Mount Calvary Music: Christ the King 2017

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Anglican Use

Christ the King

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Prelude

Introduction-Choral from Suite Gothique,  Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897)

Hymns

Al hail the power of Jesus’ name

The King of love my shepherd is

The King shall come when morning dawns

Anthems

Postula a me, Erik Spangler

Sedebit Dominus Rex, Eric Spangler

Postlude

Grand jeu, from Suite du premier ton, Pierre DuMage (1674-1751)

_____________________________________________

Prelude

Introduction-Choral from Suite Gothique,  Léon Boëllmann

Her it is on a German organ; and with Marie-Claire Alain on the organ of Saint-Sulpice.

Léon Boëllmann (1862-1897) was a French composer of Alsatian origin, known for a small number of compositions for organ. His best-known composition is Suite gothique (1895), which is a staple of the organ repertoire, especially its concluding Toccata.

During the sixteen years of his professional life, Boëllmann composed about 160 pieces in all genres. Faithful to the style of Franck and an admirer of Saint-Saëns, Boëllmann yet exhibits a turn-of-the-century Post-romantic esthetic, which especially in his organ works, demonstrates “remarkable sonorities.” His best-known composition is Suite gothique (1895), now a staple of the organ repertoire, especially its concluding Toccata, a piece “of moderate difficulty but brilliant effect,” with a dramatic minor theme and a rhythmic emphasis that made it popular even in Boëllmann’s own day.

Boëllmann was born in Ensisheim, Haut-Rhin, the son of a pharmacist. In 1871, at the age of nine, he entered the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse (L’École Niedermeyer) in Paris, where he studied with its director, Gustave Lefèvre, and with Eugène Gigout. Boëllmann there won first prizes in piano, organ, counterpoint, fugue, plainsong, and composition. After his graduation in 1881, Boëllmann was hired as “‘organiste de choeur'” at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, and six years later he became cantor and “organiste titulaire,” a position he held until his early death, probably from tuberculosis.

In 1885, Boëllmann married Louise, the daughter of Gustave Lefèvre and the niece of Eugène Gigout, into whose house the couple moved. (Having no children of his own, Gigout adopted Boëllmann.) Boëllmann then taught in Gigout’s school of organ playing and improvisation.

As a favored student of Gigout, Boëllmann moved in the best circles of the French musical world and as a pleasing personality, he made friends of many artists and was able to give concerts both in Paris and the provinces.[3] Boëllmann became known as “a dedicated teacher, trenchant critic, gifted composer and successful performer…who coaxed pleasing sounds out of recalcitrant instruments.” Boëllmann also wrote musical criticism for L’art musical under the pseudonym “le Révérend Père Léon” and “un Garçon de la salle Pleyel.”

Boëllmann died in 1897, aged only 35. After the death of his wife the following year, Gigout reared their three orphans, one of whom, Marie-Louise Boëllmann-Gigout (1891–1977), became a noted organ teacher in her own right.

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Hymns

All hail the power of Jesus’ name has a complicated history and several versions. Our version was written mostly by Edward Perronet (1726–1792), as associate of John Wesley. The hymn alludes to the Apocalypse. In Rev 19.16 Jesus is “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” on whose head “are many diadems” (Rev 19.12). The martyrs call from the altar, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness (martus) they had borne (Rev 6.9). We sinners, who have tasted the “wormwood and the gall” (Lam 3.19) of our evil deeds, offer our repentance as a trophy to the Lord of all. John sees every kindred, every tribe, “a great multitude…from every nation (Rev 7.9) who cry out “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb.” As we sing we join them in this confession, entering even now into the hymn of praise that will resound forever.

Here is the 1940 Hymnal version:

All hail the pow’r of Jesus’ name!
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown Him Lord of all.
Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown Him Lord of all.

Crown Him, ye martyrs of our God
Who from His altar call;
Extol the Stem of Jesse’s rod
And crown Him Lord of all.
Extol the Stem of Jesse’s rod
And crown Him Lord of all.

Hail Him, the Heir of David’s line,
Whom David Lord did call,
The God incarnate, Man divine,
And crown Him Lord of all.
The God incarnate, Man divine,
And crown Him Lord of all.

Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,
Ye ransomed from the Fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace
And crown Him Lord of all.
Hail Him who saves you by His grace
And crown Him Lord of all.

Sinners, whose love can ne’er forget
The wormwood and the gall,
Go, spread your trophies at His feet
And crown Him Lord of all.
Go, spread your trophies at His feet
And crown Him Lord of all.

Let every kindred, every tribe,
On this terrestrial ball
To Him all majesty ascribe
And crown Him Lord of all.
To Him all majesty ascribe
And crown Him Lord of all.

Here is Samuel Metzger’s arrangement.

Here is the 1799 version:

1 All hail the pow’r of Jesus’ name!
Let Angels prostrate fall:
Bring forth the royal diadem,
To crown Him Lord of All.

2 Let high-born Seraphs tune the lyre,
And, as they tune it, fall
Before his face who tunes their choir,
And crown Him Lord of All.

3 Crown Him, ye morning stars of light,
He fix’d this floating ball;
Now hail the strength of Israel’s might,
And crown Him Lord of All

4 Crown Him, ye martyrs of your God,
Who from His altar call,
Extol the stem of Jesse’s rod,
And crown Him Lord of All.

5 Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,
Ye ransom’d of the fall,
Hail Him who saves you by his grace,
And crown Him Lord of All.

6 Hail Him, ye heirs of David’s line,
Whom David Lord did call;
The God incarnate, Man divine,
And crown Him Lord of All.

7 Sinners! whose love can ne’er forget,
The wormwood and the gall,
Go–spread your trophies at his feet,
And crown Him Lord of All.

8 Let every tribe, and every tongue,
That hear the Saviour’s call
Now shout in universal song,
And crown Him Lord of All.

There is an alternative final stanza, found in many hymnals:

O that with yonder sacred throng
We at his feet may fall!
We’ll join the everlasting song,
And crown him Lord of all.

The eliminated stanza with “high-born Seraphs” is charming but odd. “Hail Him, ye heirs of David’s line,” a vocative, addressed presumably to the Jews, was changed to “Hail Him, the Heir of David’s line,” changing heirs to Heir, and putting it in apposition to Him, that is, Christ.

Edward Perronet (1726-1792). The Perronets of England, grandfather, father, and son, were French Huguenot emigres. David Perronet came to England about 1680. He was son of the refugee Pasteur Perronet, who had chosen Switzerland as his adopted country, where he ministered to a Protestant congregation at Chateau D’Oex. His son, Vincent Perronet, M.A., was a graduate of Queen’s College, Oxford. He became, in 1728, Vicar of Shoreham, Kent. He was close to with the Evangelical Revival under the Wesleys and Whitefield.

His son Edward was born in 1726. Born, baptized, and brought up in the Church of England, he had originally no other thought than to be one of her clergy. But, though strongly evangelical, he had a keen and searching eye for defects. A characteristic note to The Mitre, in referring to a book called The Dissenting Gentleman’s answer to the Rev. Mr. White, thus runs:—”I was born, and am like to die, in the tottering communion of the Church of England; but I despise her nonsense; and thank God that I have once read a book that no fool can answer, and that no honest man will.” This strangely overlooked satire is priceless as a reflection of contemporary ecclesiastical opinion and sentiment. It is pungent, salted with wit, gleams with humor, hits off vividly the well-known celebrities in Church and State, and is well wrought in picked and packed words. But it is a curious production to have come from a “true son” of the Church of England. It roused John Wesley’s hottest anger. He demanded its instant suppression; and it was suppressed; and yet it was at this period the author threw himself into the Wesleys’ great work. But evidences abound in the letters and journals of John Wesley that he was intermittently rebellious and vehement to even his revered leader’s authority. Earlier, Edward Perronet dared all obloquy as a Methodist. In 1749 Wesley enters in his diary:

“From Rochdale went to Bolton, and soon found that the Rochdale lions were lambs in comparison with those of Bolton. Edward Perronet was thrown down and rolled in mud and mire. Stones were hurled and windows broken.”

In 1755 arrangements to meet the emergency created by its own success had to be made for Methodism. As one result, both Edward and Charles Perronet broke loose from John Wesley’s law that none of his preachers or “helpers” were to dispense the Sacraments, but were still with their flocks to attend the parish churches. Edward Perronet asserted his right to administer the Sacraments as a divinely-called preacher. At that time he was resident at Canterbury, “in a part of the archbishop’s old palace.” He became one of the Countess of Huntingdon’s “ministers” in a chapel in Watling Street, Canterbury. Throughout he was passionate, impulsive, strong-willed; but always lived near his divine Master. In the close of his life he was an Independent or Congregational pastor of a small church in Canterbury. He died Jan. 2, 1792, and was buried in the cloisters of the great cathedral.

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Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877) recast George Herbert’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 into this hymn, The King of love my shepherd is. The true Shepherd -King is Jesus, who cares for His flock by His redemptive death which flows to us through the sacraments. “The streams of living water” flow from Jesus’ pierced side. He ransoms our soul from the captivity of sin, and feeds us with food celestial, “the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.” On our own we never keep to the righteous paths. That is why Jesus comes in love to us, sinners as we are. In his persistent and tender mercy Jesus seeks us, when, “perverse and foolish,” we stray from Him. The wood of the shepherd’s staff is the wood of the cross that guides the strayed soul. Delights flow from Jesus’ pure chalice. The “wine that gladdens the heart” is the Eucharist, the blood of Christ; His is the chalice that overbrims with love. In the Old Testament, our ancestors in faith longed to dwell in the “house of the Lord,” before the revelation of eternal life was clear. But now Christ fulfills that mysterious longing. Jesus is the King who came not be to served but to serve, the one who “giveth his life for the sheep,” the ultimate gift, eternal life with Him.

Here is a Reformed analysis of the hymn:

“We note immediately that the usual way of naming God (“the Lord”) has been replaced with a nonbiblical yet immediately comprehensible allegorical title, “the King of Love.”  This unfamiliar opening and the inversion in the first line (“my shepherd is”) prepare the singer for a text that is intentionally—even self-consciously—allusive and aesthetic. This perception of the text is reinforced by the archaic verb forms (“leadeth,” “feedeth”) and the Latinate diction (“verdant,” “celestial”) in the second stanza. The third stanza intensifies the Christological overtones of this paraphrase with allusions not only to the Good Shepherd passage noted earlier but also to Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4-7; cf. Matthew 18:12-14). The fourth stanza follows the biblical shift from third person to second person, but adds to the images of the shepherd’s rod and staff the suggestion of a processional cross familiar to many nineteen-century Anglican congregations. There is a similar churchy slant in the fifth stanza, where the psalter’s “oil” takes on sacramental tones by being called “unction,” and the usual English translation “cup” becomes a comparably Latinate and ecclesiastical “chalice.” As a result, the reference to God’s “house” in the final line of the sixth stanza does not suggest the Temple in Jerusalem so much as it does the church building in which the hymn is being sung.” (ReformedWorship.org)

I doubt that in the last line “Thy house” is simply the church building; heaven is clearly meant and specified by the “forever.” Anglocatholic services are long, but not that long.

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.

2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

4 In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Here is the Cardiff Festival Choir singing the hymn. Here is John Rutter’s lovely arrangement with harp accompaniment.

Henry Williams Baker

Sir Henry Williams Baker was the eldest son of Admiral Sir Henry Loraine Baker. Henry was born in London, May 27, 1821, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated, B.A. 1844, M.A. 1847. Taking Holy Orders in 1844, he became, in 1851, Vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire. This benefice he held to his death, on Monday, Feb. 12, 1877. He succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1851. His hymns, including metrical litanies and translations, number in the revised edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, 33 in all.. The last audible words which lingered on his dying lips were the third stanza of his rendering of the 23rd Psalm, “The King of Love, my Shepherd is:”—

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

This tender sadness, brightened by a soft calm peace, was an epitome of his poetical life.

The tune is ST COLUMBA. Because the compilers of the 1906 English Hymnal were denied permission to use Dykes’s original tune, musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) turned to a folk tune that his former teacher Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had recently edited for a collection of Irish music (A Complete Collection of Irish Music as noted by George Petri (London, 1902-1905); ST. COLUMBA is no. 1043). The two most notable improvements Vaughan Williams made in the hymn tune known as ST. COLUMBA were the lengthening of the second and fourth lines to extend the Common Meter tune to 8787 in order to accommodate Baker’s text—this being their first appearance together—and the use of a triplet (rather than an eighth and two sixteenths) in the sixth measure. (ReformedWorship.org).

The words of this hymn are often subjected to “modernization,” a process that frequently obscures the meaning the poet intended. For example, a 1994 Lutheran hymnal   changes

Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

to

You spread a table in my sight,
A banquet here bestowing;
Your oil of welcome, my delight;
My cup is overflowing!

The clear allusion to the Eucharistic chalice has been almost completely obscured and the deep emotion of “transports of delight” toned down and transferred to oil, which might be a reference to the oil used at baptism, if Lutherans use, it, but it is very obscure.

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The King shall come when morning dawns was written by the Presbyterian minister John Brownlie (1857—1925), who translated many Eastern hymns. Infused with the imagery of morning light typical of early Greek hymnody, this hymn looks back to the time when the Light of the world dawned in Bethlehem, to reveal to us our sins and God’s mercy. We now look forward to Christ’s Second Advent, when His Lordship over all creation will be revealed. There will be no night, for sin and sorrow and death will have passed away.  We pray for that that last and first Day, “Maranatha” (Rev 22:20), “Come quickly, King of Kings.”

Here are all the stanzas. The 1940 Hymnal uses stanzas 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7.

1 The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light triumphant breaks;
When beauty gilds the eastern hills,
And life to beauty breaks.

2 Not as of old, a little child
To bear, and fight, and die,
But crowned with glory like the sun,
That lights the morning sky.

3 O, brighter than the rising morn,
When He victorious rose,
And left the lonesome place of death,
Despite the rage of foes;–

4 O, brighter than that glorious morn,
Shall this fair morning be,
When Christ, our King, in beauty comes,
And we His face shall see.

5 The King shall come when morning dawns,
And earth’s dark night is past;–
O, haste the rising of that morn,
That day that aye shall last.

6 And let the endless bliss begin,
By weary saints foretold,
When right shall triumph over wrong,
And truth shall be extolled.

7 The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light and beauty brings;–
Hail! Christ the Lord; Thy people pray,
“Come quickly, King of kings.”

Here is a German group, Corona Vocalis.

Rev. John Brownlie D.D. (3 August 1857 – 18 November 1925) was a Scottish hymnist best known for his translations of early Greek and Latin hymns into English. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He received his higher education at the University of Glasgow and the Free Church College. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1884. In 1885 became assistant minister of Trinity Free Church in Portpatrick, Wigtonshire, Scotland and succeeded the senior pastor there upon his death in 1890. He became a governor of Stranraer High School in 1897, and chairman of the governors in 1901. Glasgow University awarded him an honorary D.D. degree in 1908 for his work in hymnology. He died in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland and was buried in Portpatrick.

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Anthems

Postula a me, Eric Spangler

Postula a me, et dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam,
et possessionem tuam terminos terrae.
Ask of me and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance,
and the ends of the earth for thy possession.

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Sedebit Dominus Rex, Erik Spangler

Sedebit Dominus Rex in aeternum. Dominus virtutem populo suo dabit.
Dominus benedicet populo suo in pace.
The Lord shall sit King for ever. The Lord will give strength to his people.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.

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Postlude

Grand jeu, from Suite du premier ton, Pierre DuMage

Here is Lionel Rogg.

Pierre Dumage (du Mage) (1674 – 1751) was a French Baroque organist and composer. His first music teacher was most likely his father, organist of the Beauvais Cathedral. At some point during his youth Dumage moved to Paris and studied under Louis Marchand. He also befriended Nicolas Lebègue, who in 1703 procured for Dumage a position of organist of the Saint-Quentin collegiate church. In 1710 Dumage was appointed titular organist of the Laon Cathedral. Due to strained relations with his superiors in the cathedral chapter, Dumage left on 30 March 1719, at the age of 45, and became a civil servant.[2] He apparently neither played nor composed music professionally until his death.

Dumage’s only surviving work is Premier livre d’orgue, published in 1708. This collection is dedicated to the chapter of Saint Quentin. It contains a single Suite du premier ton: eight pieces in the traditional French forms: Plein jeu, Fugue, Trio, Tierce en taille, Basse de Trompette, Récit, Duo and Grand jeu. In the brief preface Dumage explains that these are his first works, and that he modelled them after the music of his former teacher Marchand. Dumage’s music is, however, of very high quality, and entirely representative of French organ music of the period. Musicologists Félix Raugel and Willi Apel both singled out Dumage’s Récit for its “delicate and gentle lyricism”, and Apel also praised the Tierce en taille and the Grand jeu as particularly striking. Dumage’s second livre d’orgue was presented in 1712 to the chapter of Laon Cathedral, but has never been found.

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Sexual Harassment and the Fences about the Law

in sex differences, sexual abuse No Comments

Jews have developed the concept “fences about the Law.” Wikipedia explains:

“A khumra (חומרה; pl. חומרות, khumrot; alternative spelling: chumra) is a prohibition or obligation in Jewish practice that exceeds the bare requirements of Halakha (Jewish laws). One who imposes a khumra on themself in a given instance is said to be מחמיר makhmir. The rationale for a khumra comes from Deuteronomy 22:8, which states that when one builds a house, he must build a fence around the roof in order to avoid guilt should someone fall off the roof. This has been interpreted by many as a requirement to “build a fence around the Torah” in order to protect the mitzvot.

An obligation or prohibition can be adopted by an individual or an entire community. Early references to khumrot are found in the Talmud, and the understanding and application of them has changed over time.

Most often found in Orthodox Judaism, khumrot are variously seen as a precaution against transgressing the Halakha or as a way of keeping those who have taken on the stringency separate from those who have not.

A second meaning of khumra is simply “a stricter interpretation of a Jewish law (Halakha), when two or more interpretations exist”. This meaning is closely related to the first meaning, because people who follow the more lenient interpretation (qulla) believe that their interpretation is the baseline requirement of the law, and that people who observe the stringency are doing something “extra”. However, people who observe the khumra, in this sense, believe that they are following the baseline requirement, and to do any less would be to violate halakha entirely. Note that in many cases, a rule followed by the majority (or even totality) of halakha-observant Jews today is a stringency in comparison with more lenient rabbinic opinions which have existed in the past or even today. For example, universal halakhic practice today is to wait at least one hour (and even as much as six hours) after eating meat, before consuming milk. However, Rabbenu Tam, in 12th-century France, ruled that it was sufficient merely to conclude the meat meal by reciting a blessing and removing the tablecloth, and then milk could be consumed immediately. Thus, today’s universal halakhic practice of waiting between meat and milk would be considered a khumra in comparison to Rabbenu Tam’s ruling.”

Pence follows this concept. To avoid adultery, he avoids even being alone with a woman who is not his wife.

An individual or a community can also build fences about the law. I had to be away for my family for weeks at a time when I was working. I never went to bars, and always took a book to read when I was in a restaurant. I also practiced custody of the eyes; men are easily stimulated visually, so I took care not to admire feminine beauty.

To avoid sexual harassment (or worse) men should not make sexual advances by word or gesture. This in effect imposes chastity, which is not a popular virtue. We are in an impossible situation for men; any consensual activity is fine, but how can men determine if the woman gives consent if he does not make a sexual advance. no matter how trivial it might be. If the woman does not want it, it is harassment. So to avoid committing sexual harassment, men must avoid making any sexual advances. This is of course what chastity demands, but it is not what our culture teaches men.

 

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Mount Calvary Music November 19 2017

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Parable of the Talents

Mount Calvary 

Baltimore, Maryland

A Roman Catholic Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XXIII

Prelude

Hymns

Awake, my soul, and with the sun

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted

God, my King, Thy might confessing

Anthems

Serve bone et fidelis, Tommaso Bai

Almighty and everlasting God, Orlando Gibbons

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Healey Willan

Postlude

Toccata-Sortie, Auguste Larriu (1840 – 1925)

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Prelude

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Hymns

#151 Awake my soul and with the sun. Thomas Ken wrote this hymn specifically as a morning prayer, as well as another for an evening prayer, and one more for a midnight prayer, which was used only during special occasions. Written sometime prior to 1674, Ken gave this text to his students at Winchester College, which is one of the oldest public preparatory schools in England. The language is simple and precise, and the opening images of light and rising up, appropriate to morning, pervade the hymn and convey a powerful sense of renewal and aspiration.

1 Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

2 Redeem thy misspent moments past;
And live this day as if thy last:
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great Day thyself prepare.

3 Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
Think how all-seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

4 Wake, and lift up thyself, my heart,
And with the angels bear thy part,
Who all night long unwearied sing
High praise to the eternal King.

5 All praise to Thee, Who safe hast kept
And hast refreshed me while I slept;
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake,
I may of endless light partake.

6 Lord, I my vows to Thee renew;
Scatter my sins as morning dew;
Guard my first springs of thought and will,
And with Thyself my spirit fill.

7 Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say;
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

8 Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, angelic host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Here is the Norwich Cathedral Choir.

Bishop Thomas Ken

Thomas Ken (1637—1711) was a very successful man, having been schooled well, and having faced death at such a young age. Born in Berkhampstead, England, Ken lost both his mother and father at the age of nine. After the death of his parents, he was forced to move in and be raised by his older sister, Ann, and by Ann’s husband, Izaak Walton. Ken was educated at Winchester College, Hart Hall, and New College, Oxford, but throughout the heavy Presbyterian presence throughout Oxford, Ken maintained his strong connections to the Church of England. Ken was ordained in 1662, and quickly became a parish priest and chaplain. In 1669, Ken became the prebendary of Winchester Cathedral and College chaplain to the bishop, a position he would hold for ten years. It was during this ten year stay at Winchester that Ken wrote this morning hymn. Finally, Ken left Winchester so that he may serve as a chaplain to Princess Mary at The Hague in 1679, and in 1685, he was named bishop of Bath and Wells. Ken spent only a short time away from Winchester. He returned from his work with Princess Mary at The Hague after Ken’s remonstrance against a case of immorality in the church.

Thomas Ken window in Wells Cathedral

Ken was a well-respected man of integrity who was known for his strong stances, but was also known for his “conciliatory spirit….gentleness, modesty, and love.”.He was also known as one of the first Anglican writers of hymns as opposed to metrical psalms, though he is only known best for these three hymns. Ken is known for having been made Bishop of Bath and Wells by King Charles II. King Charles still favored Ken, even though Ken had refused the kings mistress, Nell Gwynne, the use of his house while she was visiting. King James II called Ken the most eloquent protestant preacher of his time, and Charles was noted of saying “I must go and hear Ken tell me my faults.”

In 1688, when James reissued his Declaration of Indulgence, which tolerated non-Anglicans, Ken was one of the Seven Bishops who refused to publish it. He was probably influenced by two considerations: first, by his profound aversion to Roman Catholicism, to which he felt he would be giving some episcopal recognition by compliance; but, second and more especially, by the feeling that James was compromising the spiritual freedom of the church. Along with his six brethren, Ken was committed to the Tower on 8 June 1688, on a charge of high misdemeanour. Ken was put on trial with the others on 29 and 30 June, which resulted in a verdict of acquittal.

With the Glorious Revolution which speedily followed this impolitic trial, new troubles encountered Ken; for, having sworn allegiance to James, he thought himself thereby precluded from taking the oath to William of Orange. Accordingly, he took his place among the non-jurors, and, as he stood firm to his refusal, he was, in August 1691, superseded in his bishopric by Dr Richard Kidder, dean of Peterborough.

From this time he lived mostly in retirement, finding a congenial home with Lord Weymouth, his friend from college days, at Longleat in Wiltshire; and though pressed by Queen Anne to resume his diocese in 1703, upon the death of Bishop Kidder, he declined, partly on the ground of growing weakness, but partly no doubt from his love for the quiet life of devotion which he was able to lead at Longleat. He did however persuade George Hooper to accept and made a cession to him. At Hooper’s instigation, Queen Anne granted Ken a pension of £200. His death took place there on 19 March 1711. and at dawn the following day, whilst his faithful friends sang “Awake, my soul, and with the sun” Bishop Ken’s remains were laid to rest beneath the East Window of the Church of St. John in Frome – the nearest parish in his old Diocese of Bath and Wells. “I am dying,” Ken had written, “In the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West; and, more particularly, in the Communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from both Papal and Protestant innovation, and adheres to the Doctrine of the Cross.”

Although Ken wrote much poetry, besides his hymns, he cannot be called a great poet; but he had that fine combination of spiritual insight and feeling with poetic taste which marks all great hymnwriters. As a hymnwriter he has had few equals in England; he wrote Praise God from whom all blessings flow. It can scarcely be said that even John Keble, though possessed of much rarer poetic gifts, surpassed him in his own sphere. In his own day he took high rank as a pulpit orator, and even royalty had to beg for a seat amongst his audiences; but his sermons are now forgotten. He lives in history, apart from his three hymns, mainly as a man of unstained purity and invincible fidelity to conscience, weak only in a certain narrowness of view. As an ecclesiastic he was a High Churchman of the old school.

The tune MORNING HYMN was commissioned by a Swedenborgian from Philadelphia by the name of Jacob Duche (1737—1798). Duche was the chaplain of the Female Orphan Asylum in London, a place where a young woman by the name of Mary Young Barthélemon had close associations with. While Duche was putting together a collection of hymns and psalms to be used at the asylum, he requested a hymn tune from her husband, François Hippolyte Barthélemon  (1741—1808), to accompany the text to Ken’s text. The tune first appeared in a supplement to William Gawler’s Hymns and Psalms Used at the Asylum for Female Orphans, which was published in London around 1785.

François-Hippolyte Barthélemon was born at Bordeaux, France, as the oldest child of sixteen. His father was a French army officer; his mother a well-to-do Irish woman. Barthélemon was a well-educated man, having a knowledge of several modern languages. He studied music, fencing and Hebrew, and gave up his career as an Irish Regiment officer to become a violinist and conductor. He played in the orchestra of the Paris Comédie-Italienne, as well as served as the director of the Opera Orchestra in London. Barthélemon ‘s wife, Mary Young, was a vocalist who was related to the composer Thomas Arne, and the bassoonist, Johann Lampe, who is known to have composed music for several of Charles Wesley’s hymns. Barthélemon and his wife became members of the Swedenborg Church, possibly under the influences of Jacob Duche, who became a close friend of the two. Mary Young and Francois H. Barthélemon gave many concerts across Europe, including several at Versailles for Marie Antoinette, and Franz Joseph Haydn was also one of his close friends.

Thomas Hardy write this tribute:

He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . .
And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,
Where was emerging like a full-robed priest
The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.

It lit his face the weary face of one
Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string,
Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing,
Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.

And then were threads of matin music spun
In trial tones as he pursued his way:
“This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun:
This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!”

And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres,
It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires.

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#195 Father, we thank Thee who hast planted  is a paraphrase by the Episcopal clergyman Francis Bland Tucker (1895—1984) of the Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, one of the earliest documents of the church.

Stanza 1 corresponds to 10: 2 of the Didache, a post-communion prayer: ‘We give Thee thanks, Holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou hast made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which Thou hast made known unto us through Thy Son Jesus’ (translation by Joseph Barber Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 1891). Stanza 2 is from 10: 3: ‘Thou, Almighty Master, didst create all things for Thy name’s sake, and didst give food and drink unto men for enjoyment, that they might render thanks to Thee; but didst bestow upon us spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy Son.’ Stanza 3 is from 10: 5: ‘Remember, Lord, Thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in Thy love…’. Stanza 4 is from 9: 4: ‘As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom.’

Here at St. John’s, Detroit, before a Tigers game.

Father, we thank Thee who hast planted
Thy holy name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus, Thy Son, to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for Thy pleasure,
Didst give us food for all our days,
Giving in Christ the Bread eternal;
Thine is the pow’r, be Thine the praise.

Watch o’er Thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
Save it from evil, guard it still,
Perfect it in Thy love, unite it,
Cleansed and conformed unto Thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
Was in this broken bread made one,
So from all lands Thy Church be gather’d
Into Thy kingdom by Thy Son.

Francis Bland Tucker (1885-1984)  was an important figure in hymnody. He was educated at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Beginning in 1945, he was Rector of Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia. Tucker served on the two commissions, forty-two years apart, that revised hymnals of the Episcopal Church. He worked on the 1940 Hymnal and the 1982 Hymnal which includes 17 of Tucker’s contributions. Among these are the texts, Oh, Gracious Light (Hymns 25-26), Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted (Hymns 302-303), and his original text, Our Father, by Whose Name (Hymn 587). Only John Mason Neale is credited with more items in the 1982 Hymnal.  Tucker was also a theological adviser to the commission that produced the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

A collateral descendant of George Washington, Tucker’s parents were Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Episcopal Bishop of Southern Virginia, and Anna Maria Washington who was one of the last children to be born at Mount Vernon. Francis Bland is the brother of Henry St. George Tucker (1874–1959), 19th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and descendant of St. George Tucker (1752–1827), lawyer, legal scholar, state and federal judge for whom the St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg is named.

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#280 God, my King, Thy might confessing is a metrical version of Psalm 145, ‘I will extol thee, my God, O king’. It was first published in Richard Mant’s The Book of Psalms, in an English Metrical Version (1824). Mant (1776—1848), a bishop on the Church of Ireland, was also one of the architects of the revival of Latin hymnody in the Church of England, especially in his Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary (1837).

1 God, my King, Thy might confessing,
Ever will I bless Thy Name;
Day by day Thy throne addressing,
Still will I Thy praise proclaim.

2 Honor great our God befitteth;
Who His Majesty can reach?
Age to age His works transmitteth,
Age to age His power shall teach.

3 They shall talk of all Thy glory,
On Thy might and greatness dwell,
Speak of Thy dread acts the story,
And Thy deeds of wonder tell.

4 Nor shall fail from memory’s treasure,
Works by love and mercy wrought,
Works of love surpassing measure,
Works of mercy passing thought.

5 Full of kindness and compassion,
Slow to anger, vast in love,
God is good to all creation;
All His works His goodness prove.

6 All Thy works, O Lord, shall bless Thee;
Thee shall all Thy saints adore;
King supreme shall they confess Thee,
And proclaim Thy sovereign power.

Here is St. John’s Detroit.

Bishop Richard Mant

Richard Mant (1776-1848) was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford; he was then a fellow of Oriel. He was ordained in 1802. In 1820 he became Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora, in Ireland. In 1823 he was translated to Down and Connor, and from 1842 was the Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore.

Dr. Mant owed his rise in the church to his professional authorship of works such as

  • Two Tracts intended to convey correct Notions of Regeneration and Conversion, according to the sense of Holy Scripture, and of the Church of England.
  • The Fear of God and the King
  • The Laws of the Church the Churchman’s guard against Romanism and Puritanism, in two Charges.
  • Reflections on the Sinfulness of Cruelty to Animals; a Sermon.

His secular work included The Simpliciad, a satirical poem that parodied Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) by William Wordsworth. He gave notes relating his parodies to the originals. The aim of the work included the other Lake Poets, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with “To a Young Ass” by Coleridge used to guy the group as a whole.

Coleridge’s poem which was beyond parody was:

To A Young Ass, Its Mother Being Tethered Near It

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race!
I love the languid patience of thy face:
And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread,
And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head.
But what thy dulled spirits hath dismay’d,
That never thou dost sport along the glade?
And (most unlike the nature of things young)
That earthward still thy moveless head is hung?
Do thy prophetic fears anticipate,
Meek Child of Misery! thy future fate?
The starving meal, and all the thousand aches
‘Which patient Merit of the Unworthy takes’?
Or is thy sad heart thrill’d with filial pain
To see thy wretched mother’s shorten’d chain?
And truly, very piteous is her lot–
Chain’d to a log within a narrow spot,
Where the close-eaten grass is scarcely seen,
While sweet around her waves the tempting green!

Poor Ass! they master should have learnt to show
Pity — best taught by fellowship of Woe!
For much I fear me that He lives like thee,
Half famished in a land of Luxury!
How askingly its footsteps hither bend?
It seems to say, ‘And have I then one friend?’
Innocent foal! thou poor despis’d forlorn!
I hail thee Brother — spite of the fool’s scorn!
And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell,
Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride,
And Laughter tickle Plenty’s ribless side!
How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play,
And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay!
Yea! and more musically sweet to me
Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be,
Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest
The aching of pale Fashion’s vacant breast!

“I hail thee Brother” was irresistible.

The tune STUTTGART was included in Psalmodia Sacra (1715) and probably composed by Christian Friedrich Witt (1660—1716).

Son of Altenburg court organist Johann Ernst Witt, Christian probably received a scholarship from Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, in 1676 to study in Vienna and Salzburg, then from 1685-86 to study composition and counterpoint in Nuremberg with Georg Caspar Wecker, returning for a further period of study in 1688. He moved to Gotha to become court chamber organist in June 1686, and stayed there for the rest of his life. He became a substitute for Kapellmeister W. M. Mylius in 1694, and succeeded him after his death in 1713; Duke Frederick II was one of his pupils. He is mentioned as a good keyboard player and Kapellmeister in J. P. Treiber’s 1704 Der accurate Organist im General-Bass & Telemann’s 1739 Beschreibung der Augen-Orgel. He was valued by the courts of Ansbach-Bayreuth, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and Saxe-Weiss­enfels. While on his deathbed, Bach was commissioned to substitute for him and perform a Passiontide work for the court chapel (the Weimarer Passion).

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Anthems

Serve bone et fidelis, Tommaso

Serve bone et fidelis, quia in pauca fuisti, supra multa te constituam: intra in gaudium Domini Dei tui.

Good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful with a few things, I will set you over many things: enter into the joy of the Lord your God.

Tommaso Bai (1636-1714) was a singer and composer and head of the Sistine choir. His chief fame rests on his Miserere, which was sung wash year in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week. His music is in the polyphonic Roman tradition.

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Almighty and everlasting God, Orlando Gibbons

Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth thy right hand to help and defend us, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here is the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) between 1596 and 1598 sang in the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where his brother Edward Gibbons (1568–1650), eldest of the four sons of William Gibbons, was master of the choristers. Orlando achieved the degree of Bachelor of Music in 1606.

King James I appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist from at least 1615 until his death. In 1623 he became senior organist at the Chapel Royal. He also held positions as keyboard player in the privy chamber of the court of Prince Charles (later King Charles I), and organist at Westminster Abbey. He died at age 41 in Canterbury of apoplexy, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

One of the most versatile English composers of his time, Gibbons wrote a large number of keyboard works, around thirty fantasias for viols, a number of madrigals (the best-known being “The Silver Swan”), and many popular verse anthems, all to English texts. Perhaps his most well-known verse anthem is This Is the Record of John, which sets an Advent text for solo countertenor or tenor, alternating with full chorus. The soloist is required to demonstrate considerable technical facility at points, and the work expresses the rhetorical force of the text, whilst never being demonstrative or bombastic. He also produced two major settings of Evensong, the Short Service and the Second Service, an extended composition combining verse and full sections. Gibbons’s full anthems include the expressive O Lord, in thy wrath, and the Ascension Day anthem O clap your hands together for eight voices.

He contributed six pieces to the first printed collection of keyboard music in England, Parthenia (to which he was by far the youngest of the three contributors), published in about 1611. Gibbons’s surviving keyboard output comprises some 45 pieces. The polyphonic fantasia and dance forms are the best represented genres. Gibbons’s writing exhibits a command of three- and four-part counterpoint. Most of the fantasias are complex, multi-sectional pieces, treating multiple subjects imitatively. Gibbons’s approach to melody, in both his fantasias and his dances, features extensive development of simple musical ideas, as for example in Pavane in D minor and Lord Salisbury’s Pavan and Galliard.

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Postlude

Toccata-Sortie, Auguste Larriu

August Larriu (1840-1925) was an advocate by profession, and was also organist at Sainte-Croix d’Oloron. He composed for the organ and harmonium, but most of his music has been lost.

Here is the Toccata Sortie.

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Mount Calvary Music: The Consecration of the Altar: 11 November 2017

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Mount Calvary

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

The Consecration of the Altar

by

The Most Rev. Stephen Lopes

November 11, 2017

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Prelude

An Evocation of ‘Urbs Beata Jerusalem’ – Gerre Hancock (1934-2012)

Hymns

Christ is made the sure foundation

How lovely is thy dwelling place

Love divine, all loves excelling

The church’s one foundation

Anthems

Hear the voice and prayer, Thomas Tallis

O how amiable, Ralph Vaughn Williams

Locus iste, Paul Mealor

Postlude

Marche Triomphale (Nun Danket Alle Gott) from op. 6,  Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

Common

Missa de S Maria Magdelena, Willan

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Prelude

An Evocation of ‘Urbs Beata Jerusalem’ ,  Gerre Hancock

Gerre Edward Hancock (1934 – 2012) was an American organist, improviser, and composer. Hancock was Professor of Organ and Sacred Music at the University of Texas at Austin.Hancock served as Organist at Second Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas; Assistant Organist at Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, New York; Organist and Choirmaster at Christ Church (now Christ Church Cathedral) in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Organist and Master of the Choristers at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1971 to 2004.In 1981, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and in 1995 was appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Hancock received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the Nashotah House Seminary and The University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. In May 2004 he was awarded the Doctor of Divinity degree (Honoris causa) from The General Theological Seminary in New York.

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Hymns

Christ is made the sure foundation is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818—1866) of the 7th c. Latin hymn Urbs beata Ierusalem, which was written for the dedication of a church. Neale was an Evangelical when he was ordained an Anglican clergyman, but under the influence of the Oxford Movement he became an Anglo-Catholic. He was a student of worship in the early church and one of the first to translate ancient Greek and Latin texts into metrical English for singing.

The hymn is based on two Scriptures: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ep 2:20-22); and  “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious, And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.’ Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone’” (1 Pet 2:4-7).

Henry Thomas Smart (1813—1979) composed the tune Regent Square and named it for Regent Square Church, the “Presbyterian cathedral” of London.

Henry Thomas Smart (1813– 1879) was an English organist and composer.

Smart was born in London, a nephew of the conductor Sir George Smart and son of a music publisher, orchestra director and accomplished violinist (also called Henry Smart). He was educated at Highgate School  and then studied for the law, but soon gave this up for music.

In 1831 Smart became organist of Blackburn parish church, where he wrote his first important work, an anthem; then of St Giles-without-Cripplegate; St Luke’s, Old Street; and finally of St Pancras New Church, in 1864, which last post he held at the time of his death, less than a month after receiving a government pension of £100 per annum. Smart was also skilled as a mechanic, and designed several organs.

Though highly rated as a composer by his English contemporaries, Smart is now largely forgotten, save for his hymn tune Regent Square, which retains considerable popularity, and which is commonly performed with the words “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation”, “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem”, or “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. His many compositions for the organ (some of which have been occasionally revived in recent years) were described as “effective and melodious, if not strikingly original” by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which also praised his part songs. A cantata by him, The Bride of Dunkerron was written for the Birmingham Festival of 1864; another cantata was a version of the play King René’s Daughter (1871). The oratorio Jacob was created for Glasgow in 1873; and his opera Bertha was produced with some success at the Haymarket in 1855.

Harry Emerson Fosdick greatly admired Regent Square, and wrote his own “God of Grace and God of Glory” specifically in the hope that it would be generally sung to that tune. He was horrified when in 1935 the Methodist Hymnal set the lyrics instead to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Cwm Rhondda.

In the last 15 years of his life Smart was practically blind. He composed by dictation, primarily to his daughter Ellen, who was married to Joseph Joachim´s brother Henry Joachim.

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How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts, to me is a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 84, from the Scottish Psalter. Many British Reformation churches would use only psalms in worship. The tune BROTHER JAMES’ AIR is by the poet and mystic James Leith Macbeth Bain (1840—1925).

James Leith Macbeth Bain (1840 – 1925), was a healer, mystic, and poet known simply as Brother James. The tune BROTHER JAMES AIR was first published in his volume The great peace: being a New Year’s greeting … (1915). Born in a devout Christian home, Bain came to doubt the faith but later regained a mystical belief with the aid of the Christo Theosophic Society. He founded the Brotherhood of Healers, and he and his fellow healers often sang to their patients during healing sessions. In the latter years of his life he worked among the poor in the slums of Liverpool.

Here is Psalm 23 with Brother James Air: the choir of Kings College, Cambridge;  the choristers of Canterbury Cathedral.

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Love divine, all loves excelling is by Charles Wesley (1707—1788). The hymn is a prayer: through the incarnated Christ, we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and ask that we would never be separated from the love of God in Christ, who works in us and through us until our time on earth is done.

One of the most loved Welsh tunes, HYFRODOL was composed by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811—1887) in 1830 when he was only nineteen.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

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The Church’s one foundation was written by Samuel John Stone (1839—1900) as an expansion of the article in the Creed: “The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of saints.” Bishop Colenso of South Africa had denounced most of the Bible as fictitious; in response Stone wrote this affirmation of the Church, which, although afflicted by heresies and schisms, still reflects the unity of the Trinity and the glory of the Church Triumphant in heaven.

The tune Aurelia is by Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810—1876), the son of the composer Samuel Wesley, and grandson of Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley.

Here is the choir of Kings College, Cambridge.

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Anthems

O How Amiable,  R. Vaughan Williams

O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of hosts!
My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young,
even thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be alway praising thee.
The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us:
prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handywork.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.

This is a setting of Psalms 84 and 90 in the 1539 Miles Cloverdale translation, with the hymn O God our help in ages past at the end.

Simplicity is a keynote in Vaughan Williams’s O how amiable, and the reason is the circumstances in which it was composed. In 1934 the novelist E. M. Forster wrote “The Abinger Pageant”, a play about the history of England, performed to aid preservation work at a church near where he lived in Surrey. Vaughan Williams’s anthem was written to be sung by amateur performers as part of the festivities, and the mainly unison writing reflects this. It also emphasizes the communal nature of the pageant experience, as does the addition of a verse from the famous hymn “O God our help in ages past” at the conclusion.

Here is the Houston Camerata.

Hear the voice and prayer, Thomas Tallis

Hear the voice and prayer of thy servants, that they make before thee this day.
That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, ever toward this place,
of which thou hast said: “My Name shall be there.” And when thou hearest have mercy on them.

It appears that Thomas Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer of Thy Servants was one of the earliest efforts at an “anthem” composed in English. Its earliest manuscript source dates from right around 1547, and its scoring for four men’s voices (without choirboy trebles) also tends to indicate this time period; though composers quickly moved to use antiphonal effects of divided treble voices, many observers of the time disparaged the practice as “like tennis play whereto God is called a Judge who can do best and be most gallant in his worship.” Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer remains quite conservative and unassuming!

Like much of the early English anthem repertory, Tallis’ Hear the Voice and Prayer follows a simple ABB repetition form and uses imitation somewhat sparingly at the outset of its musical sections. In this case, he is setting an English text that comes from Solomon’s dedicatory prayers over the Temple of Jerusalem (2 Chron. 6:19-21). The text thus is appropriate to any church dedication or memorial. The first musical section is rather brief, with a single invocation of God, and a rhetorical first cadence. The second opens with “That thine eyes may be open toward this house,” with a more active imitative motive that leads to two extended sequential passages. Tallis repeats the final imitative prayer, “And when thou hear’st, have mercy upon them,” twice in each repeat for quadruple emphasis on the desired mercy.

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Locus iste, Paul Mealor

Locus iste a Deo factus est, inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.
O flawless hallow, O seamless robe. Lantern of stone, unbroken.

Exultate Chamber Choir performs the motet Locus Iste by Welsh composer, Paul Mealor who became famous for his setting of Ubi Caritas, composed for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. His harmonic language abilities are immense and his compositions are thoughtfully composed and ripe with neo-romantic chord structures. Mealor is a master of contemporary harmony where complex chords sound “right” to the ear and serve to move the soul when connected to traditional liturgy or compelling poetry. His Locus Iste was written to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the consecration of King’s College Chapel.

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Postlude

Marche Triomphale (Nun Danket Alle Gott) from op. 65 – Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

Karg-Elert was born Siegfried Theodor Karg in Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany, the youngest of the twelve children;he changed his name to Sigfrid Karg-Elert, adding a variant of his mother’s maiden name to his surname, and adopting the Swedish spelling of his first name.

Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (he often used the BACH motif in Bach’s honour), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and early Arnold Schoenberg. In general terms, his musical style can be characterised as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies. His profound knowledge of music theory allowed him to stretch the limits of traditional harmony without losing tonal coherence.

Here is Peter Hurford.

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Mount Calvary Music November 5 2017

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and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XXI

Prelude

Prelude on ‘St. Columba’, Henry George Ley

Hymns

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

The King of love my shepherd is

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven

Anthems

Lay me low, where the Lord can find me, Kevin Siegfried

Lord, give Thy Holy Spirit, Thomas Tallis

Common

 Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Postlude

Kleines Harmonisches Labyrinth, J. S. Bach (?)

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PRELUDE

Prelude on St. Columba, Henry George Ley

Henry George Ley

Henry George Ley MA DMus FRCO FRCM HonRAM (1887 – 1962) was an English organist, composer and music teacher.

Dr Ley was born in Chagford in Devon. He was a chorister at St George’s Chapel Windsor Castle, Music Scholar at Uppingham School, Organ Scholar of Keble College Oxford (1906) where he was President of the University Musical Club in 1908, and an Exhibitioner at the Royal College of Music where he was a pupil of Sir Walter Parratt and Marmaduke Barton. He was organist at St Mary’s, Farnham Royal, from 1905–1906, and at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (1909–1926), Professor of organ at the Royal College of Music in London from 1919, and Precentor at Radley College and at Eton College (that is, in charge of the music in College Chapel) from 1926 to 1945. He was an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, from 1926 to 1945 and died on 24 August 1962. He was a composer of choral works, including a celebrated setting of the Founder’s Prayer of King Henry VI.

Here is the Prayer.

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HYMNS

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (#279), a paraphrase of Psalms 103 and 150, was written by Joachim Neander (1650—1680), the first hymn writer of the German Reformed Church. A valley was renamed in his honor in the early nineteenth century, and later became very famous in 1856 because of the discovery of the remains of Homo neanderthalensis, or the Neanderthal discovered in that valley.

The hymn was Englished by the indefatigable translator of German hymns, Catherine Winkworth (1827—1878). She began translating hymn texts into the English language during the early years of the Oxford movement. Leaders of the Oxford movement believed that the English Reformation had gone too far and had thrown out much that was valuable in the pre-16th century church. They realized that hymns had been a significant part of worship, and they revived Greek hymns from the early years of the church, Latin hymns from the Roman Catholic Church, and German hymn texts from the Lutheran Reformation.

The 1940 Hymnal uses 1,2, 4, and 5.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,
the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy
health and salvation!
All ye who hear,
Now to His temple draw near;
Sing now in glad adoration!
2
Praise to the Lord, who o’er all
things so wondrously reigneth,
Who, as on wings of an eagle,
uplifteth, sustaineth.
Hast thou not seen
How thy desires all have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?
3
Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully,
wondrously, made thee!
Health hath vouchsafed and, when
heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.
What need or grief
Ever hath failed of relief?
Wings of His mercy did shade thee.
4
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper
thy work and defend thee,
Who from the heavens the streams of
His mercy doth send thee.
Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do,
Who with His love doth befriend thee.
5
Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that
is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come
now with praises before Him!
Let the Amen
Sound from His people again;
Gladly for aye we adore Him.

Here is the hymn at the 6oth anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

Here is the German:

Lobe den Herren,
den mächtigen König der Ehren,
meine geliebete Seele,
das ist mein Begehren.
Kommet zuhauf,
Psalter und Harfe, wacht auf,
lasset den Lobgesang hören!

Lobe den Herren,
der alles so herrlich regieret,
der dich auf Adelers
Fittichen sicher geführet,
der dich erhält,
wie es dir selber gefällt;
hast du nicht dieses verspüret?

Lobe den Herren,
der künstlich und fein dich bereitet,
der dir Gesundheit verliehen,
dich freundlich geleitet.
In wieviel Not
hat nicht der gnädige Gott
über dir Flügel gebreitet!

Lobe den Herren,
der deinen Stand sichtbar gesegnet,
der aus dem Himmel
mit Strömen der Liebe geregnet.
Denke daran,
was der Allmächtige kann,
der dir mit Liebe begegnet.

Lobe den Herren,
was in mir ist, lobe den Namen.
Alles, was Odem hat,
lobe mit Abrahams Samen.
Er ist dein Licht,
Seele, vergiss es ja nicht.
Lobende, schließe mit Amen!

Her is the Bach’s version at Erfurt.


Joachim Neander

Joachim Neander (1650-1680)was the grandson of a musician and son of a teacher. He studied theology at Bremen University from 1666 to 1670. His family name was Neumann (“new man”), but, as was popular at the time, his grandfather (also a preacher, and also named Joachim!), changed it to a foreign equivalent, in this case Greek. In 1671, Neander moved his studies to Heidelberg (locale of The Student Prince musical). In 1673, he moved to Frankfurt, where he met Pietistic scholars Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705) and Johann Schütz (1640-1690).

Düssel River

From 1674 to 1679, Joachim Neander was principal of the Reformed Lateinschule (grammar school) in Düsseldorf. During these years, he used to wander the secluded Düssel River valley, which was, until the 19th Century, a deep ravine between rock fac­es and forests, with numerous caves, grottos and waterfalls.  In the early 19th Century, a large cave was named Neanderhöhle after him. In the mid-19th Century, the cement industry started to quarry the limestone, and the narrow ravine became a wide valley, which was now named the Neander Valley (in German, Neanderthal). The “Neanderthal Man” was found there in the summer of 1856, giving Joachim the distinction of being the only hymnist with a fossil hominid (or any fossil) named after him.

My Ancestor

In 1679, Joachim Neander moved to Bremen and worked as assistant preacher at St. Martini church. The next year he became seriously ill and died, presumably of the plague.

The anonymous tune LOBE DEN HERRN appeared in the 1665 edition of Praxis pietatis melica (Practice of Piety in Song). a Protestant hymnal first published in the 17th century by Johann Crüger. The hymnal, which appeared under this title from 1647 to 1737 in 45 editions, has been described as “the most successful and widely-known Lutheran hymnal of the 17th century”

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Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877) recast George Herbert’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 into this hymn, The King of love my shepherd is (#345, First tune). Baker gives Psalm 23 an explicit Christological and sacramental cast. “The streams of living water” flow from Jesus’ pierced side. He ransoms our soul from the captivity of sin, and feeds with food celestial, “the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die” On our own we never keep to the righteous paths. That is why Jesus comes in love to us, sinners as we are. In his persistent and tender mercy Jesus seeks us, when, “perverse and foolish,” we stray from Him. The wood of the shepherd’s staff is the wood of the cross that guides the strayed soul. Delights flow from Jesus’ pure chalice. The “wine that gladdens the heart” is the Eucharist, the blood of Christ; His is the chalice that overbrims with love. In the Old Testament, our ancestors in faith longed to dwell in the “house of the Lord,” before the revelation of eternal life was clear. But now Christ fulfills that mysterious longing. He is the Good Shepherd, who “giveth his life for the sheep,” the ultimate gift, eternal life with Him. (Thanks to Tony Esolen)

Here is a Reformed analysis of the hymn:

“We note immediately that the usual way of naming God (“the Lord”) has been replaced with a nonbiblical yet immediately comprehensible allegorical title, “the King of Love.”  This unfamiliar opening and the inversion in the first line (“my shepherd is”) prepare the singer for a text that is intentionally—even self-consciously—allusive and aesthetic. This perception of the text is reinforced by the archaic verb forms (“leadeth,” “feedeth”) and the Latinate diction (“verdant,” “celestial”) in the second stanza. The third stanza intensifies the Christological overtones of this paraphrase with allusions not only to the Good Shepherd passage noted earlier but also to Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4-7; cf. Matthew 18:12-14). The fourth stanza follows the biblical shift from third person to second person, but adds to the images of the shepherd’s rod and staff the suggestion of a processional cross familiar to many nineteen-century Anglican congregations. There is a similar churchy slant in the fifth stanza, where the psalter’s “oil” takes on sacramental tones by being called “unction,” and the usual English translation “cup” becomes a comparably Latinate and ecclesiastical “chalice.” As a result, the reference to God’s “house” in the final line of the sixth stanza does not suggest the Temple in Jerusalem so much as it does the church building in which the hymn is being sung.” (ReformedWorship.org)

I doubt that in the last line “Thy house” is simply the church building; heaven is clearly meant and specified by the “forever.” Anglocatholic services are long, but not that long.

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.

2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

4 In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Here is the Cardiff Festival Choir singing the hymn. Here is John Rutter’s lovely arrangement with harp accompaniment.

Henry Williams Baker

Sir Henry Williams Baker was the eldest son of Admiral Sir Henry Loraine Baker. Henry was born in London, May 27, 1821, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated, B.A. 1844, M.A. 1847. Taking Holy Orders in 1844, he became, in 1851, Vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire. This benefice he held to his death, on Monday, Feb. 12, 1877. He succeeded to the Baronetcy in 1851. His hymns, including metrical litanies and translations, number in the revised edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, 33 in all.. The last audible words which lingered on his dying lips were the third stanza of his rendering of the 23rd Psalm, “The King of Love, my Shepherd is:”—

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

This tender sadness, brightened by a soft calm peace, was an epitome of his poetical life.

The tune is ST COLUMBA. Because the compilers of the 1906 English Hymnal were denied permission to use Dykes’s original tune, musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) turned to a folk tune that his former teacher Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had recently edited for a collection of Irish music (A Complete Collection of Irish Music as noted by George Petri (London, 1902-1905); ST. COLUMBA is no. 1043). The two most notable improvements Vaughan Williams made in the hymn tune known as ST. COLUMBA were the lengthening of the second and fourth lines to extend the Common Meter tune to 8787 in order to accommodate Baker’s text—this being their first appearance together—and the use of a triplet (rather than an eighth and two sixteenths) in the sixth measure. (ReformedWorship.org).

The words of this hymn are often subjected to “modernization,” a process that frequently obscures the meaning the poet intended. For example, a 1994 Lutheran hymnal   changes

Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

to

You spread a table in my sight,
A banquet here bestowing;
Your oil of welcome, my delight;
My cup is overflowing!

The clear allusion to the Eucharistic chalice has been almost completely obscuresd and the deep emotion of “transports of delight” toned down and transferred to oil, which might be a reference to the oil used at baptism, if Lutherans use, it, but it is very obscure.

On a personal note, I have used the hymn at the funeral masses I have arranged for member of my family: my mother, my nephew, my sister. I think the hymn combines the sweetness, sadness, and tender trust that we feel when a fellow Christian leaves this life to enter into the presence of the Lord.

We mourn, not as those who have no hope, but we do and should mourn.

When I was walking the Camino de Santiago in 2010, I passed through a pastoral landscape in which shepherds with their staffs were leading flocks of sheep. I sang this hymn, with especial stress on the stanza,

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

On the Camino I had the strong feeling that I was on my way Home; if I could not walk, I would be carried.

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Praise my soul the King of heaven (#282) by the Anglican clergyman Henry Francis Lyte (1793—1847) is, like the first hymn, a paraphrase of Psalm 103.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the pressure was on hymn writers to keep their versifications of psalms as close to the Scriptural text as possible. Henry F. Lyte would have none of this, and boldly published a book of psalm paraphrases entitled Spirit of the Psalms. Lyte decided he could maintain the spirit of the psalms while still using his own words, probably with the intention of making the reader see the psalms in a new light. Lyte’s text speaks to the love of God and our dependence on Him in a clear and imaginative way.

1 Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
to his feet your tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
evermore his praises sing.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King!
2 Praise him for his grace and favor
to his people in distress.
Praise him, still the same as ever,
slow to chide, and swift to bless.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Glorious in his faithfulness!
3 Fatherlike he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows.
In his hand he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Widely yet his mercy flows!
4 Angels, help us to adore him;
ye behold him face to face.
Sun and moon, bow down before him,
dwellers all in time and space.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace!

Henry Francis Lyte

Henry Francis Lyte (also the author of Abide with me) was the second son of Thomas and Anna Maria (née Oliver) Lyte. He was born at Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland. Lyte’s father was described as a “ne-er do-well … more interested in fishing and shooting than in facing up to his family responsibilities”. He deserted the family shortly after making arrangements for his two oldest sons to attend Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh; and Anna moved to London, where both she and her youngest son died.

The headmaster at Portora, Dr. Robert Burrowes, recognised Henry Lyte’s ability, paid the boy’s fees, and “welcomed him into his own family during the holidays.” Lyte was effectively an adopted son.

After studying at Trinity College, Dublin and with very limited training for the ministry, Lyte took Anglican holy orders in 1815, and for some time he held a curacy in Taghmon near Wexford. Lyte’s “sense of vocation was vague at this early stage. Perhaps he felt an indefinable desire to do something good in life.” However, in about 1816, Lyte experienced an evangelical conversion. In attendance on a dying priest, the latter convinced Lyte that both had earlier been mistaken in not having taken the Epistles of St. Paul “in their plain and literal sense.” Lyte began to study the Bible “and preach in another manner,” following the example of four or five local clergymen whom he had previously laughed at and considered “enthusiastic rhapsodists.”

In 1817 Lyte became a curate in Marazion, Cornwall, and there met and married Anne Maxwell, daughter of a well-known Scottish-Irish family. She was 31, seven years older than her husband and a “keen Methodist.” Furthermore, she “could not match her husband’s good looks and personal charm.” Nevertheless, the marriage was happy and successful. Ann eventually made Lyte’s situation more comfortable by contributing her family fortune, and she was an excellent manager of the house and finances. They had two daughters and three sons, one of whom was the chemist and photographer Farnham Maxwell-Lyte. A grandson was the well known historian Sir Henry Churchill Maxwell-Lyte.

From 1820 to 1822 the Lytes lived in Sway, Hampshire. Itself only five miles from the sea, the house in Sway was the only one the couple shared during their marriage that was neither on a river or by the sea. At Sway Lyte lost a month-old daughter and wrote his first book, later published as Tales In Verse Illustrative of the Several Petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (1826).  In 1822 the Lytes moved to Dittisham, Devon, on the River Dart and then, after Lyte had regained some measure of health, to the small parish of Charleton.

About April 1824, Lyte left Charleton for Lower Brixham, a Devon fishing village. Almost immediately, Lyte joined the schools committee, and two months later he became its chairman. Also in 1824, Lyte established the first Sunday school in the Torbay area and created a Sailors’ Sunday School. Although religious instruction was given there, the primary object of both was educating children and seamen for whom other schooling was virtually impossible. Each year Lyte organised an Annual Treat for the 800-1000 Sunday school children, which included a short religious service followed by tea and sports in the field.

Shortly after Lyte’s arrival in Brixham, the minister attracted such large crowds that the church had to be enlarged—the resulting structure later described by his grandson as “a hideous barn-like building.” Lyte added to his clerical income by taking resident pupils into his home, including the blind brother of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, later British prime minister. About 1830, Lyte made excavations at nearby Ash Hole Cavern, where he discovered pottery and human remains.

Lyte was a tall and “unusually handsome” man, “slightly eccentric but of great personal charm, a man noted for his wit and human understanding, a born poet and an able scholar.” He was an expert flute player and according to his great-grandson always had his flute with him.  Lyte spoke Latin, Greek, and French; enjoyed discussing literature; and was knowledgeable about wild flowers. At Berry Head House, a former military hospital at Berry Head, Lyte built a magnificent library —largely of theology and old English poetry—described in his obituary as “one of the most extensive and valuable in the West of England.”

Nevertheless, Lyte was also able to identify with his parish of fishermen, visiting them at their homes and on board their ships in harbour, supplying every vessel with a Bible, and compiling songs and a manual of devotions for use at sea. In theology Lyte was a conservative evangelical who believed that man’s nature was totally corrupt. Lyte frequently rose at 6 AM and prayed for two or more hours before breakfast.

In politics, Lyte was a Conservative who feared revolt among the irreligious poor. He publicly opposed Catholic Emancipation by speaking against it in several Devon towns, stating that he preferred Catholics to be “emancipated from priests and from the power of the factious and turbulent demagogues of Ireland.” Lyte, a friend of Samuel Wilberforce, also opposed slavery, organising an 1833 petition to Parliament requesting it be abolished in Great Britain.

In poor health throughout his life, Lyte suffered various respiratory illnesses and often visited continental Europe in attempts to check their progress. In 1835 Lyte sought appointment as the vicar of Crediton but was rejected because of his increasingly debilitating asthma and bronchitis. In 1839, when only 46, Lyte wrote a poem entitled “Declining Days.” Lyte also grew discouraged when numbers of his congregation (including in 1846, nearly his entire choir) left him for Dissenter congregations, especially the Plymouth Brethren, after Lyte expressed High Church sympathies and leaned towards the Oxford Movement.

By the 1840s, Lyte was spending much of his time in the warmer climates of France and Italy, making written suggestions about the conduct of his family’s financial affairs after his death. When his daughter was married to his senior curate, Lyte did not perform the ceremony. Lyte complained of weakness and incessant coughing spasms, and he mentions medical treatments of blistering, bleeding, calomel, tartar emetic, and “large doses” of Prussic acid. Yet his friends found him buoyant, cheerful, and keenly interested in affairs of the Europe around him. Lyte spent the summer of 1847 at Berry Head then, after one final sermon to his congregation on the subject of the Holy Communion, he left again for Italy. He died on 20 November 1847 at Nice, at that time in the Kingdom of Sardinia, where he was buried.

 

John Goss  composed LAUDA ANIMA (Latin for the opening words of Psalm 103) for this text in 1868. Along with his original harmonizations, intended to interpret the different stanzas, the tune was also included in the appendix to Robert Brown¬ Borthwick’s Supplemental Hymn and Tune Book (1869). LAUDA ANIMA is one of the finest tunes that arose out of the Victorian era. A reviewer in The Musical Times, June 1869, said, “It is at once the most beautiful and dignified hymn tune which has lately come under our notice.”

John Goss

Sir John Goss (27 December 1800 – 10 May 1880) was an English organist, composer and teacher.

Born to a musical family, Goss was a boy chorister of the Chapel Royal, London. The master of the choir at that time was John Stafford Smith, a musician known for composing the song To Anacreon in Heaven, later used as the tune of the American national anthem. As an educator, Smith combined a harsh discipline with a narrow musical curriculum. He confiscated Goss’s score of Handel’s organ concertos on the grounds that choristers of the Chapel Royal were there to learn to sing and not to play.

Goss was later a pupil of Thomas Attwood, organist of St Paul’s Cathedral. After a brief period as a chorus member in an opera company he was appointed organist of a chapel in south London, later moving to more prestigious organ posts at St Luke’s Church, Chelsea and finally St Paul’s Cathedral, where he struggled to improve musical standards.

Attwood died in 1838, and Goss hoped to succeed him as organist of St Paul’s. He sought the advice of the Rev Sydney Smith, canon of St Paul’s, who teased him by telling him that the salary was only £34 a year. Having a family to support, Goss replied that he might not be able to apply for the post, but Smith then revealed that the post of organist carried with it several additional sources of income, which enabled Goss to reconsider. He was appointed to the post, but immediately found that the organist was employed solely to play the organ, and enjoyed little influence over the other music of the cathedral. Control of the music lay with the Succentor, Canon Beckwith, who was at odds with the Almoner, Canon Hawes, who was responsible for rehearsing the boy choristers. The cathedral authorities were not interested in raising musical standards. Sydney Smith’s view was typical: “It is enough if our music is decent … we are there to pray, and the singing is a very subordinate consideration.” Some of Smith’s colleagues were indifferent to both considerations, there being frequent absenteeism by the junior clergy, neglecting their duties and failing to conduct services.

Goss was noted for his piety and gentleness of character. His pupil, John Stainer, wrote, “That Goss was a man of religious life was patent to all who came into contact with him, but an appeal to the general effect of his sacred compositions offers public proof of the fact.” His mildness was a disadvantage when attempting to deal with his recalcitrant singers. He was unable to do anything about the laziness of the tenors and basses, who had lifetime security of tenure and were uninterested in learning new music.[10] The biographer Jeremy Dibble writes, “Hostility to [Goss’s] fine anthem ‘Blessed is the man’, composed in 1842, undermined his confidence so markedly that he did not compose any further anthems until 1852, when he was commissioned to write two anthems for the state funeral of the Duke of Wellington”.

Stainer who was a boy chorister at the time of Wellington’s funeral later recalled the effect of Goss’s music at rehearsal: “When the last few bars pianissimo had died away, there was a profound silence for some time, so deeply had the hearts of all been touched by its truly devotional spirit. Then there gradually arose on all sides the warmest congratulation to the composer, it could hardly be termed applause, for it was something much more genuine and respectful.” Stainer was not always so reverential about his teacher. He later recalled the occasion on which he and the young Arthur Sullivan succumbed to laughter when Goss absent-mindedly walked across the pedals of the organ during a service “before he realised that he was the cause of the alarming thunderings which were frightening the congregation and putting a temporary pause in the sermon.”

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ANTHEMS

Lay me low, Kevin Siegfried

Lay me low, lay me low. Where the Lord can find me, Where the Lord can own me, Where the Lord can bless me.

This Shaker Song was written ca. 1838 by Addah Z. Potter in the Shaker community at New Lebanon, NY. Lay me Low is Kevin Siegfried’s arrangement, from his Shaker Songs. 

Here is a performance at the University of Missouri. Here is his lovely arrangement of the familiar Love is Little.

Kevin Siegfried

Acclaimed as writing music of “austere beauty” that exhibits the “pressure and presence of personal conviction,” Kevin Siegfried (b. 1969) is in demand as a composer of distinctive and engaging musical works. His music was recently described as “hypnotic and beautifully written” by The Boston Musical Intelligencer, and is known for its direct expression, lyricism, and accessibility.

Siegfried is actively involved in the research and performance of early American music and his arrangements of Shaker music have been performed and recorded by choirs across the globe. The Tudor Choir’s “Gentle Words” CD, the premiere recording of Siegfried’s Shaker arrangements, received wide acclaim and was praised as “a stunning addition to the repertoire” by Fanfare Magazine.

Siegfried teaches at The Boston Conservatory, where he is Coordinator of Theory and New Works in the Theater Division, and directs the Songwriting Workshop, a training ground for budding songwriters in a variety of styles. Siegfried graduated from The New England Conservatory with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. He studied additionally in Paris, through the European American Musical Alliance, and in India, having received a Stanley Fellowship to study South Indian classical music with performing artist Sriram Parasuram. His previous teaching experience includes Harvard University, The New England Conservatory, The University of Iowa, and The Northwest School in Seattle.

O Lord, give Thy Holy Spirit, Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)

O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, and lighten our understanding, that we may dwell in the fear of thy Name, all the days of our life, that we may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Here is a Spanish group.

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Postlude

Kleines Harmonisches Labyrinth, J. S. Bach (?)

This composition is still listed in many works lists — old ones, albeit — as the doing of J.S. Bach. Almost all musicologists today, however, recognize it as at least of spurious provenance, and the majority of them assign the work to composer and Bach contemporary Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729), a man well-known in his lifetime but who faded to total obscurity until his rediscovery in the 1990s by conductor and musicologist Reinhard Goebel. The work was probably originally attributed to Bach because it contains the musical representation of his name (B flat, A, C, B natural) near the end of the piece, a motif that appears in some Bach pieces. Other composers also used it to pay homage to Bach.

The title of the work in English is usually translated as “Little harmonic labyrinth.” Lasting three minutes or so, the piece is in three sections: Introitus, Centrum, and Exitus, tempo Andante. It opens with a dramatic trill, then, while initially retaining the propulsive trill in the background, gradually moves from a festive mood to a hymn-like solemnity. The Centrum section is livelier and features interesting contrapuntal activity. The final section, the Exitus, makes up about half the length of the work. It initially harkens back to the Introitus in mood, but builds to a resoundingly triumphant ending, with sonorities moving higher and higher on the registers, as if reaching to the heavens.

Here is a view which sees it as Bach’s:

The Kleines harmonisches Labyrinth (BWV 591) by Johann Sebastian Bach has 3 parts: Introïtus – Centrum – Exitus. Analysis of the form and the harmony of the composition can lead to a view of the first 13 measures of the composition as the labyrinth. In the short polyphonic section which succeeds it the wanderer might be represented by the (descending) minor second. The passage work, alternating with chords, represents the walk through the labyrinth, in which the wanderer arrives at the Centrum. In the meditative Centrum movement the minor second (metaphor for the wanderer) is used both rising and falling, and chords with many accidentals are eschewed since these chords symbolize the hedges of the labyrinth. The Exitus proceeds more quietly than the Introïtus.

With his labyrinth composition Bach joined the discussion on the significance of the relationship mi-fa (minor second). BWV 591 should perhaps be viewed theologically against the background of an old sacred tradition in which the labyrinth is a metaphor for the soul in its arduous life’s journey (cf. also the mi-fa interval). Bach has as it were equated in his composition the arcanum Divinum (=divine mystery) of ‘fa-mi et mi-fa est tota Musica’ [fa-mi & mi-fa is all of Music] and the arcanum Divinum of the grace of God’s Word.

 

Here is Peter Hurford at the organ.

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Purgatory and the Judgment

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In the All Saints Tide edition of the Mount Calvary Magazine in 1935, the rector reflected upon purgatory:

“People do not go to heaven when they die. Heaven is a special sphere of which the chief characteristic is the unveiled presence of God and only those souls who have been entirely cleansed from all stain of sin and so developed in spiritual capacity that they can bear the sight of God.”

“The mere physical fact of death does not change does not change a sinner into a saint. We die sinners and death is a door to a better life where temptation is removed and the ravages of sin are healed. When that work of purgation—cleansing—is completed, then the sinner has become a saint.”

Of our beloved dead:

“what does death do to them? It brings them before their Judge and they see themselves as He sees them; they feel their sins as never before and penitence takes full instead of partial possession of them; they claim no merits but claim only to the redeeming love of their Saviour. They want us who are left here to pray for them, especially to share in offering the Holy Sacrifice which continues to all souls the power of the Cross.”

It is a braider topic, but in the later Middles Ages Christians began to have a Cartesian sense of time and space, possibly because of the ubiquity of clocks and the recovery of perspective. They lost the awareness that both time and space will be (are) transfigured in the New Creation, and that the One Sacrifice of Calvary in 33 AD can also be present on the altar, and the Lamb standing as one slain in heaven is also present on the altar.

Judgment has two meanings: a person has good judgment if he sees things clearly and accurately and acts appropriately; but judgment also means a punishment.

The motto of the Dominicans is Veritas, Truth, and truth is the correspondence of the mind with reality. God sees everything accurately; we do not; in fact we engage in infinite self-deception.

At our judgment, God shows us the truth of our life: that we are not the persons he had planned for us to be, and they wee have really messed up (I’d like to use a stronger verb) our lives. But the blood of Jesus, if we accept it, washes all this away and restores the divine image in us.

We see everything that God has done for us, and how ungrateful we have been. That burning shame is the fire of purgatory.

Is it a punishment? Well, yes, but not an arbitrary one. It is intrinsic to our repentance and purgation.

He wrote of those who have prayed for the dead and themselves have died with no family or friends to pray for them:

“it grieves us to realize that some of those who in other years have been most loving in asking such prayers have gone to join those for whom they have prayed, leaving no one behind to go on remembering the family.”

Let s pray for all the members of Mount Calvary who have died, especially those who have been forgotten and have no one to pray for them.

As the prayer of Fatima in the rosary says “O my Jesus, save us from hell; lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.”

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Mount Calvary Music October 29 2017

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The Two Great Commandments

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XX

Hymns

Come, Thou almighty King

Draw near and take the Body of the Lord

O God, our help in ages past

Anthems

A new commandment, Thomas Tallis

Ubi caritas, Maurice Duruflé

Common

 Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

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Hymns

Come, Thou Almighty King is by an unknown author and predates 1757. Similarities between “Come, Thou Almighty King” and the British national anthem “God Save the King” suggest that the hymn was written as a parody to that national anthem. There is a story that, during the American Revolution, some British soldiers surprised an American congregation on Long Island and ordered them to sing “God Save the King.” The Americans responded by singing the correct tune, but the words of “Come, Thou Almighty King.”

In his first letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul warns him that the Christian life is a constant war against evil. He commands Timothy to “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). A few verses later, Paul describes the one for whose sake we fight: “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen” (1 Timothy 6:15-16). In this hymn, we praise God as our King and Ruler, addressing each Person of the Trinity in turn, and end with a request that “His Sovereign majesty / May we in glory see.”

1 Come, Thou Almighty King,
help us Thy name to sing,
help us to praise:
Father, all glorious,
o’er all victorious,
come and reign over us,
Ancient of Days.
2 Come, Thou Incarnate Word,
gird on Thy mighty sword,
our pray’r attend;
Come, and Thy people bless,
and give Thy Word success:
Spirit of holiness,
on us descend.
3 Come, Holy Comforter,
Thy sacred witness bear
in this glad hour:
Thou who almighty art,
now rule in ev’ry heart,
and ne’er from us depart,
Spirit of pow’r.
4 To the great One in Three,
eternal praises be
hence evermore.
His sov’reign majesty
may we in glory see,
and to eternity
love and adore.

The tune MOSCOW was composed by Felice Giardini, who born in Turin. When it became clear that he was a child prodigy, his father sent him to Milan. There he studied singing, harpsichord and violin but it was on the latter that he became a famous virtuoso. By the age of 12, he was already playing in theater orchestras. In a famous incident about this time, Giardini, who was serving as assistant concertmaster (i.e. leader of the orchestra) during an opera, played a solo passage for violin which the composer Niccolò Jommelli had written. He decided to show off his skills and improvised several bravura variations which Jommelli had not written. Although the audience applauded loudly, Jommelli, who happened to be there, was not pleased and suddenly stood up and slapped the young man in the face. Giardini, years later, remarked, “it was the most instructive lesson I ever received from a great artist.”


During the 1750s, Giardini toured Europe as a violinist, scoring successes in Paris, Berlin, and especially in England, where he eventually settled. For many years, he served as the orchestra leader and director of the Italian Opera in London and gave solo concerts under the auspices of J. C. Bach with whom he was a close friend. He directed the orchestra at the London Pantheon. From the mid-1750s to the end of the 1760s, he was widely regarded as the greatest musical performing artist before the public. His identity with the Signor Giardini, who in 1774 sought with Dr Charles Burney to form a public music school associated with the Foundling Hospital is uncertain. In 1784, he returned to Naples to run a theater, but encountered financial setbacks. In 1793, he returned to England to try his luck. But times had changed, and he was no longer remembered. He then went to Russia, but again had little luck, dying in Moscow in 1796.

Giardini was a prolific composer, writing for virtually every genre which then existed. His two main areas, however, were opera and chamber music. Virtually all of his music is out of print with the exception of a few songs and works of chamber music. As a string player, he knew how to make string instruments sound their best. His chamber music combines the so-called Style Galant with the mid-18th-century classicism of J.C. Bach, the Stamitzes and the Mannheim school. In the Style Galant, the writing emphasizes the soloistic qualities of the instruments, rather than integrated part-writing, to create a whole. Giardini, although he did write string quartets and quartets for other instruments — a new and evolving form at the time — concentrated on writing trios, primarily those for violin, viola and cello, of which he wrote at least 18.

Giardini is known among Protestant churches for his “Italian Hymn” or “Moscow”, which often accompanies the text to the hymn “Come, Thou Almighty King” and also John Marriott’s hymn “Thou whose almighty word”.

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Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord is a translation by the Anglican clergyman John Mason Neale (1818—1866) of the seventh-century Latin hymn Sancti venite, corpus Christi sumite. From a devout Evangelical family, Neale attended Cambridge, which like Oxford was influenced by the revival of Catholicism.

The hymn begins with the New Testament understanding of Psalm 34:8: “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” The only way to “taste and see that the LORD is good” is to “draw near and take the body of the Lord.” Jesus gives us His body and blood to taste God’s goodness. In God’s goodness, He rules and shields His saints. He gives everlasting life with heavenly bread and living water.

1 Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord,
And drink the holy Blood for you outpoured.

2 Saved by that Body and that holy Blood,
With souls refreshed, we render thanks to God.

3 Salvation’s giver, Christ, the only Son,
By His dear cross and Blood the victory won.

4 Offered was He for greatest and for least
Himself the Victim, and Himself the Priest.

5 Victims were offered by the law of old,
That in a type celestial mysteries told.

6 He, Ransomer from death, and Light from shade
Now gives His holy grace, His saints to aid.

7 Approach ye then with faithful hearts sincere,
And take the safeguard of salvation here.

8 He, that His saints in this world rules and shields,
To all believers life eternal yields;

9 With heavenly bread makes them that hunger whole,
Gives living waters to the thirsting soul.

10 Alpha and Omega, to Whom shall bow
All nations at the doom, is with us now.

Here is the Latin hymn:

Sancti venite, Christi corpus sumite,
Sanctum bibentes, quo redempti sanguinem.

Salvati Christi corpore et sanguine,
A quo refecti laudes dicamus Deo.

Hoc sacramento corporis et sanguinis
Omnes exuti ab inferni faucibus.

Dator salutis, Christus filius Dei,
Mundum salvavit per crucem et sanguinem.

Pro universis immolatus Dominus
Ipse sacerdos exstitit et hostia.

Lege praeceptum immolari hostias,
Qua adumbrantur divina mysteria.

Lucis indultor et salvator omnium
Praeclaram sanctis largitus est gratiam.

Accedant omnes pura mente creduli,
Sumant aeterman salutis custodiam.

Sanctorum custos, rector quoque,
Dominus, Vitae perennis largitor credentibus.

Caelestem panem dat esurien- tibus,
De fonte vivo praebet sitientibus.

Alpha et omega ipse Christus Dominus

Venit, venturus iudicare homines

“Sancti venite” was composed at Bangor Abbey in the 7th century AD, making it the oldest known Eucharistic hymn. It was carried to Bobbio Abbey and was first published by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in his Anecdota Latina ex Ambrosianæ Bibliothecæ codicibus (1697–98), when he discovered it in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. According to a legend recorded in An Leabhar Breac, the hymn was first sung by angels at St. Seachnall’s Church, Dunshaughlin, after Secundinus had reconciled with his uncle Saint Patrick.

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O God, our help in ages past. Considered one of the finest paraphrases written by Isaac Watt (1674—1748), the hymn expresses a strong note of assurance, promise, and hope in the LORD as recorded in the first part of Psalm 90. It contrasts the ephemeral quality of human life with the unshakeable eternity of God.

Watts is often called the “Father of English hymnody”—that is, hymns on a wider range of topics rather than metrical versions of the psalms in the English language. Before him, congregational song focused almost exclusively on singing strict metrical versions of the psalms.

1 Our God, our Help in ages past,
our Hope for years to come,
our Shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal Home.
2 Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is Thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.
3 Before the hills in order stood
or earth received its frame,
from everlasting Thou art God,
to endless years the same.
4 A thousand ages in Thy sight
are like an ev’ning gone,
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun.
5 Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the op’ning day.
6 Our God, our Help in ages past,
our Hope for years to come,
be Thou our Guide while life shall last,
and our eternal Home!

Here is the hymn at Westminster Abbey.

The hymn tune “St. Anne” was composed by William Croft in 1708 while he was the organist of the church of St. Anne, Soho. J. S. Bach’s Fugue in E-flat major BWV 552 is often called the “St. Anne” because of the similarity of its subject to the first line of the hymn tune, though there is some debate as to whether Bach used the actual tune after hearing it, or coincidentally created the very similar tune used as the fugal theme.

Here is Bach’s fugue.

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Anthems

A new commandment, Thomas Tallis

A new commandment give I unto you, saith the Lord, that ye love together, as I have loved you, that even so ye love one another. By this shall every man know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Here are three voices.

Little is known about Thomas Tallis’s early life, but there seems to be agreement that he was born in the early 16th century, toward the close of the reign of Henry VII. Little is also known about Tallis’s childhood and his significance with music at that age. However, there are suggestions that he was a Child (boy chorister) of the Chapel Royal, St. James’ Palace, the same singing establishment which he later joined as a Gentleman. His first known musical appointment was in 1532, as organist of Dover Priory (now Dover College), a Benedictine priory in Kent. His career took him to London, then (probably in the autumn of 1538) to Waltham Abbey, a large Augustinian monastery in Essex which was dissolved in 1540. Tallis was paid off and also acquired a volume and preserved it; one of the treatises in it, by Leonel Power, prohibits consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves.

Tallis’s next post was at Canterbury Cathedral. He was next sent to Court as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1543 (which later became a Protestant establishment), where he composed and performed for Henry VIII,[9] Edward VI (1547–1553), Queen Mary (1553–1558), and Queen Elizabeth I (1558 until Tallis died in 1585). Throughout his service to successive monarchs as organist and composer, Tallis avoided the religious controversies that raged around him, though, like William Byrd, he stayed an “unreformed Roman Catholic.” Tallis was capable of switching the style of his compositions to suit the different monarchs’ vastly different demands. Among other important composers of the time, including Christopher Tye and Robert White, Tallis stood out. Walker observes, “He had more versatility of style than either, and his general handling of his material was more consistently easy and certain.” Tallis was also a teacher, not only of William Byrd, but also of Elway Bevin, an organist of Bristol Cathedral, and Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

Tallis married around 1552; his wife, Joan, outlived him by four years. They apparently had no children. Late in his life he lived in Greenwich, possibly close to the royal palace: a local tradition holds that he lived on Stockwell Street.

Queen Mary granted Tallis a lease on a manor in Kent that provided a comfortable annual income. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth granted to him and William Byrd a 21-year monopoly for polyphonic music and a patent to print and publish music, which was one of the first arrangements of that type in the country. Tallis’s monopoly covered ‘set songe or songes in parts’, and he composed in English, Latin, French, Italian, or other tongues as long as they served for music in the Church or chamber. Tallis had exclusive rights to print any music, in any language. He and William Byrd were the only ones allowed to use the paper that was used in printing music. Tallis and Byrd used their monopoly to produce Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur in 1575, but the collection did not sell well and they appealed to Queen Elizabeth for her support. People were naturally wary of their new publications, and it certainly did not help their case that they were both avowed Roman Catholics. Not only that, they were strictly forbidden to sell any imported music. “We straightly by the same forbid…to be brought out of any forren Realmes…any songe or songes made and printed in any foreen countrie.” Also, Byrd and Tallis were not given “the rights to music type fonts, printing patents were not under their command, and they didn’t actually own a printing press.”

Tallis retained respect during a succession of opposing religious movements and deflected the violence that claimed Catholics and Protestants alike. He died peacefully in his house in Greenwich in November 1585.

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Ubi caritas, Maurice  Duruflé

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. Exultemus, et in ipso iucundemur. Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum. Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.

Where charity and love are, God is there. Christ’s love has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him. Let us fear, and let us love the living God. And may we love each other with a sincere heart.

Here is the King’s College Choir, Cambridge.

Maurice Duruflé’s choral setting makes use of the Gregorian melody, using only the words of the refrain and the first stanza.

Ubi caritas is a hymn of the Western Church, long used as one of the antiphons for the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday. The Gregorian melody was composed sometime between the fourth and tenth centuries, though some scholars believe the text dates from early Christian gatherings before the formalization of the Mass. It is usually sung at Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and on Holy Thursday evening at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultemus, et in ipso jucundemur.
Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Simul ergo cum in unum congregamur:
Ne nos mente dividamur, caveamus.
Cessent iurgia maligna, cessent lites.
Et in medio nostri sit Christus Deus.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Simul quoque cum beatis videamus,
Glorianter vultum tuum, Christe Deus:
Gaudium quod est immensum, atque probum,
Saecula per infinita saeculorum. Amen.

Maurice Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School from 1912 to 1918, where he studied piano and organ with Jules Haelling, a pupil of Alexandre Guilmant. The choral plainsong tradition at Rouen became a strong and lasting influence. At age 17, upon moving to Paris, he took private organ lessons with Charles Tournemire, whom he assisted at Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris until 1927. In 1920 Duruflé entered the Conservatoire de Paris, eventually graduating with first prizes in organ with Eugène Gigout (1922), harmony with Jean Gallon (1924), fugue with Georges Caussade (1924), piano accompaniment with César Abel Estyle (1926) and composition with Paul Dukas (1928).

In 1927, Louis Vierne nominated him as his assistant at Notre-Dame. Duruflé and Vierne remained lifelong friends, and Duruflé was at Vierne’s side acting as assistant when Vierne died at the console of the Notre-Dame organ on 2 June 1937, even though Duruflé had become titular organist of St-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris in 1929, a position he held for the rest of his life. In 1930 he won a prize for his “Prélude, adagio et choral varié sur le “Veni Creator”, and in 1936 he won the Prix Blumenthal. In 1939, he premiered Francis Poulenc’s Organ Concerto (the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G minor); he had advised Poulenc on the registrations of the organ part. In 1943 he became Professor of Harmony at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he worked until 1970; among his pupils were Pierre Cochereau, Jean Guillou and Marie-Claire Alain.

In 1947 he completed probably the most famous of his few pieces: the Requiem op. 9, for soloists, choir, organ, and orchestra. He had begun composing the work in 1941, following a commission from the Vichy regime. Also in 1947, Marie-Madeleine Chevalier became his assistant at St-Étienne-du-Mont. They married on 15 September 1953. (Duruflé’s first marriage to Lucette Bousquet, in 1932, ended in civil divorce in 1947 and was declared null by the Vatican on 23 June 1953.) The couple became a famous and popular organ duo, going on tour together several times throughout the sixties and early seventies.

He was made a Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur in 1954. He was promoted to an Officier de la Legion d’honneur in 1966.
Duruflé suffered severe injuries in a car accident on 29 May 1975, and as a result he gave up performing; indeed he was largely confined to his apartment, leaving the service at St-Étienne-du-Mont to his wife Marie-Madeleine (who was also injured in the accident). He died in Louveciennes (near Paris) in 1986, aged 84.

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The Ethics of Addiction

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Drug companies have been busy pushing opioids and doctors think that every pain should be treated with narcotics. When I fractured my foot, Urgent Care offered me Oxycontin. I said ibuprofen was sufficient.

In the nineteenth century patent medicines were  full of unadmitted ingredients, contributing to a massive problem with drug addiction.

Therefore, on that same Frederick News  page of June 1,1895, I noticed this ad, I was suspicious:

Sure enough, a quick Internet search revealed what was calming the babies so quickly: morphine.

 

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News From All Over

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In researching old newspapers for genealogical and historical purposes, my eye sometimes alights upon articles too good not to share. This one is from the Frederick News of June 1, 1895.

A comment diagnosed this condition:

Ichthyosis vulgaris is an inherited skin condition that occurs when your skin doesn’t shed its dead skin cells. This causes dry, dead skin cells to accumulate in patches on the surface of your skin. It’s also known as “fish scale disease” because the dead skin accumulates in a similar pattern to a fish’s scales.

The majority of cases are mild and confined to specific areas of the body. However, some cases are severe and cover large areas of the body, including the abdomen, back, arms, and legs.

 

 

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Mount Calvary Music : October 22, 2017

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Caesar’s Coin (1790),  Domingos Sequeira (1768-1837)

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XIX

Prelude

Fantasia in G, Johann Pachelbel

Hymns

When morning gilds the skies

Be thou my vision

Let us, with a gladsome mind

Anthems

Cantate Domino, Hans Leo Hassler (1564 -1612)

Laetentur coeli, William Byrd

Common: Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Postlude in G, op. 134, no. 6, Gustav Merkel (1827-1885)

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Prelude

Fantasia in G, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)

Johann Pachelbel (1653 – 1706) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak.

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When morning gilds the skies was translated by Edward Caswell (1814—1878). from an anonymous German text, “Beim frühen Morgenlicht,” thought to date from around 1800 (perhaps even the mid-1700s). The German text was first published in Sebastian Portner’s Katholisches Gesangbuch (1828). The words were reworked by Robert Seymour Bridges (1844—1930), England’s poet laureate (1913) and friend of Gerald Manley Hopkins, whose works he arranged to have published posthumously.

The images of the rising sun carry over to the second stanza as the “night becomes as day” and the “powers of darkness fear.” However, stanzas three and four switch from visual images of light to aural images “joyous with the sound” of praising Christ.

The hymn, like many hymns, was originally much longer. C. S, Lewis asked for better and shorter hymns, and most hymns in modern hymnals have at most five stanzas. Perhaps modern attention spans are shorter.

When morning gilds the skies my heart awaking cries:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Alike at work and prayer, to Jesus I repair:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

When you begin the day, O never fail to say,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
And at your work rejoice, to sing with heart and voice,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Whene’er the sweet church bell peals over hill and dell,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
O hark to what it sings, as joyously it rings,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

My tongue shall never tire of chanting with the choir,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
This song of sacred joy, it never seems to cloy,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Does sadness fill my mind? A solace here I find,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Or fades my earthly bliss? My comfort still is this,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

To God, the Word, on high, the host of angels cry,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Let mortals, too, upraise their voice in hymns of praise,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Be this at meals your grace, in every time and place;
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Be this, when day is past, of all your thoughts the last
May Jesus Christ be praised!

When mirth for music longs, this is my song of songs:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
When evening shadows fall, this rings my curfew call,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

When sleep her balm denies, my silent spirit sighs,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
When evil thoughts molest, with this I shield my breast,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

The night becomes as day when from the heart we say:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
The powers of darkness fear when this sweet chant they hear:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

No lovelier antiphon in all high Heav’n is known
Than, Jesus Christ be praised!
There to the eternal Word the eternal psalm is heard:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Let all the earth around ring joyous with the sound:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
In Heaven’s eternal bliss the loveliest strain is this:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Sing, suns and stars of space, sing, ye that see His face,
Sing, Jesus Christ be praised!
God’s whole creation o’er, for aye and evermore
Shall Jesus Christ be praised!

In Heav’n’s eternal bliss the loveliest strain is this,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Let earth, and sea and sky from depth to height reply,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Be this, while life is mine, my canticle divine:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Sing this eternal song through all the ages long:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Here is Coral Ridge. Here is First Plymouth in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Here is part of the German original:

Beim frühen Morgenlicht
Erwacht mein Herz und spricht,
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
So sing ich früh und spät,
Bei Arbeit und Gebet,
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Was tönst der schönste Klang
Der lieblichste Gesang?
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
In Gottes heiligem Haus
Sprech ich vor allem aus,
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Ihm, meinem höchster Gut,
Sing ich in Liebesglut,
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
Bei jeden Anbeginn
Ruf ich mit Herz und Sinn
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Im Himmel selbst erschallt,
Mit heiligem Gewalt!
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
Des Vaters ewigem Wort,
Ertönet ewig dort:
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Ihr Menschenkinder all
Singt laut im Jubelschall:
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
Ring um den Erdenkreis
Ertöne Gott zum Preis
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Singt Himmel, Erd und Meer,
Und alle Engel Heer:
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!
Es Schalle weit und breit,
In Zeit und Ewigkeit:
Gelobt sei Jesus Christ!

Here is the tune the German version uses.

Edward Caswell

Edward Caswall (15 July 1814 – 2 January 1878) was an Anglican clergyman and hymn writer who converted to Roman Catholicism.

He was born at Yateley, Hampshire on 15 July 1814, the son of Rev. R. C. Caswall, sometime Vicar of Yateley, Hampshire.

Caswall was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1836 with honours and later proceeded to Master of Arts. He was curate of Stratford-sub-Castle, near Salisbury, 1840–1847. In 1850, his wife having died the previous year, he joined the Oratory of St. Philip Neri under future Cardinal Newman, to whose influence his conversion to Roman Catholicism was due.

He wrote original poems that have survived mainly in Catholic hymnals due to a clear adherence to Catholic doctrine. Caswall is best known for his translations from the Roman Breviary and other Latin sources, which are marked by faithfulness to the original and purity of rhythm. They were published in Lyra Catholica, containing all the breviary and missal hymns (London, 1849); The Masque of Mary (1858); and A May Pageant and other poems (1865). Hymns and Poems (1873) are the three books combined, with many of the hymns rewritten or revised. Some of his translations are used in the Hymns Ancient and Modern. His widely used hymn texts and translations include “Alleluia! Alleluia! Let the Holy Anthem Rise”; “Come, Holy Ghost”; “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee”; “When Morning Gilds the Skies”; and “Ye Sons and Daughters of the Lord”.

He died at the Oratory, Edgbaston, near Birmingham on 2 January 1878 and was buried at Rednal, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. (Wiki)

Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was poet laureate of England from 1913 until his death. At Oxford he was a friend of Gerald Manley Hopkins and arranged for the publication of Hopkins’ poetry posthumously.

Bridges wrote and also translated historic hymns, and many of these were included in Songs of Syon (1904) and the later English Hymnal (1906). Several of Bridges’ hymns and translations are still in use today:

“Thee will I love, my God and King”
“Happy are they that love God”
“Rejoice, O land, in God thy might”
The Baptist Hymn Book, University Press, Oxford 1962
“Ah, Holy Jesus” (Johann Heermann, 1630)
“All my hope on God is founded” (Joachim Neander, c. 1680)
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (Martin Jahn, 1661)
“O Gladsome Light” (Phos Hilaron)
“O Sacred Head, sore wounded” (Paulus Gerhardt, 1656)
“O Splendour of God’s Glory Bright” (Ambrose, 4th century)
“When morning gilds the skies” (stanza 3; Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1744)

The tune LAUDES DOMINI was composed for this text by Joseph Barnby (1839—1896), English organist and composer. The rising melodic motif complements the rising sun that “gilds the skies” of the early morning. Within two phrases we soar an octave above our starting pitch—indeed our voices ascend with the rising sun about which we are singing. The melody ends on an unusually high note for hymns, proclaiming the text, “May Jesus Christ be praised!” These five words form a brief refrain that encapsulates the intent of the entire hymn.

Joseph Barnby

Sir Joseph Barnby (1838-1896) was a prominent English musician and composer in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although his output of published works was prolific, he is more highly regarded today for his influence on the Victorian musical scene.

He was born in York in 1838, the youngest of a family of fifteen children. His father, as well as running a boot and shoe making shop on Swinegate, played the church organ and passed on his musical skills to his family. Joseph became a chorister at York Minster at the age of seven, following in the footsteps of six of his brothers, and at the tender age of twelve was appointed assistant organist and choirmaster, also at the Minster.

When he was sixteen, he moved down to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music. Two years later, he entered a competition for the first Mendelssohn Scholarship, but was beaten into second place by the young Arthur Sullivan.

He was organist at several London churches including St Andrew’s on Wells Street and St Anne’s in Soho, and during this time composed an enormous number of church services, anthems and hymn tunes. In 1869 he formed his own choir (the first Barnby Choir!) which gave the London premiere of Bach’s St John Passion. Three years later, his choir amalgamated with Charles Gounod’s choir to form the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society, now the Royal Choral Society. As well as introducing London audiences to old masters such as Bach, he also invited contemporary composers to give the British premieres of their works, including Verdi with his Requiem and Dvorak with his Stabat Mater.

In 1875 he was appointed Precentor at Eton College, and stayed there 17 years. He left in 1892 to take up the post of Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, and was knighted in the same year. He died in 1896, and his funeral was held at St Paul’s Cathedral.

From a long list of his works, only a handful have stood the test of time – his part song setting of Longfellow’s poem Sweet and Low, the hymn tune O PERFECT LOVE set to the hymn of the same title, and another hymn tune LAUDES DOMINI set to When Morning Gilds the Skies.

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Be thou my vision. The Irish monk Eohaid Forgaill (530-598) was a Latin scholar and “King of the Poets.” He was said to have spent so much time studying that he went blind, and was give the name Dallán, “Little Blind One.”   He wrote the poem, “Rop tú mo Baile” (Be Thou my Vision) asking God to be his vision. But “vision” here means more than physical sight. The original Irish word “baile” mean “vision” or “rapture,” in the sense used by the Old Testament prophets. The language of this hymn is drawn from traditional Irish culture: it uses heroic imagery to describe God. This was characteristic of medieval Irish poetry, which cast God as the ‘chieftain’ or ‘High King’ (Ard Ri) who provided protection to his people or clan.

Be thou my vision14th C. Manuscript MG 3, National Library of Ireland

containing “Rob tu mo bhoile”

The Irish monk Eohaid Forgaill (530-598) was a Latin scholar and “King of the Poets.” He was said to have spent so much time studying that he went blind, and was give the name Dallán, “Little Blind One.”   He wrote the poem, “Rop tú mo Baile” (“Be Thou my Vision”) asking God to be his vision But “vision” here means more than physical sight. The original Irish word “baile” mean “vision” or “rapture,” in the sense used by the Old Testament prophets.

This was translated into literal prose by Irish scholar Mary Byrne (1880-1931), a Dublin native, and then published in Eriú, the journal of the School of Irish Learning, in 1905. Eleanor Hull (1860-1935b), born in Manchester, was the founder of the Irish Text Society and president of the Irish Literary Society of London. Hull versified the text and it was published in her Poem Book of the Gael (1912).

Irish liturgy and ritual scholar Helen Phelan, a lecturer at the University of Limerick, points out how the language of this hymn is drawn from traditional Irish culture: “One of the essential characteristics of the text is the use of ‘heroic’ imagery to describe God. This was very typical of medieval Irish poetry, which cast God as the ‘chieftain’ or ‘High King’ (Ard Ri) who provided protection to his people or clan. The lorica (Latin: breastplate) is one of the most popular forms of this kind of protection prayer and is very prevalent in texts of this period.” St. Patrick’s Breastplate (1940 The Hymnal, #268) is in this genre.

Hull’s verse version was paired with the Irish tune SLANE in The Irish Church Hymnal in 1919. The folk melody was taken from a non-liturgical source, Patrick Weston Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs: A Collection of 842 Airs and Songs hitherto unpublished (1909).

“Most ‘traditional’ Irish religious songs are non-liturgical,” says Dr. Phelan. “There is a longstanding practice of ‘editorial weddings’ in Irish liturgical music, where traditional tunes were wedded to more liturgically appropriate texts. This is a very good example of this practice.”

Back in 433 AD, on the eve of Bealtine, a Druidic Holiday that lines up directly with Easter as well as the spring equinox, it was declared by the King, Leoghaire (Leary) Mac Neill, that no fires were to be lit until the fire atop of Tara Hill was lit. Going against the kings wishes, St. Patrick went out to Slane Hill and lit a candle to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The king was so impressed by the courage that St. Patrick had shown, Leoghaire let him continue his missionary work throughout Ireland. The tune was given the name SLANE to commemorate this event.

English translation by Mary Byrne, 1905:

Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart
None other is aught but the King of the seven heavens.

Be thou my meditation by day and night.
May it be thou that I behold even in my sleep.

Be thou my speech, be thou my understanding.
Be thou with me, be I with thee

Be thou my father, be I thy son.
Mayst thou be mine, may I be thine.

Be thou my battle-shield, be thou my sword.
Be thou my dignity, be thou my delight.

Be thou my shelter, be thou my stronghold.
Mayst thou raise me up to the company of the angels.

Be thou every good to my body and soul.
Be thou my kingdom in heaven and on earth.

Be thou solely chief love of my heart.
Let there be none other, O high King of Heaven.

Till I am able to pass into thy hands,
My treasure, my beloved through the greatness of thy love

Be thou alone my noble and wondrous estate.
I seek not men nor lifeless wealth.

Be thou the constant guardian of every possession and every life.
For our corrupt desires are dead at the mere sight of thee.

Thy love in my soul and in my heart —
Grant this to me, O King of the seven heavens.

O King of the seven heavens grant me this —
Thy love to be in my heart and in my soul.

With the King of all, with him after victory won by piety,
May I be in the kingdom of heaven O brightness of the son.

Beloved Father, hear, hear my lamentations.
Timely is the cry of woe of this miserable wretch.

O heart of my heart, whatever befall me,
O ruler of all, be thou my vision.

Here is the hymnal version. Verse three is usually omitted.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tow’r:
Raise Thou me heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’n’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Although there are hundreds of versions of Be Thou my vision on the Internet, all the vocals ones are not very satisfactory.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here is King’s College, Cambridge.Here it is arranged as an art song. Here sung in Modern Irish.

Here is a charming version for violin and harp. A good arrangement for cello and piano. Of course for Celtic instruments. For string quartet. For brass quintet! For marching band!!

Let us with a gladsome mind is a versification of Psalm 136 by John Milton, who was fifteen and a schoolboy at St. Paul’s.\ when he wrote it.

The original is long; the 1940 Hymnal uses the stanzas in red:

Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for he is kind;
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.

Let us blaze his Name abroad,
For of gods he is the God;
For his, &c.

O let us his praises tell,
That doth the wrathful tyrants quell;
For his, &c.

That with his miracles doth make
Amazèd Heaven and Earth to shake;
For his, &c.

That by his wisdom did create
The painted heavens so full of state;
For his, &c.

That did the solid Earth ordain
To rise above the watery plain;
For his, &c.

That by his all-commanding might,
Did fill the new-made world with light;
For his, &c.

And caused the golden-tressèd Sun
All the day long his course to run;
For his, &c.

The hornèd Moon to shine by night
Amongst her spangled sisters bright;
For his, &c.

He, with his thunder-clasping hand,
Smote the first-born of Egypt land;
For his, &c.

And, in despite of Pharao fell,
He brought from thence his Israel;
For his, &c.

The ruddy waves he cleft in twain
Of the Erythræan main;
For his, &c.

The floods stood still, like walls of glass,
While the Hebrew bands did pass;
For his, &c.

But full soon they did devour
The tawny King with all his power;
For his, &c.

His chosen people he did bless
In the wasteful Wilderness;
For his, &c.

In bloody battail he brought down
Kings of prowess and renown;
For his, &c.

He foiled bold Seon and his host,
That ruled the Amorrean coast;
For his, &c.

And large-limbed Og he did subdue,
With all his over-hardy crew;
For his, &c.

And to his servant Israel
He gave their land, therein to dwell;
For his, &c.

He hath, with a piteous eye,
Beheld us in our misery;
For his, &c.

And freed us from the slavery
Of the invading enemy;
For his, &c.

All living creatures he doth feed,
And with full hand supplies their need;
For his, &c.

Let us, therefore, warble forth
His mighty majesty and worth;
For his, &c.

That his mansion hath on high,
Above the reach of mortal eye;
For his, &c.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

The tune MONKLAND has a fascinating if complex history. Rooted in a tune for the text “Fahre fort” in Johann A. Freylinghausen’s famous hymnal, Geistreiches Gesangbuch (1704), it then was significantly altered by John Antes (b. Frederick, PA, 1740; d. Bristol, England, 1811) in a Moravian manuscript, A Collection of Hymn Tunes (c. 1800). Antes was a missionary, watchmaker, business manager, and composer. Born near the Moravian community of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he was trained at the Moravian boys’ school and later received religious education and further training as a watchmaker in Herrnhut, Germany. From 1770 to 1781 he served as a missionary in Egypt and from 1783 until his death was the business manager of the Moravian community in Fullneck, England. Although music was his avocation, Antes was a fine composer and musician. Among his compositions are a number of anthems, several string trios, and over fifty hymn tunes.

MONKLAND received its present shape at the hands of John Lees in another Moravian hymnal, Hymn Tunes of the United Brethren (1824). From there John Wilkes (b. England, date unknown; d. England, 1882) simplified it and introduced it to Henry W. Baker, who published it in the English Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) to his own harvest-theme text, “Praise, O Praise Our God and King.” Wilkes named the tune after the village where he was organist and Baker was vicar–Monkland–located near Leominster in Herefordshire, England. Wilkes died around 1882; he should not be confused with the better-known John Bernard Wilkes (1785-1869). (Hymnary)

The 1940 Hymnal is apparently mistaken in attributing it to John Bernard Wilkes rather than to John Wilkes.

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Anthems

Cantate Domino, Hans Leo Hassler

Cantate Domino canticum novum; cantate Domino omnis terra. Cantate Domino, et benedicite nomini ejus; annuntiate de die in diem salutare ejus. Annuntiate inter gentes gloriam ejus; in omnibus populis mirabilia ejus.

O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the whole earth. Sing unto the Lord, and praise his Name: be telling of his salvation from day to day. Declare his honour unto the heathen: and his wonders unto all people.

Here it is sung by the UCLA Early Music ensemble,

Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Hassler (1564- 1612) was the first German composer of the Renaissance who went to Italy to continue studies; he studied in Venive inder Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni’s uncle, He returned to Germany, where he was an expert organist as well as a composer. Hassler’s influence was one of the reasons for the Italian domination over German music and for the common trend of German musicians finishing their education in Italy. Though Hassler was Protestant, he wrote many masses and directed the music for Catholic services in Augsburg.

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Laetentur coeli, William Byrd

Laetentur coeli, et exultet terra. Jubilate montes laudem, quia Dominus noster veniet, et pauperum suorum miserebitur. Orietur in diebus tuis justitia et abundantia pacis. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice.

Let the mountains be joyful with praise, because our Lord will come, and will show mercy to his poor. In your days, justice and abundance of peace shall arise.

Here it is sung by the Roskilde Domkirkes Drengekor.

William Byrd (c. 1540-1623)

16th Century England, under the charge of Queen Elizabeth I, was officially Protestant; and although Byrd was famous in his day, he constantly lived in fear of losing commissions because of his Catholic faith. Because of this, many of Byrd’s earlier sacred works were smaller in scope, and included phrases and musical suspensions meant to secretly signify the desire for equal protection for Catholics in England.

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Postlude

Postlude in G, op. 134, no. 6, Gustav Merkel (1827-1885)

Here is Stephen Mann at the English Martyrs’ Church.

Gustav (Adolf) Merkel (November 12, 1827, Oberoderwitz, Kingdom of Saxony – October 30, 1885, Dresden) was a German organist and composer. Having been given some lessons by Schumann in his youth, Merkel spent most of his career in Dresden, concentrating on organ-playing from 1858. A Lutheran himself, he nevertheless held an appointment at one of Dresden’s main Catholic churches from 1864 until his death. During the same period he taught the organ at Dresden’s Conservatorium.

 

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To Be or Not to Be: Bears Ears, Blanding, and Bluff

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On entering Blanding, Utah

On a front yard in Blanding

I went hiking in the new Bears Ears National Monument in Utah with Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Not everyone is happy with Obama’s designation of the Monument, and Trump may shrink the Monument.

Bluff and Blanding are both on the edge of the new Monument, and are only twenty-five miles part, but they have opposed views on the Monument. Bluff was founded by the Mormons, but the flooding from the San Juan River made farming impossible, and they moved up to Blanding, leaving Bluff to be taken over by New West types, especially outfitters and archaeologists. The area is dense with sites ranging from 7000 BC to 1250 or so.

There are an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites scattered across the Bears Ears cultural landscape, according to the Bears Inter-Tribal Coalition’s national monument proposal

The Revelator did a series of article son the Monument; the last one was The Fight Over Bears Ears: A Tale of Two Towns.

When it comes to the fight over Bears Ears National Monument, the stark differences in attitudes toward the monument designation between residents of Bluff and nearby Blanding are literally 15 centuries apart.

The roadside signs welcoming travelers to each community located along U.S. 191, one of the nation’s most beautiful highways, succinctly sum up the difference between the two communities.

In a respectful nod toward the ancient settlements that first appeared along the banks of the San Juan River, Bluff’s welcome signs declare that the unincorporated community of about 300 was founded in 650 A.D.

Blanding is Mormon, alcohol-free, and largely edible-food-free.

The Obama administration worked with the five Native American groups in the area to develop a way to protect the area and give Indians access for traditional uses.  The Mormons have a long history of pot-stealing from public land and seem to regard public land as their private property.

Like others in his community, Blanding businessman Joe Lyman, currently serving his third term on the Blanding City Council, turns to a far-right fringe analysis to buttress his anti-monument stance.

Lyman, a descendant of Mormon pioneers who founded Bluff in 1880 after a harrowing trek through the rugged mountains, provided The Revelator with a copy of a report written by J.R. Carlson of Stillwater Technical Solutions of Garden City, Kansas, which was presented to the San Juan County Commission in October 2016.

Carlson’s report claims, incorrectly, that the president doesn’t have the authority to proclaim a national monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906, and that the 43 grazing allotments on Bear Ears National Monument are lands that are not “owned or controlled” by the federal government and therefore not eligible for monument inclusion.

Carlson, the executive director of the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition — an alliance of county governments that engage with federal agencies on natural resource policies — argues in the document that “for purposes of a monument designation, grazing allotments (districts) are a limited-fee, surface title property, and as a result such lands are not owned or controlled by the Federal government.”

There is no widely accepted legal basis to support Carlson’s claim, which is often cited by ranchers seeking to assume control of federal land. The federal government has been leasing federal land to ranchers since passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.

The leases are at bargain rates so the Federal government has been subsidizing ranchers for almost a century. Even worse, the land has been overgrazed. It is really too dry to run cattle on it without ruining it, especially as the area has a centuries-old pattern of periodic droughts.

The land in the new Monument was BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and Forest Service land, which was open to a variety of uses:

Lyman says Blanding has long relied on the tax base created from grazing, mining and timber harvesting on federal lands, including Manti-La Sal National Forest, that are now included in Bears Ears National Monument. He worries the national monument designation will reduce economic development opportunities.

“Continued multiple use of the land is vital to our way of life and our economic survival,” he says. “An increase in seasonal tourism is no replacement for a diverse and healthy economy.”

But I have been told that this way of life is heavily subsidized by the government by fees that are far lower than equivalent private fees. Moreover, grazing and mining are destructive of a very fragile landscape.

I have heard mostly from the Bluffoons, as the inhabitants of Bluff call themselves, although they can be a bit paranoid about the Mormons, who do seem to be making an effort to repopulate Bluff.

A businessman in Bluff analyzed the situation:

Simpson, a tax attorney by training, says most of the people living in Bluff support the national monument and embrace a tourist-based economy that they believe is far more sustainable than relying on the boom-bust extractive industries that have historically underpinned the regional economy.

“You have Bluff, which is a liberal community, right in the middle of an extremely conservative, extremely LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) area,” he says. “The position of Bluff doesn’t mesh well with the folks in Blanding.” Simpson also knows quite a few people who are opposed to the monument. Many of them are Mormon pioneer descendants, he says, and have strong ties to the land that their ancestors settled in the late 19th century.

There is resentment, Simpson says, that a huge part of what they see as their back yard is now being set aside as a national monument — particularly since it was at the request of American Indian tribes that were forcibly removed from much of their traditional lands, including Bears Ears, more than 150 years ago.

The resentment toward American Indians by the local population was readily apparent during the debate leading up to the monument designation. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman told Navajo leaders that they “lost the war” and have no right to comment on public land management. Ranchers in San Juan County were also telling American Indians to “get back on the reservation.”

The Indians have gotten a raw deal from Euro-Americans; not all wrongs can be righted, but we can certainly treat them with respect as the first settlers of this continent and help them integrate into modern society while preserving as much of their culture as they choose.

I am sympathetic to the people of Blanding who want to continue living there and making a living. Seasonal tourism is not enough, I agree, but developing the vast recreational and cultural potential of the area can also make it attractive for businesses and retirees to locate there. In any case, should the Federal government through  the low fees that make extractive uses profitable subsidize uses that destroy public lands, which should be held in trust for all Americans and future generations.

If the Monument is rescinded, the government should make sure first of all that the fees it charges are the same as the fees that private land owners charge and secondly use that money to restore the lands that have been damaged and to preserve archaeological sites.

 

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Mount Calvary Music October 15 2017

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The Parable of the Wedding Feast, Jan Luyken

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XVIII

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Prelude

Hymns

O splendor of God’s glory bright

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

The God of Abraham praise

Anthems

Psalm 23, Franz Schubert

Love bade me welcome, Ralph Vaughn Williams

Postlude

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O splendor of God’s glory bright is a translation by Robert Bridges, poet laureate of England, of St. Ambrose’s morning hymn Splendor paternæ gloriæ.

O Splendor of God’s glory bright,
O Thou that bringest light from light,
O Light of Light, light’s living spring,
O Day, all days illumining.

O thou true Sun, on us Thy glance,
Let fall in royal radiance,
the Spirit’s sanctifying beam
upon our earthly senses stream.

The Father, too, our prayers implore,
Father of glory evermore;
the Father of all grace and might,
to banish sin from our delight.

On Christ, the true bread, let us feed;
Let Him to us be drink indeed;
And let us taste with joyfulness
The Holy Spirit’s plenteousness.

All laud to God the Father be;
All praise, eternal Son, to thee;
All glory, as is ever meet,
To God the holy Paraclete.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir doing a cheerful version.

Here is the English sung to a Gregorian melody.

Splendor paternæ gloriæ,
De luce lucem proferens,
Lux lucis et fons luminis,
Diem dies illuminans

Verusque sol, illabere
Micans nitore perpeti
Iubarque sancti spiritus
Infunde nostris sensibus.

Votis vocemus et patrem,
Patrem perennis gloriæ,
Patrem potentis gratiæ
Culpam releget lubricam.

Informet actus strenuos,
Dentem retundat invidi,
Casus secundet asperos,
Donet gerendi gratiam.

Mentem gubernet et regat
Casto, fideli corpore,
Fides calore ferveat,
Fraudis venena nesciat.

Christusque noster sit cibus,
Potusque noster sit fides,
Læti bibamus sobriam
Ebrietatem spiritus.

Lætus dies hic transeat,
Pudor sit ut diluculum,
Fides velut meridies,
Crepusculum mens nesciat.

Aurora cursus provehat,
Aurora totus prodeat,
In patre totus filius
Et totus in verbo pater.

Here is the Latin with Gregorian chant.

Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was poet laureate of England from 1913 until his death. At Oxford he was a friend of Gerald Manley Hopkins and arranged for the publication of Hopkins’ poetry posthumously.

Bridges wrote and also translated historic hymns, and many of these were included in Songs of Syon (1904) and the later English Hymnal (1906). Several of Bridges’ hymns and translations are still in use today:

“Thee will I love, my God and King”
“Happy are they that love God”
“Rejoice, O land, in God thy might”
“Ah, Holy Jesus” (Johann Heermann, 1630)
“All my hope on God is founded” (Joachim Neander, c. 1680)
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (Martin Jahn, 1661)
“O Gladsome Light” (Phos Hilaron)
“O Sacred Head, sore wounded” (Paulus Gerhardt, 1656)
“O Splendour of God’s Glory Bright” (Ambrose, 4th century)
“When morning gilds the skies” (stanza 3; Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1744)

PUER NOBIS NASCITUR is a melody from a fifteenth-century manuscript from Trier. However, the tune probably dates from an earlier time and may even have folk roots. PUER NOBIS was altered in Spangenberg’s Christliches Gesangbuchlein (1568), in Petri’s famous Piae Cantiones (1582), and again in Praetorius’s  Musae Sioniae (Part VI, 1609), which is the basis for the triple-meter version

Let all mortal flesh keep silence is a paraphrase by James Moultrie (1829—1885) of the Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St. James of the Eastern Church. The hymn dates to the third century. It is chanted as the bread and wine are carried to the altar. The Greek text reads: “Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and in itself consider nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.” Here is the hymn in the 4th Plagal. Here is the Great Entrance.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six wingèd seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High

Her is the King’s College, Cambridge, choir.

Gerald Moultrie was a Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer born on September 16, 1829, at Rugby Rectory, Warwickshire, England. He died on April 25, 1885, Southleigh, England, aged 55.

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One night in London, Thomas Olivers (1725—1729), a follower of John Wesley, was attracted to a service in a Jewish synagogue, where he heard a great singer, Myer Leoni, sing an ancient Hebrew text in solemn, plaintive mode. Olivers wrote a hymn to that tune: The God of Abraham Praise, which is a paraphrase of the ancient Hebrew Yigdal, or doxology. In the 12th century, Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides codified the 13 articles of the Jewish Creed. These articles of the Jewish faith were later shaped into the Yigdal around 1400 by Daniel ben Judah, a judge in Rome.

Her is the King’s College choir.

Here is a wonderful Sephardic Yigdal. Here is a modern arrangement of the Yigdal.

Here are the original verses. Note that in almost all hymnals the specifically Christian references have been removed, often to make the hymn suitable for interfaith gatherings.

The God of Abraham praise, who reigns enthroned above;
Ancient of everlasting days, and God of Love;
Jehovah, great I AM! by earth and Heav’n confessed;
I bow and bless the sacred Name forever blessed.

The God of Abraham praise, at Whose supreme command
From earth I rise—and seek the joys at His right hand;
I all on earth forsake, its wisdom, fame, and power;
And Him my only Portion make, my Shield and Tower.

The God of Abraham praise, whose all sufficient grace
Shall guide me all my happy days, in all my ways.
He calls a worm His friend, He calls Himself my God!
And He shall save me to the end, thro’ Jesus’ blood.

He by Himself has sworn; I on His oath depend,
I shall, on eagle wings upborne, to Heav’n ascend.
I shall behold His face; I shall His power adore,
And sing the wonders of His grace forevermore.

Tho’ nature’s strength decay, and earth and hell withstand,
To Canaan’s bounds I urge my way, at His command.
The wat’ry deep I pass, with Jesus in my view;
And thro’ the howling wilderness my way pursue.

The goodly land I see, with peace and plenty bless’d;
A land of sacred liberty, and endless rest.
There milk and honey flow, and oil and wine abound,
And trees of life forever grow with mercy crowned.

There dwells the Lord our King, the Lord our righteousness,
Triumphant o’er the world and sin, the Prince of peace;
On Sion’s sacred height His kingdom still maintains,
And glorious with His saints in light forever reigns.

He keeps His own secure, He guards them by His side,
Arrays in garments, white and pure, His spotless bride:
With streams of sacred bliss, with groves of living joys—
With all the fruits of Paradise, He still supplies.

Before the great Three-One they all exulting stand;
And tell the wonders He hath done, through all their land:
The list’ning spheres attend, and swell the growing fame;
And sing, in songs which never end, the wondrous Name.

The God Who reigns on high the great archangels sing,
And “Holy, holy, holy!” cry, “Almighty King!
Who was, and is, the same, and evermore shall be:
Jehovah—Father—great I AM, we worship Thee!”

Before the Savior’s face the ransomed nations bow;
O’erwhelmed at His almighty grace, forever new:
He shows His prints of love—they kindle to a flame!
And sound thro’ all the worlds above the slaughtered Lamb.

The whole triumphant host give thanks to God on high;
“Hail, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” they ever cry.
Hail, Abraham’s God, and mine! (I join the heav’nly lays,)
All might and majesty are Thine, and endless praise.

Here is the 1940 Hymnal version by an English choir.

Here is the Yigdal:

  1. Exalted be the Living God and praised, He exists – unbounded by time is His existence;
  2. He is One – and there is no unity like His Oneness – Inscrutable and infinite is His Oneness;
  3. He has no semblance of a body nor is He corporeal – nor has His holiness any comparison;
  4. He preceded every being that was created – the First, and nothing precedes His precedence;
  5. Behold! He is Master of the universe – Every creature demonstrates His greatness and His sovereignty;
  6. He granted His flow of prophecy – to His treasured, splendid people;
  7. In Israel, none like Moses arose again – a prophet who perceived His vision clearly;
  8. God gave His people a Torah of truth – by means of His prophet, the most trusted of His household;
  9. God will never amend nor exchange His law – for any other one, for all eternity;
  10. He scrutinizes and knows our hiddenmost secrets – He perceives a matter’s outcome at its inception;
  11. He recompenses man with kindness according to his deed – He places evil on the wicked according to his wickedness;
  12. By the End of Days He will send our Messiah – to redeem those longing for His final salvation;
  13. God will revive the dead in His abundant kindness – Blessed forever is His praised Name.

Note that the last verse expresses belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is an article of Jewish belief, as is clear from  Gospels.

Thomas Olivers

Thomas Olivers was born in 1725 in the Welsh village of Tregynon in Montgomeryshire. Both his father and his mother died when he was four years old. He grew up to be an apprentice shoemaker and he became a profligate and reckless young man.] After his involvement in a scandal which forced him to leave his home, Olivers travelled to Bristol where he heard George Whitfield preach on the text “is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” (Zechariah 3:2). Olivers was converted and stated a desire to follow Whitfield however one of Whitfield’s preachers discouraged him and instead he joined the Methodist society and met one of the founders of Methodism, John Wesley there.

After joining Wesley as a preacher, Olivers was initially stationed to preach in Cornwall.  He was later stationed to preach all around Great Britain and Ireland because of his fearless preaching style. He also had good relations with Great Britain’s Jewish community, attending Jewish synagogues and became friends with Rabbi Myer Lyon. In 1775, Wesley appointed Olivers to co-write the Arminian Magazine with him. Olivers often exercised control over the content of the magazine. Due to a lack of formal education, Olivers’ editorial of the magazine contained several printing errors, which annoyed Wesley but he persevered with Olivers whom he counted as a friend and attached a list of errors at the back of the yearly annual in 1778. However following an “astounding number of errata”, Wesley declared in a letter that “I cannot, dare not, will not suffer Thomas Olivers to murder the Arminian Magazine any longer. The errata are intolerable and innumerable. They shall be so no more” and removed Olivers from his position in 1789. Despite this, Olivers and Wesley remained good friends, often viewed as a father-son relationship. When Olivers died in March 1799, he was buried in Wesley’s grave in London.

_____________________________

ANTHEMS

Franz Schubert

Psalm 23, Franz Schubert

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He feedeth me in pastures green, he leadeth me beside still waters. He shall convert my soul and bring me forth in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through death’s dark shadowed vale, yet I will fear no evil: for thou art still with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou hast prepared a table for me against them that trouble me; thou hast anointed my head with oil and my cup shall be full. Thy kindness and thy mercy shall ever follow me; and I will dwell forever in the house of the Lord.

It’s almost beyond belief that Schubert wrote this beatific setting of the well-beloved Psalm 23 “The Lord is my Shepherd” as an examination piece. And yet it is so: composed in December 1820 at the request of Schubert’s friend Anna Frolich as a test piece for her vocal pupils, Schubert’s part song far transcends its original purpose to become a small-scale piece of musical religious art. Originally written for two sopranos and two altos, Psalm 23 has become a staple of women’s choirs everywhere there are women’s choirs. It’s easy to understand why: from the exquisite harmonies of the piano’s prelude — the magical entry of the voices, the smooth voice writing, the clear progress of the harmonies — to the final blissful statement of faith (James Leonard).

Here is King’s College, Cambridge.

____________________________

Love bade me welcome, Ralph Vaughn Williams

George Herbert

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back.
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here:”
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat:”
So I did sit and eat.

In 1629, the 35-year-old politician George Herbert seemed set for a promising career in public life. He had already been a favorite of King James I as a student, and now he was an up-and-coming member of Parliament. Instead, he abandoned it all to become a priest in an obscure rural church. Never a healthy man, he died of consumption four years later.

From his deathbed, he sent a friend the manuscript of his collected poems, The Temple, which he described as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master.” The poem “Love Bade Me Welcome” (or “Love iii”) is the record of one such struggle. Its description of doubt and anguish yielding to Christ’s unmerited love has been treasured by generations.

In English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’s 1906 setting, Herbert’s poem is sung by a baritone solo, joined in the final stanza by a choir wordlessly singing the melody of the plainsong O Sacrum Convivium – Thomas Aquinas’s meditation on Christ’s promise to be present at the communion table. Here at the climax of the piece, the speaker at last accepts Love’s invitation to “sit and eat.”

Here is baritone Jamie Hall. Here is Wakefield Cathedral Choir.

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Mount Calvary Music October 8, 2017

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Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Congregation of

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Anglican Use

Trinity XVII

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

Prelude

Hymns

Christ is made the sure foundation

In heavenly love abiding

O worship the King, all glorious above

Anthems

Vinea mea electa, Johann Michael Haydn

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Giaches de Wert

Postlude

 

Christ is made the sure foundation was translated by the great Anglican hymnologist John Mason Neale (1818-1866) from the Latin hymn Angularis fundamentum. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church; insofar as we are aligned to Him, we are made into a unity, a temple where God is praised. We ask for His blessings that we may praise Him forever.

The hymn is based on Ephesians 2:20-22: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

And on I Peter 2:4-7: “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious,
And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.’

Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient,
‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone.’”

Christ is made the sure Foundation,
Christ the Head and Cornerstone,
Chosen of the Lord and precious,
Binding all the Church in one;
Holy Zion’s help forever,
And her confidence alone.

All that dedicated city,
dearly loved of God on high,
in exultant jubilation
pours perpetual melody;
God the One in Three adoring
in glad hymns eternally.

To this temple, where we call Thee,
Come, O Lord of Hosts, today:
With Thy wonted loving-kindness
Hear Thy people as they pray;
And Thy fullest benediction
Shed within its walls alway.

Here vouchsafe to all Thy servants
What they ask of Thee to gain,
What they gain from Thee forever
With the blessed to retain,
And hereafter in Thy glory
Evermore with Thee to reign.

Here is a parish (RC? Anglican?) singing it.

Here is the Latin hymn which Neale translated-paraphrased:

Angularis fundamentum
lapis Christus missus est,
qui parietum compage
in utroque nectitur,
quem Sion sancta suscepit,
in quo credens permanet.

Omnis illa Deo sacra
et dilecta civitas,
plena modulis in laude
et canore jubilo,
trinum Deum unicumque
cum fervore prædicat.

Hoc in templo, summe Deus,
exoratus adveni,
et clementi bonitate
precum vota suscipe;
largam benedictionem
hic infunde jugiter.

Hic promereantur omnes
petita acquirere
et adepta possidere
cum sanctis perenniter,
paradisum introire
translati in requiem.

Here is the Gregorian chant for this Latin hymn.

 

The son of an Anglican clergyman, James Mason Neale (1818-1866) intended to follow the same path. Hymn scholar Leon Litvack notes, “Neale entered Cambridge as an Evangelical, but emerged an Anglo-Catholic.” Fascinated by the tracts of the Oxford Movement, he became intensely interested in the medieval church. The result was an interest in a “high church” in contrast to an “evangelical” perspective that influenced developments in liturgy and architecture as well as hymn singing.

Neale was a student of worship in the early church and one of the first to translate ancient Greek and Latin texts into metrical English for singing. American hymnologist William Reynolds notes that “His strong attachment to the old Breviary hymns [of the medieval church] caused him to urge the omission of the Protestant hymns from the Anglican service in favor of translations of medieval hymns.”

Though an ordained Anglican priest, Neale was unable to serve a parish due to his health. He was appointed as a warden of a home for indigent old men, but was not permitted to serve as a priest because he had alienated the hierarchy of the Anglican Church due to his independent spirit regarding his beliefs and rigorous devotional practices. His minimal caretaker duties, however, allowed Neale time to pursue his scholarly studies.

Henry Thomas Smart

Henry Thomas Smart composed REGENT SQUARE for the Horatius Bonar doxology “Glory be to God the Father.” The tune was first published in the English Presbyterian Church’s Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), of which Smart was music editor. Because the text editor of that hymnal, James Hamilton, was minister of the Regent Square Church, the “Presbyterian cathedral” of London, the tune was given this title.

Henry Thomas Smart (26 October 1813 – 6 July 1879) was an English organist and composer. He was born in London, a nephew of the conductor Sir George Smart and son of a music publisher, orchestra director and accomplished violinist (also called Henry Smart). He was educated at Highgate School and then studied for the law, but soon gave this up for music.

In 1831 Smart became organist of Blackburn parish church, where he wrote his first important work, an anthem; then of St Giles-without-Cripplegate; St Luke’s, Old Street; and finally of St Pancras New Church, in 1864, which last post he held at the time of his death, less than a month after receiving a government pension of £100 per annum. Smart was also skilled as a mechanic, and designed several organs.

Though highly rated as a composer by his English contemporaries, Smart is now largely forgotten, save for his hymn tune Regent Square, which retains considerable popularity, and which is commonly performed with the words “Christ is Made the Sure Foundation”, “Light’s Abode, Celestial Salem”, or “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. His many compositions for the organ (some of which have been occasionally revived in recent years) were described as “effective and melodious, if not strikingly original” by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which also praised his part songs. A cantata by him, The Bride of Dunkerron was written for the Birmingham Festival of 1864; another cantata was a version of the play King René’s Daughter (1871). The oratorio Jacob was created for Glasgow in 1873; and his opera Bertha was produced with some success at the Haymarket in 1855.

___________________________

In heavenly love abiding was written by Anna Letitia Waring. Abide is key word in Scripture: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Jesus Himself is obedient to His Father and keeps the Commandments that the Father has given Him, and in that way Jesus abides in His Father’s love. The Father’s will was that the Son should become man and die for us, trusting in the Father to raise Him from the dead. We likewise trust in Jesus in the storms of life. The hymn then refers to Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus walks with us, especially as we receive Him in the Eucharist,  and we know that he will lead us to the green pastures of heaven.

1 In heavenly love abiding,
no change my heart shall fear;
and safe is such confiding,
for nothing changes here:
the storm may roar without me,
my heart may low be laid;
but God is round about me,
and can I be dismayed?

2 Wherever he may guide me,
no want shall turn me back;
my Shepherd is beside me,
and nothing can I lack:
his wisdom ever waketh,
his sight is never dim,
he knows the way he taketh,
and I will walk with him.

3 Green pastures are before me,
which yet I have not seen;
bright skies will soon be o’er me,
where darkest clouds have been;
my hope I cannot measure,
my path to life is free;
my Saviour has my treasure,
and he will walk with me.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here is a boys’ choir.

Anna Letitia Waring (or Anna Laetitia Waring) (19 April 1823 – 10 May 1910) was a Welsh poet and hymn-writer. She was born at Plas-y-Felin, Neath, third of the seven children of Elijah Waring (1787-1857) and his wife, Deborah. Her family were Quakers, but she became an Anglican and was baptized into the Church of England in 1842, at St Martin Church, Winnall, Winchester. Several members of her family had literary interests. She learned Hebrew in order to study the Old Testament in the original.

In 1850, Anna published her first work, Hymns and Meditations. This was to be reprinted and extended many times. Additional Hymns (1858) was integrated into later editions of Hymns and Meditations.

Anna was pious, reserved, and given to “good works”. Anna became involved in philanthropic work, particularly as a supporter of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society. According to her friend Mary S. Talbot, Waring “visited in the prisons of Bridewell, and at Horfield, Bristol, for many years. To one who spoke to her of the painfulness of such work she answered, ‘It is like watching by a filthy gutter to pick out a jewel here and there, as the foul stream flows by.'” Waring died unmarried at her home in Clifton, Bristol on 10 May 1910.

NYLAND, named for a province in Finland, is a folk melody from Kuortane, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. In fact, the tune is also known as KUORTANE. NYLAND was first published with a hymn text in an appendix to the 1909 edition of the Finnish Suomen Evankelis Luterilaisen Kirken Koraalikirja. It gained popularity in the English-speaking world after David Evans’s use of it in the British Church Hymnary of 1927 as a setting for Anna 1. Waring’s text “In Heavenly Love Abiding.”

David Evans was an important leader in Welsh church music. Educated at Arnold College, Swansea, and at University College, Cardiff, he received a doctorate in music from Oxford University. His longest professional post was as professor of music at University College in Cardiff (1903-1939), where he organized a large music department. He was also a well-known and respected judge at Welsh hymn-singing festivals and a composer of many orchestral and choral works, anthems, service music, and hymn tunes.

NYLAND is a modified rounded bar-form tune (AA’BA’) with a wide-ranging melodic contour and a fine harmonization for part singing.

____________________________

O worship the King, all glorious above was written by Sir Robert Grant (1735-1838).

In 1835 Robert Grant wrote a text that helps us see the creation story in a new light. His meditation on the creation theme of Psalm 104 consists of six verses that parallel the six days of creation. Grant focuses on how creation is a testimony to God’s “measureless might.” The fourth and fifth verse we celebrate God’s saving grace to his creation. When God took that seventh day of rest, he was not signaling an end. He continued to bless His creation, even those as feeble and frail as us. In the last verse, Grant points to Christ as the ultimate reconciler of a broken, but still beautiful creation. The last rhyme end/Friend, emphasizes that the purpose (telos-end) of our creation was that we should in the end (forever) forever enjoy the friendship of God in Christ.

O worship the King all glorious above,
O gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

The earth with its store of wonders untold,
Almighty, Thy power hath founded of old;
Hath stablished it fast by a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast, like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend!

Here is the tune for the organ, for the piano and women’s choir, for hand bells, for two violins, for women’s choir and drums and stuff, for praise band, for acoustic guitar, for piano and cello, for euphonium and piano, with handbells AND ballerina, for trombone and drums, on the harmonium.

Robert Grant

Robert Grant

Sir Robert Grant was the second son of Mr. Charles Grant, sometime Member of Parliament for Inverness, and a Director of the East India Company, was born in 1785, and educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1806. The Grants were members of the Clapham set, an Evangelical group in the Church of England. Called to the English Bar in 1807, he became Member of Parliament for Inverness in 1826; in that position, through his persistent efforts a bill was eventually passed which emancipated England’s Jews.

He became a Privy Councillor in 1831; and Governor of Bombay, 1834,  where he had opportunity to put his social concerns into practice, for the poverty and spiritual condition of the common people were appalling. He died at Dapoorie, in Western India, July 9, 1838. As a hymn writer of great merit he is well and favorably known. His hymns, “O worship the King”; “Saviour, when in dust to Thee”; and “When gathering clouds around I view,” are widely used in all English-speaking countries. Some of those which are less known are marked by the same graceful versification and deep and tender feeling. The best of his hymns were contributed to the Christian Observer, 1806-1815, under the signature of “E—y, D. R.”; and to Elliott’s Psalms & Hymns, Brighton, 1835. In the Psalms & Hymns those which were taken from the Christian Observer were rewritten by the author. The year following his death his brother, Lord Glenelg, gathered 12 of his hymns and poems together, and published them.

Joseph Martin Kraus

Joseph Martin Kraus

The tune is LYONS, composed by Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), a composer in the classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Germany. He moved to Sweden at age 21, and died at the age of 36 in Stockholm. He is sometimes referred to as “the Swedish Mozart”, and had a life span which was very similar to that of Mozart’s.

Anthems

Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis. Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum et dedit illi nomen, quod est super omne nomen.

Christ became obedient for us unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above all names.

Johann Michael Haydn (1707-1806) was an Austrian composer, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn. Michael Haydn, like his brother, was a chorister at St Stephen’s in Vienna. Shortly after leaving the choir-school, he was appointed Kapellmeister at Großwardein and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and much instrumental music. He was an intimate friend of Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and the teacher of Carl Maria von Weber.

Haydn’s sacred choral works are generally regarded as his most important; his musical taste and skill showed themselves best in his church compositions and were already in his lifetime old-fashioned. Michael remained close to Joseph all of his life. Joseph regarded his brother’s music highly, to the point of feeling Michael’s religious works were superior to his own (possibly for their devotional intimacy, as opposed to Joseph’s monumental and majestic more secularized symphonic style

Here is a Hungarian performance.

____________________

Jerusalem, quæ occidis prophetas, et lapidas eos qui mittuntur ad te, quoties volui congregare filios tuos, quem admodum avis nidum suum sub pennis, et noluisti?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

Giaches de Wert (also Jacques/Jaches de Wert, Giaches de Vuert; 1535 – 6 May 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal.

The style of his sacred music varies from simple homophony, designed for absolute clarity of textual expression in conformance with the dictates of the Council of Trent, to motet settings similar in expressive intensity to his madrigals including passages of surprising chromaticism not unlike that of Gesualdo. This is particularly true in the 1581 collections: Ascendente Jesu, for example, contains colorful examples of text-painting such as he used in the works he was composing for the Ferrarese court at the time.

Here is his Egressus Jesus.

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The Vineyard of the Lord

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The Vineyard of the Lord, Lukas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586)

The Gospel for October 8 (Trinity XVII) is the parable of the Vineyard.

The first reading is from Isaiah 5:

Let me sing for my beloved
a love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
2 He digged it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
judge, I pray you, between me
and my vineyard.
4 What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
6 I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, a cry!

Psalm 80 continues the image:

8 You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches;
11 it sent out its branches to the sea,
and its shoots to the River.
12 Why then have you broken down its walls,
so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
13 The boar from the forest ravages it,
and all that move in the field feed on it.
14 Turn again, O God of hosts;
look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine,
15 the stock that your right hand planted.[b]
16 They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down;[c]
may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.
17 But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,
the one whom you made strong for yourself.
18 Then we will never turn back from you;
give us life, and we will call on your name.

And Jesus uses it in the Gospel (Matthew 21)

Hear another parable. There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. 34 When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; 35 and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. 37 Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ 39 And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Cranach in 1582 painted the Protestant interpretation of this metaphor.

 

The painting once hung in Martin Luther’s parish church of St. Mary’s in Wittenberg. Cranach created this painting in memory of the Reformer Paul Eber, who lectured on theology in Wittenberg. Paul Eber, his wife, and  and his thirteen children kneel on the right, The ones in white died in infancy.

It is riposte to a statement that Pope Leo X had made in response to Luther’s posting of his Ninety-five Theses. The pope excommunicated Luther, tossing him out of the Church, in Exsurge, Domine exclaiming famously, “The wild boar from the forest seeks to destroy the vineyard.”

The Lord’s Vineyard is defined as the central motif of the composition by a surrounding fence, which separates it from the landscape behind. A path divides this vineyard into two sections: Catholic left and Protestant right.

14.4.2009: from Lucas Cranach the Younger, ‘Vineyard of the Lord’ (1569), Stadtkirche St-Marien, Wittenberg.

On the left side, the vineyard has withered from neglect and mismanagement. The pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and monks are hard at work … ripping out the vines and throwing rocks into the well. They are destroying the Good News of Jesus Christ with their false doctrines of the worship of Mary and the saints, purgatory, penance, indulgence, etc. They have ripped out the true salvation story contained in the words and person of Jesus Christ, who is the Vine to whom we are connected by faith. The monks are getting drunk and pulling up the vines.

But on the Protestant right, the vineyard is flourishing under Lutheran cultivation. Twelve reformers associated with Wittenberg, ranging from Martin Luther (d. 1546) to the young Matthias Flacius Illyricus (d. 1575), clear the land and prune and irrigate the new, healthy plants.

Luther in his black doctoral gown with a rake and other Reformers take care of the plants by watering them and pulling out the weeds. John Bugenhagen, Luther’s confessor and a contributor to the Augsburg Confession is in the center wearing a light-colored robe as he tills the soil.

Phillip Melanchthon, author of the Augsburg Confession,  is drawing the pure waters of the Scriptures (ad fontes).

In the foreground a procession of clerics, lead by the pope, has stepped beyond the fenced area to meet with Christ and the apostles. The Pope seems to be offering Jesus money to gain admission to heaven, and Jesus is refusing it. Perhaps it is an allusion to Tetzel’s (alleged ) couplet “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul out of purgatory springs” (Sobald der Pfennig im Kasten klingt, die Selle aus dem Fegfeuer springt), which he is supposed to have used to preach the sale of indulgences which would release souls from Purgatory.

Jesus, like the owner of the Vineyard, is carrying a bag with money with which he will pay the true workers in the vineyard, i. e., the Reformers.

This is the frame and epitaph.

In case the meaning of the painiting escaped you:

 

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