is speaking through the natural beauty of the world, through music and art, through hymns and carols. She also states that God is speaking to us, pleading, in the voices of those with needs and hungers living among us. God speaks to us in the tragedies and injustices of the world in which we live. Jesus even addressed this kind of God-speak in Matthew 25. The "church people" asked him, incredulous, “When in the world did we ever hear your voice, Jesus, calling out to us in need or pain?” And Jesus said, “Anytime you heard the cry of your fellow humans, of basic needs, of care and concern, of human dignity, that voice was mine.” (Source Here)

You might recognize the Polish tune, "W Żłobie Leży," as the Christmas song "Infant Holy, Infant Lowly." To learn more about that history READ MORE.

Middle Hymn:

#183 "Come to Me, O Weary Traveler" (AUSTIN)

This paraphrase and expansion of Matthew 11:28-30 by a Canadian minister [Sylvia G. Dunstan, 1991] is structured so that the first three syllables of each stanza provide the hymn's skeleton and summary. The immediacy of the text is enhanced by the folksong-like setting later composed for it [by William P. Rowan, 1992]. (From Glory to God)

A beautiful reimagining by Paul A. Tate of the tune as an anthem:

Offertory:

"Six Short Pieces for Organ: Tranquillo ma con moto" by Herbert Howells

As a schoolboy, Herbert Howells (1892–1983) sang in choir and deputized for his father, organist at a local church. Showing great musical promise, Howells attended the Royal College of Music, studying under infamous British teachers such as Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry, and Charles Wood. His life changed in 1915 after being diagnosed with Graves' disease. The disease saved him from conscription in World War I but hampered his ability to travel for work. Howells married a few years later and had two children. His son, Michael, died at just 9 years old from polio. This traumatic event spurred a string of compositions. From the late 1930s, Howells turned increasingly to choral and organ music, composing a second series of Psalm Preludes, followed by a set of Six Pieces (begun in 1939). Tranquillo ma con moto comes from that set. During the course of his life, he taught at the Royal College of Music, St. John's College of Cambridge, and served as Director of Music at St. Paul's Girls' School. After a very successful music career, he passed away at age 90. (Source Here)

Closing Hymn:

#432 "How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord" (REPTON)

Rev. Frederick Pratt Green (1903-2000), an English Methodist minister and hymnwriter, wrote this text in 1981 to reflect a concern for social issues through the lens of past and future. The tune for the hymn was composed by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918), an English underwriter at Lloyds of London before devoting himself to music as a composer, teacher and historian. While head of the Royal Academy of Music, his pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Parry named the tune “Repton” in honor of a friend who was music director of the Repton School, an English boarding school. (Source Here)

Postlude: 

"In Nomine Domine" from "Organ Book Vol. 2" by American composer, Ned Rorem (b. 1923).

"My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose. A diary nevertheless differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the moment, the writer's present mood which, were it inscribed an hour later, could emerge quite otherwise. I don't believe that composers notate their moods, they don't tell the music where to go - it leads them....Why do I write music? Because I want to hear it - it's simple as that. Others may have more talent, more sense of duty. But I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need." READ MORE.