Mount Calvary Music: May 31, 2020: Whitsunday

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

May 31, 2020

10 A.M. Livecast on YouTube

Here is the Program.

Whitsunday

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Organ Prelude

Down Ampney, setting by Mark Sedio

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Organ Postlude

Prelude from Suite du Second Ton,  Jean-Adam Guillaume Guilain

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, Willan

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Anthems

Loquebatur variis linguis, Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

Loquebantur variis linguis Apostoli magnalia Dei, prout Spiritus Sanctus dabat eloqui illis, alleluia. Repleti sunt omnes Spiritu Sancto, et coeperunt loqui.

The Apostles spoke in many languages of the great works of God, as the Holy Spirit gave them the gift of speech, alleluia. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak.

Loquebantur variis linguis is an example of a polyphonic responsory as established by Taverner: both Tallis and Sheppard contributed a number of pieces to the genre. This motet for Pentecost (as with most responsories by Tallis) places the cantus firmus in the tenor part whilst the other six parts weave a vigorous web of polyphony around it culminating with a fulsome setting of the word ‘Alleluia’.

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Factus est repente, William Byrd (1540-1623)

Factus est repente de coelo sonus, tamquam advenientis spiritus vehementis ubi erant sedentes, alleluia; et repleti sunt omnes Spiritu Sancto, loquentes magnalia Dei, alleluia, alleluia.

Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming where they were sitting, alleluia; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking the wonderful works of God, alleluia, alleluia.

 

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Hymns

Come down, O Love divine (DOWN AMPNEY) is a translation by Richard Littledale (1833-1890) of a laude of Bianco of Siena (c. 1345-c. 1412). The text is intense—intensely personal and intensely passionate. The incipit (first line) invokes the Holy Spirit to “seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.” Classic images of Pentecost appear throughout the hymn, especially those that relate to fire. Stanza one mentions “ardor glowing” and “kindle . . . thy holy flame.” Stanza two continues the flame images with “freely burn,” “dust and ashes in its heat consuming.” The final stanza is a powerful statement of total commitment to love, to “create a place/wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.”

DOWN AMPNEY is a tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who named it after the village of his birth.

Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest (MENDON) is a translation by Edward Caswall (1814-1878) of Hrabanus Maurus’s (756-856) Veni Creator Spiritus. Caswall was an Anglican clergyman who became a Catholic and joined Newman at the Oratory. MENDON is a traditional German tune.

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Mount Calvary Music: May 24, 2020: Easter VII

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

Midori Tanaka, Organist

May 24, 2020

10 A.M. Livecast on YouTube

Here is the Program.

Easter VII

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Organ Prelude

Arioso, J. S. Bach

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Organ Postlude

Diademata, arranged by Jason Payne

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

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Anthems

Non vos relinquam orphanos, William Byrd (1540-1623)

Non vos relinquam orphanos. Alleluia.
Vado, et venio ad vos. Alleluia.
Et gaudebit, cor vestrum. Alleluia.

I will not leave you comfortless. Alleluia.
I go, and I will come to you. Alleluia.
And your heart shall rejoice. Alleluia.

This poignantly brief and tightly-knit motet from the 1607 Gradualia conceals its contrapuntal complexity (including beautifully interwoven alleluias) behind a deceptively simple, flowing texture. Byrd somehow manages to combine a feeling of the sadness of Christ’s parting from the Apostles with the joy he promises for them in the future.

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O Rex Gloriae, William Byrd (1540-1623)

O Rex gloriae, Domine virtutum,
qui triumphator hodie super omnes coelos ascendisti;
ne derelinquas nos orphanos,
sed mitte promissum Patris in nos,
spiritum veritatis. Alleluia.

O King of glory, Lord of all power,
who ascended to heaven on this day triumphant over all;
do not leave us as orphans,
but send us the Father’s promise,
the spirit of truth. Alleluia.

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Hymns

The Head that once was crowned with thorns (ST MAGNUS) was written by  Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), who based this hymn on Hebrews 2: 9-10 which speaks of Christ’s glory and the universal message of grace that is available because of Christ’s suffering: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

Kelly employs the poetic device of hypotyposis – a vivid description of a scene or events in words – that provides the singer with a glimpse of the splendor of heaven, which is contrasted with the suffering of the cross and the suffering of all who follow Christ on earth.

ST. MAGNUS first appeared in Henry Playford’s Divine Companion (1707 ed.) as an anonymous tune with soprano and bass parts. The tune was later credited to Jeremiah Clark  (c. 1670 – 1707), who was a chorister in the Chapel Royal and sang at the coronation of James II in 1685. Later he served as organist in Winchester College, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Chapel Royal. He shot himself to death in a fit of depression, apparently because of an unhappy romance. Supported by Queen Anne, Clark was a prominent composer in his day, writing songs for the stage as well as anthems, psalm tunes, and harpsichord works. One well-known piece, the Trumpet Voluntary, was long attributed to his contemporary Henry Purcell but is now recognized as Clark’s composition.

The tune is named for the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, built by Christopher Wren in 1676 on Lower Thames Street near the old London Bridge, England. ST. MAGNUS consists of two long lines, each of which has its own sense of climax. The octave leap in the final phrase has a stunning effect, like a vault in a Gothic cathedral.

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Crown Him with Many Crowns  (DIADEMATA) is by the Anglican Matthew Bridges (1800-1894), who wrote six verses of this hymn, which is based on Rev 1: 12: “and on His head were many crowns.” But Bridges converted to Catholicism in 1848 under the influence of John Henry Newman, and Godfrey Thring (1823-1903) thought the hymn was too Catholic, and wrote six more verses, so hymnals, depending on their leanings, use different selections of verses. In the 1940 Hymnal the first and last verses are by Bridges, the middle three by Thring.

The tune DIADEMATA is by Sir George Job Elvey (1816-1893), private organist to Queen Victoria, and is in the simple Handelian style.

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Mount Calvary Music: Ascension Thursday: May 21, 2020

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

Midori Tanaka, Organist

Ascension Thursday

May 21, 2020

Noon. Livestreamed on YouTube

Program

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Organ Prelude

Llanfair, setting by Alfred Fedak

Organ Postlude

Voluntary by Maurice Greene (1696-1755)

Dr Maurice Greene was one of England’s leading composers and musicians in a period that was dominated by Handel. His output of large and small scale choral works along with his organ voluntaries are some of the finest examples of music by English composers of the Georgian period and deserve a much wider audience.

The voluntary here is No I in a set of 12 published in 1780, some 25 years after his death. With its use of the cornet stop in the second movement, and the trumpet stop in the fourth, this could have been written for any of the three principle organs in the London churches and cathedral for which Maurice Greene was at various times the organist, namely, St Dunstan’s-in-the-West, St Andrew’s, Holborn, and St Paul’s Cathedral.

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

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Anthems

O clap your hands, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

O clap your hands together, all ye people, O sing unto God with a voice of melody. For the Lord is high, and to be feared, he is the great King of all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. He shall choose out an heritage for us, ev’n the worship of Jacob, whom he loved. God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. O sing praises, sing praises unto our God, O sing praises, sing praises unto the Lord our King. For God is the King of all the earth, sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen, God sitteth upon his holy seat. For God, which is highly exalted, doth defend the earth, as it were with a shield. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Orlando Gibbons is acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of his period; he wrote some 40 anthems, a variety of other church music, a book of madrigals, and a large quantity of keyboard and instrumental consort music. He was born in Oxford of a musical family, and sang as a boy in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where later, in 1599, he became a student. In about 1603 he moved to London to become a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. By the time of his death he was senior organist there, and also organist of Westminster Abbey. O clap your hands is one of the largest and most festive of Gibbons’ anthems, making vivid use of its eight-voice double choir layout. It was first performed in 1622 at a ceremony in Oxford when Gibbons and his friend William Heyther received the degree of Doctor of Music; one source states that Gibbons wrote the piece as a qualifying exercise for the degree. The music certainly offers convincing evidence of Gibbons’ impressive compositional skill, and it contains examples of such ‘learned devices’ as canon which would no doubt have gratified the examiners.

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Ascendit Dominus, Peter Philips (1560-1628)

Ascendit Deus in jubilatione, et Dominus in voce tubae. Dedit dona hominibus. Alleluia. Dominus in caelo paravit sedem suam. Alleluia.

God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. He gave gifts to men. Alleluia. The Lord hath prepared his seat in heaven. Alleluia.

Philips was born in 1560 or 1561, possibly in Devonshire or London. From 1572 to 1578 he began his career as a boy chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, under the aegis of the Catholic master of choristers, Sebastian Westcott (died 1582), who had also trained the young William Byrd some twenty years earlier. Philips must have had a close relationship with his master, as he lodged in his house up to the time of Westcote’s death, and was a beneficiary of his will.

In the same year (1582), Philips left England for good, like so many others for reasons of his Catholicism, and stayed briefly in Flanders before travelling to Rome where he entered the service of Alessandro Farnese (1520–1589), with whom he stayed for three years, and was also engaged as organist at the English Jesuit College. It was here that in February 1585 he met a fellow Catholic exile, Thomas, third Baron Paget (c. 1544–1590). Philips entered Paget’s service as a musician, and the two left Rome in March 1585, travelling over several years to Genoa, Madrid, Paris, Brussels and finally Antwerp, where Philips settled in 1590 and where Paget died the same year.

After settling, Philips married and gained a precarious living by teaching the virginals to children. In 1593 he went to Amsterdam “to sie and heare an excellent man of his faculties”, doubtless Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, whose reputation had by then long been made. On his way back, Philips was denounced by a compatriot for complicity in a plot on Queen Elizabeth’s life, and he was temporarily imprisoned at the Hague, where he probably composed the pavan and galliard Doloroso (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book nos. LXXX and LXXXI). Philips himself translated the accusations made against him during his trial, revealing that he could by then speak Dutch. He was acquitted and released without further charges.

In 1597 Philips was appointed organist to the chapel of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria at the Coudenberg Palace in Brussels
Philips’ fortunes took a turn for the better on his return, and in 1597 he was employed in Brussels as organist to the chapel of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria who had been appointed governor of the Low Countries in 1595. Here, after his wife – and child’s – deaths, he was ordained a priest in either 1601 or 1609 – opinions differ; in any case, he received a canonry at Soignies in 1610, and another at Béthune in 1622 or 1623. In his position at court, Philips was able to meet the best musicians of the time, including Girolamo Frescobaldi, who visited the Low Countries in 1607–1608, and his fellow-countryman John Bull, who had fled England on a charge of adultery. His nearest colleague, however, was Peeter Cornet (c. 1575–1633), organist to Archduchess Isabella, wife of Philips’ employer the archduke.

Philips died in 1628, probably in Brussels, where he was buried.

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Hymns

Hail the day that sees Him rise (LLANFAIR) by Charles Wesley (1707-1788) was published in 1739 in Hymns and Sacred Poems under the title “Hymn for Ascension-Day.”

The first and second stanzas employ apostrophe, a rhetorical device in which the poet addresses an absent or inanimate object. The first addresses the day of Jesus’ ascension, the second the gates of heaven which accept Christ in glory. The third emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus and his continued investment in the lives of those on earth, in comparison to his heavenly inheritance described in the previous lines. He is the continuous intercessor for mankind, imploring his assistance in the efforts of all to follow him in the ascent to the presence of God, leading finally to the beatific vision and eternal union with God.

LLANFAIR is usually attributed to Welsh singer Robert Williams (b. Mynydd Ithel, Anglesey, Wales, 1781; d. Mynydd Ithel, 1821), whose manuscript, dated July 14, 1817, included the tune. Williams lived on the island of Anglesey. A basket weaver with great innate musical ability, Williams, who was blind, could write out a tune after hearing it just once. A rounded bar form (AABA) tune, LLANFAIR features the common Welsh device of building a melody on the tones of the tonic triad. The tune is in a major key. The melismas give fitting shape to the “alleluias.”

See the conqueror mounts in triumph (IN BABILONE) was written Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885), the nephew of the poet William Wordsworth. Christopher Wordsworth was an athlete, classicist, poet, and Anglican bishop of Lincoln.

The text views the ascending Lord being sung to by angels at heaven’s gates, recalls Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, and looks forward to our reign with Christ in glory. The text emphasizes not only the event of the Ascension but also its meaning for us: in Christ’s ascension, “we by faith can see” our own. Our shared destiny is to be raised with Jesus: “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence”(2 Cor 4:13-14).

IN BABILONE is a traditional Dutch melody that appeared in Oude en Nieuwe Hollantse Boerenlities en Contradansen (Old and New Dutch Peasant Songs and Country Dances), c. 1710. Ralph Vaughan Williams  discovered this tune as arranged by Julius Rontgen (b. Leipzig, Germany, 1855; d. Utrecht, the Netherlands, 1932) and included it in The English Hymnal (1906), from which it gained widespread use. It is a rounded barform tune (AABA).

An important Dutch pianist, composer, conductor, scholar, and editor, Rontgen studied music in Leipzig with well-known German teachers. In 1877 he moved to Amsterdam, where he first taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory. In 1886 he became conductor of the Society for the Advancement of Musical Art. He returned to the Conservatory as director in 1918, and then retired in 1924 to devote himself to composition. He was a friend of leading composers of his day, including Liszt, Brahms, and Grieg, and wrote a biography of Grieg. Rontgen’s compositions include symphonies, chamber works, operas, and film scores.

 

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Mount Calvary Music: May 17. 2020: Easter VI

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This mass will be livecast at 10 A.M. Sunday May 17, 2020.

Here is the program.

The apostle Philip healing a cripple in Samaria. 

Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, Antwerp 1593-1678)

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

Midori Tanaka, Organist

May 17, 2020

10 A.M. Livecast on YouTube

Easter VI

Rogation Sunday

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Organ Prelude

Voluntary II by William Boyce

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Organ Postlude

Hyfrydol, arranged by Charles Callahan

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

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Anthems

Rise up, my love, Healey Willan (1880-1968)

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear upon the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come. Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.

The text for today’s offertory anthem “Rise up my love, my fair one” is taken from that strange and beautiful book dwelling almost exclusively on romantic love, the Song of Solomon. Although the origin of this book is obscure, perhaps coming from the ancient Israelite marriage liturgy, it was read very early on as an allegory of God’s love for Israel and in the Christian era as Christ’s love for the church. “Rise up my love, my fair one,” can be heard equally plausibly as Christ offering redemption to the sinner or as the blossoming of new hope through forgiveness at a turning point in a romantic relationship. Healey Willan (1880-1968) was born in England and attended a choir school where he studied harmony, counterpoint, and organ. From an Anglo-Catholic background, he became an authority on plainchant in English translation and many of his compositions have chant-like melodies with free meter.

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If ye love me, Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the spirit of truth.

“If Ye Love Me” is a setting for an a cappella choir of four voice parts, and it is a noted example of Reformation compositional style, essentially homophonic but with some elaboration and imitation. Typically for Anglican motets of this period, it is written in an ABB form, with the second section repeated.

The anthem was chosen to be sung when Pope Benedict XVI attended Evensong at Westminster Abbey during his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, and also at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle in 2018

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Hymns

Love’s redeeming work is done  (SAVANNAH) by Charles Wesley is a cento composed of stanzas from his hymn “Christ the Lord is risen to-day.” Books originating in the Church of England tradition use the tune SAVANNAH, first found in England in John Wesley’s A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music, as they are commonly sung at the Foundery (1742), with the name HERNHUTH, which indicates its origins in 18th-century Moravian books. The name SAVANNAH comes from the Moravian settlement at Savannah, Georgia. Wesley accompanied the Moravians on their voyage from England to Savannah and was deeply impressed by their calm and faith during a storm that panicked the sailors.

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Alleluia! sing to Jesus (HYFRYDOL) was written by William Chatterton Dix (1837—1898). Revelation 5:9 describes this eschatological scene of joy and glory: “And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slain, and with Your blood You purchased for God members of every tribe and language and nation.’”  Dix invites us to sing that new song of praise to our ascended Savior. This hymn is a declaration of Jesus’ victory over death and His continued presence among His people. By complex and interlocking allusions to Scripture, it presents a very high view of the Eucharist presence: Jesus is both “Priest and Victim” in this feast. Jesus, having triumphed over sin and death, “robed in flesh” has ascended above all the heavens, entering “within the veil” to the very throne of God. Dix sees in the Eucharist the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to be with us evermore.

HYFRYDOL (the word means, ‘cheerful’ or ‘melodious’), by Rowland Huw Prichard (1811-1887) was set for three voices, there being still at that time those who thought that there was something improper in four-part singing. The tune is in the tenor until line 7, in which the tenor is silent and the melody is in the upper part. The tune shows some sophistication in its construction. The melody lies within a fifth (tonic to dominant) until, at the climax in the last line, it rises to the sixth degree. The repetition of the first two lines in lines 3 and 4, and the powerful sequential construction of line 5 (characteristic of Welsh hymn melodies) suggest, perhaps, that the larger structure will conform to the common AABA form, but this expectation is defeated by new material for lines 7 (which is also strongly sequential) and 8 (which draws on the sequential motif from line 5).

 

Rogation Days

In the year 470 a French bishop called for three days of prayer, fasting, and processions in order to protect his earthquake-ravaged diocese from further tremors. He scheduled these days of prayer and penance for the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preceding Ascension Day (for more on penance, see Repentance). This observance spread throughout France and reached Rome around the ninth century. In Rome the pope combined these ceremonies with those already occurring on April 25. He mandated that the most important religious services take place on April 25 and the other, lesser services on the three days preceding the Ascension. English speakers call these four days of prayer and processions the Rogation Days. The word rogation comes from the Latin word rogare, meaning “ask” or “plead.” April 25 is known as the Major Rogation, and the other days as the Minor Rogations. St. Mark’s Day is also observed on April 25, although this observance is not related to the Rogation Days. In addition, although the Sunday before Ascension Day was not one of the original Rogation Days, the spirit of the Rogation Days influenced the way in which it was observed and inspired people to call it Rogation Sunday.

Beating the Bounds

In medieval England the Rogation Days were observed with processions that began in the local church and proceeded to outline the boundaries of the parish, pausing occasionally for the recitation of prayers. Priests and cross-bearers led these long walks in the countryside. Accordingly, the English sometimes called the Rogation Days the “Walking Days” from the Old Anglo-Saxon name for the observance, Gang Daegas, meaning approximately “Day of Going About.” They also called them the “Cross Days,” a reference to the cross carried at the head of the processions. Scholars trace the custom of prayerful perimeter-walking back to the Roman festival of Ambargalia, in which the Romans paced the perimeter of their fields asking the gods to bless them with fertility. In any case, those who participated in the Rogation Day walks were expected to fast before the procession, and to treat the event as a sober religious exercise rather than a holiday in the countryside. Nevertheless, people tended to turn the event into an expression of pride in their parish. On occasion, an excess of “team spirit” led some parish groups to attack others that they encountered.

After the Reformation some of Protestant denominations attempted to eliminate folk customs associated with the Rogation Days. In England Rogation processions were curtailed, though not completely eliminated. At a later date, however, people revived them. Some writers believe that the processions served an important social as well as religious function by teaching youth the parish boundary lines in an era when maps were not in common circulation. Youngsters accompanying the procession were often bumped against stone boundary markers, tossed into streams that divided one parish from another, or forced to climb hedges, walls, or even houses built over the boundary lines. Some writers speculate that this painful process gave rise to the folk name for the custom, “beating the bounds.” Presumably this ordeal left the boys with a permanent if somewhat unpleasant memory of the exact location of the parish boundaries. On the other hand, the name may come from the common custom of beating the boundary markers with wooden wands so as to impress their location upon the memory. Indeed some parish processions did not subject participants to painful ordeals other than the walk itself, which could be quite taxing. In many locations adults and children who took part in these excursions were rewarded with coins, sweets, fruit, nuts, bread, cheese, or ale along the way.

The beating of the bounds during the Rogation Days reached the height of its popularity around 1700 and then entered a long, slow decline. Folklorists attribute this decline to the enclosure of what had once been open fields, as well as waning belief in the effectiveness of the processions as a means of finding favor with God. In recent years these old Rogationtide processions have experienced a modest revival. Priests lead parish children in yearly Ascension Day processions in the university town of Oxford. In Chudleigh, near Exeter, ambitious parishioners beat the bounds of their parish every seven years. The expedition takes the party over a twenty-one-mile route, requiring at least one volunteer to swim the river Teign and the entire party to board a bus in order to cross a busy highway. The arduous nature of the task seems to have inspired the seven-year delay between processions.

The hobbits who beat the bounds of the Shire, as Tolkien explained, are called bounders.

 

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All Shall Be Well and Feminine Intuition

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Women, considering their slack of theological education until recent times, have played a disproportionate role in propagating the doctrine of universal salvation.

Lady Julian of Norwich and St. Macrina spoke of the possibility universal salvation. Women were prominent in universalist circles in the nineteenth century, and Universalists were the first denomination   to ordain women.

Robin A. Perry in A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century examines Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911), an exponent of universal salvation.

Her tender feelings toward her children shaped the way she thought of the bliss of heaven and of the love of God: “I think this feeling has taught me more of what God’s feelings are towards his children than anything else in the universe…. In fact most of my ideas of the love and goodness of God have come from my own experience as a mother.” She conceives of a mother’s love as a reflection of God’s love, for humans are divine images. God’s love, therefore, cannot be inferior to a mother’s own love for her children — for the latter is only a pale reflection of the former —it must infinitely exceed it.

(A father’s love is also like this, as we see in the Parable of the Loving Father and the Prodigal Son. Shortly after my first child was born, I held him in my arms and I suddenly felt such a river of pure and sweet love for him bursting out of my heart that I realized that that love could not have come from my selfish and sinful heart, but was coming from God through me, perhaps, I hope purifying me. But the thought that he could be forever lost is unendurable. And such is the feeling God has about us. He would die one the cross and descend into hell lest anyone be lost)

For Friedrich Schleiermacher religion was the unmediated feeling of unity with the absolute through discovery of the infinite in the finite, the Anschauen des Universums. Women, who have a greater capacity for feeling, in the traditional Aristotelian analysis, therefore have the primary religious experience. Feelings in this sense are not just emotions, but a deep sense prior to analytic reason, such as a sense of the meaning of beauty or of the mysterious correspondence of human mathematical formulae to the exterior world.

Schleiermacher noticed that women have a more continuous emotional and religious development than men, whose lives are characterized by struggle and discontinuity and conversion, Sturm und Drang. (He may have been thinking of Augustine in contrast to Monica.) In Schleiermacher’s Christmas Eve, A Dialogue (of the Platonic variety), the characters discuss men, women, and Christmas.

Leonhardt claims that men are more Christian, because “Christianity is always speaking of a conversion, a change of heart, a new life.” Karoline replies, “Christ himself…was not converted.”  Christmas, Eduard continues, is the celebration of the immediate union of the human and divine, in which no conversion is needed. Women, both because of their greater unity of life and their experience of unity with the child, have a stronger consciousness of the unity of the divine and human,  and that is the reason, Eduard continues, “why they are so much more fervently and unreservedly attached to the church.” The heart has reasons which the mind knows not, and is a better guide to ultimate reality than reason is.

Women have a greater sense of unity with other people because of their capacity for motherhood. Being able to carry another person nine months under her heart gives a woman a much stronger sense of human connection than a man has, and it continues with nursing. It would follow that women are more likely to believe in universal salvation: the thought that anyone, especially a child (and we are all children of someone), could be lost forever is unendurable.

This of course does not prove the truth of the doctrine, but it suggests one reason why it did not trouble theologians (99%+ male, and mostly celibate) with few exceptions. Were there any women theologians who held the strict Calvinist doctrine of double predestination?

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Mount Calvary Music: Easter V: May10, 2020

in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music 1 Comment

This mass will be livestreamed on YouTube at 10 A.M. Sunday May 10, 2020

Here is the program.

The Legend of St. Stephen: The Appointment of the First Deacons (Photo by Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

Midori Tanaka, Organist

May 3, 2020

10 A.M. Livecast on YouTube

Easter V

______________________

Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

___________________

Anthems

Christ rising again, Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

Christ rising again from the dead now dieth not.
Death from henceforth hath no pow’r upon him.
For in that he died he died but once to put away sin;
but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
And so likewise, count yourselves dead unto sin,
but living unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Christ is risen again,
the first fruits of them that sleep.
For seeing that by man came death,
by man also cometh the resurrection of the dead.
For as by Adam all men do die,
so by Christ all men shall be restored to life. Alleluia

Christ rising again is an extended work, divided into two clear parts and based on a text used only at Morning Prayer on Easter Day. Tallis’s setting shows his fluency at five-part imitative writing with some passages of strong rhythmic contrast, such as at the words ‘by man also cometh the resurrection of the dead’. The anthem ends with a rising sequence of Alleluias, underscoring the resurrection theme of the text.

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God be in my head, Henry Walford Davies (1869-1941)

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.

The first trace of this very moving verse is in a French text dating from ca. 1490:

Jesus soit en ma teste et mon entendement.
Jesus soit en mes yeulx et mon regardement.
Jesus soit en ma bouche et mon parlement.
Jesus soit en mon coeur et en mon pensement.
Jesus soit en ma vie et mon trépassement. Amen.

The English text is found in a Book of Hours printed by Robert Pynson at London, Hore beate marie/virginis ad vsum in/signis ac prelare ec/clesie Sarum (Salisbury) in 1514. It was then printed in a Sarum Primer of 1558. It must have become well known: it was printed with slight alteration in John Cosin*’s A Collection of Private Devotions in the Practice of the Ancient Church (1627).

It was revived early in the 20th century and was given many tunes, the most lasting being the one by Walford Davies. Davies (1869-1941) was a distinguished church musician and music professor, and was Master of the King’s Music – but at the same time worked at the grass roots, with choirs, community music, broadcasting, hymn book editing, adjudicating at festivals, and the writing of stirring military melodies.

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Hymns

Christ the lord is risen today (VICTIMAE PASCHALI) is a translation by Jane Elizabeth Leeson (1807-1881) of the Easter sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, attributed to St. Wipo of Burgundy (c. 1000). The Council of Trent eliminated scores of sequences in the Roman liturgy. This was one of the four that survived. Leeson first joined the charismatic Catholic Apostolic Church (Irvingites) and later became a Roman Catholic.

Be joyful Mary, heavenly Queen is a translation of Regina coeli, iubila, an anonymous 17th century hymn. The tune was written by Johann Leisentritt (1527-1586), and published in his Catholicum Hymnologium Germanicum in 1584.

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Some Thoughts on Universal Salvation

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Ilaria Ramelli in A Larger Hope?, Volume 1: Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich shows that universal salvation was taught by numerous Fathers of the church, including those recognized as saints and that the origin was not in pagan philosophy or Gnosticism but in reflections upon Scripture.

I cannot judge the scholarly evidence, but she seems to make her case.

What puzzles me is the hostility to the possibility of universal salvation. Origen and others thought it should be taught only to the mature, and Douglas Farrow holds this against them. Many feared that the doctrine could lead to moral laxity; but that does not mean it is false.  As Paul discovered, his preaching of freedom from the Law could and did lead to moral laxity. The misunderstanding of a doctrine and its misuse does not call the truth or orthodoxy of the doctrine into question.

I certainly hope there will be universal salvation and it seems to follow the logic of Scripture. I have just finished reading Richard Alter’s translation of the prophets, and the constant theme is that the Lord is angry a little while, but His mercy endures forever.

As some have noticed, the doctrine of universal salvation is in part motivated by a desire to provide a theodicy, but it only moves the question back to the evils and sorrows of time. Even if all will be well, all is not well in this world. It is very not well, sometimes it is a horror.

I have wondered why God did not avoid all this suffering by creating all rational creatures free from death and with the perfect beatific vision. They would see God as He is, the Absolute Good; therefore, their wills would freely and permanently be moved to love Him.

What would be missing if God had avoided the slaughterhouse of history, with the suffering and torments of animals and humans?

I am looking at it above my computer: the Cross. Without a world in which the nothingness of evil gnawed at the goodness of creation, the Son of God would never have become incarnate, died for us, and rose again, unleashing the power of his resurrection through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Or as the Exultet proclaims: o felix culpa, o happy fault, o truly necessary sin of Adam, that led to such and so great a Redeemer.

Does this justify the ways of God with man? That God Himself has shared in our sufferings? Ratzinger once said that all theodicies sound hollow to a person in anguish, that the only theodicy is the cross. What did God wish to accomplish that could be accomplished only through the suffering of his creatures, whom he loved, and of his own Son. Perhaps we will not know that until the end beyond the end, when Christ turns over the kingdom to his Father.

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The Hazards of Being Male

in Coronavirus No Comments

British Columbia has published its statistics on COVID-19 by age and gender:

 

Blacks are dying at twice the rates of whites; but men are dying at an even far higher rate than women. In both cases the immediate cases are not at all clear. But clearly being male is a far greater risk factor than being black. The ones who are doomed are older black men; they have all three major risk factors.

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Genetic Component in COVID-19 Deaths?

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Why are blacks disproportionately dying from COVID-19?

AMP Research summarizes:

For each 100,000 Americans (of their respective group), about 35 Blacks have died from COVID-19, a mortality rate of more than double the rate for Latinos (15) and Asians (15). Blacks’ mortality rate is 2.6 times that of Whites (13).

Note that Latinos, who also suffer from poverty, lack of health care, discrimination, crowded housing, etc. have a lower death rate than blacks, and that the rates for Latinos, Asians, and Whites are about in the same range.

Could there possibly be a genetic component? That people who have African ancestry are more susceptible to this virus?

Why do Latinos, who suffer from most of the disadvantages that blacks have, have a death rate less than half that of blacks? I suspected that a greater sociability (which blacks share with groups like the Hasidim for similar historical reasons) might be a major factor, as it is with the Hasidim. But do Latinos observe social distancing more than blacks?

Genetic differences among population groups are a forbidden subject, but blacks have sickle cell anemia and those who live in northern climates suffer the consequences of Vitamin D deficiency, and Jews have Tay Sachs syndrome. Could something similar be happening with COVID-19? In which case the black community needs special protection. Or is there something that blacks are doing or suffering from that Latinos are not doing or suffering from? These are urgent questions.

Could it be diet? Blacks tend to like the traditional Southern diet (soul food) and fats food, both of which (alas!) are bad for you. From my sketchy observations, Latinos seem to still like traditional diets heavy on beans. But, according to SaludAmerica,  Latinos suffer from obesity:

Latino adults were more obese (47%) than their black (46.8%), white (37.9%), and Asian (12.7%) peers.

The New York Times reports of one facility:

Nearly 60 percent of those hospitalized at the Northwell facilities had high blood pressure, 40 percent were obese, and about one-third had diabetes. Smaller numbers of patients suffered from other chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, kidney disease and chronic respiratory illnesses.

Other smaller reports from New York City area hospitals have also highlighted obesity as a complicating risk factor. One hypothesis is that obesity causes chronic, low-grade inflammation that can lead to an increase in circulating, pro-inflammatory cytokines, which may play a role in the worst Covid-19 outcomes.

Obesity contributes to diabetes and high blood pressure. Perhaps that is why the Navajo nation has been so hard hit, despite the extremely low density of population. Native Americans had no problem with obesity until the Federal giveaways of refined flour, lard, and sugar during the Depression changed their diet.

Native American adults are 50% more likely to be affected by obesity than non-Hispanic whites, according to a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Native Americans also are twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to have diabetes, the CDC says.

Diabetes and obesity are linked; more than 90% of people with Type 2 diabetes are affected by some degree of obesity, according to the Obesity Action Coalition. Excess weight can make the cells of muscle and other tissue more resistant to self-produced insulin.

This chart from London suggests that genes are at most a small factor. Blacks in the UK do not have the same dietary history as American blacks. So perhaps it is neither genes nor obesity but diet. It seems to be something that affects American blacks but not Latinos or UK blacks. Are there any other candidates but diet?

 

 

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Mount Calvary Music: May 3, 2020

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This mass will be live streamed on YouTube.

Here is the program.

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Dr. Allen Buskirk, Choir Director and Cantor

Midori Tanaka, Organist

May 3, 2020

10 A.M. Livecast on YouTube

Easter IV

Good Shepherd Sunday

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Common

Missa de S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

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Anthems

Psalm 23, Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

The Lord is my shepherd;
therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture
and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul and bring me forth in
the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil,
thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Thou shalt prepare a table before me
against them that trouble me;
thou hast anointed my head with oil,
and my cup shall be full.
But thy lovingkindness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

This setting of Psalm 23 is from the larger composition Requiem. Although written in 1936, Requiem was not released for performance until 1980, held back by Howells following the death of his son Michael in 1935. Michael contracted polio during an epidemic and died three days later. It is a harmonious and deeply Romantic composition, but restrained and it is at these moments we realise how affected he was by his loss.

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Beati quorum via, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Beati quorum via integra est, qui ambulant in lege Domini.
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.
Beati quorum via (Psalm 119: 1) is a restrained, pastoral prayer. Stanford’s instrumental treatment is manifested in the skilful sonata structure whose two contrasting thematic subjects are defined by the opening words (‘Beati quorum via’) and the secondary phrase (‘qui ambulant in lege Domini’). Both ideas, in the recapitulation, are subsequently reworked with consummate legerdemain.
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Hymns
The King of love my shepherd is (ST COLUMBA) was written by Sir Henry Williams Baker (1821–1877). It is notable for its skillful meter, and its well-managed rhyme scheme of single and double rhymes, which control and shape the emotion very beautifully. Baker gave an Anglican slant to Psalm 23, interpreting it as a psalm of love and care, but stressing these qualities as evidenced in the Eucharist. The spread table of verse 5 becomes the altar on which the elements are displayed, and the delight comes as the believer takes the ‘pure chalice’; the unction, or anointing (from 1 John 2: 27), while bestowing grace in a spiritual sense, also has suggestions of a rite. This verse spreads its meaning through the whole hymn, allowing the words of Psalm 23 to acquire an extra significance: so that the last verse suggests that the length of days of a person’s life can be spent, figuratively, ‘within thy house for ever’, in the service and under the influence of the church, and then later in heaven. The singer can reflect back, and conclude that the first verses suggest the ransomed soul, sought out in love and rescued from sin (Baker’s version of ‘he restoreth my soul’). The beautiful use of the shepherd metaphor in verse 3, as the shepherd carries the lamb gently on his shoulder, is an illustration of the tenderness of Baker’s work: these lines were the last words spoken by Baker on his deathbed.

Baker’s name is chiefly known as the promoter and editor of ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern,’ first published in 1861. To this collection Baker contributed many original hymns, besides several translations of Latin hymns. In 1868 an ‘Appendix’ to the collection was issued, and in 1875 the work was thoroughly revised. The hymnal was compiled to meet the wants of churchmen of all schools, but strong objections were raised in many quarters to Sir Henry Baker’s own hymn addressed to the Virgin Mary, ‘Shall we not love thee. Mother dear?’

Sir Henry Baker held the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, and at his death the baronetcy devolved on a kinsman.

Because the compilers of the 1906 English Hymnal were denied permission to use Dykes’s original tune DOMINUS REGIT ME, 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). The two most notable improvements Vaughan Williams made in the hymn tune known as ST. COLUMBA (Here is Willan’s Prelude) 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. The 3/4 Irish melody reinforces the experiential, affective, and narrative elements of the text and accentuates the iambic stresses of the text.
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 I know that my redeemer lives (DUKE ST) is by the English Baptist Samuel Medley (1738-1799). The hymn uses a simple repetition of “He lives” to celebrate the resurrected Jesus who rules our lives and gives us eternal life.
DUKE STREET is by John Warrington Hatton  (1710 -1793) was christened in Warrington, Lancashire, England. He supposedly lived on Duke Street in Lancashire, from where his famous tune name comes. Very little is known about Hatton, but he was most likely a Presbyterian, and the story goes that he was killed in a stagecoach accident.
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A Puzzling Chart

in Coronavirus 1 Comment Tags:

New Orleans: Mardi Gras

New York: Dense, immigrants, public transportation

Detroit: very low density, no public transportation, poor

San Francisco: Dense, over-crowded housing, immigrants legal and illegal, public transportation, cool, wet climate that viruses like.

Did an early shut-down protect San Francisco? Or is something else going on?

 

 

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Pandemics and Borders

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New Zealand intends to eliminate the new coronavirus by closing its borders. Returning citizens will be required to quarantine. And others? Nothing has been said, but either they have to be quarantined (For how long? At whose expense?), or they will reintroduce the virus. There goes tourism.

Travel from other countries has been a vector for the virus in the US, which is why New York has been so badly hit, and will continue to be so even if community transmission within the US falls. Will everyone arriving on an international flight be tested or quarantined?

Central and South America have inadequate or nonexistent public health systems, and leaders such as Ortega in Nicaragua and Bolsinaro in Brazil who deny the existence of the crisis. The virus will become endemic in these countries. Migrants will carry it over the border and re-introduce it to already weakened immigrant communities. Unless, that is, the southern border of the US is really sealed.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire maintained a twenty-mile deep border with the Ottoman Empire, in part as a defense, but in part as a measure to exclude epidemics. Spies reported on the outbreak of epidemics. Trade continued under severe quarantine measures. Violators were summarily executed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire kept the epidemics away and allowed free movement within the empire.

So let us hear the Democrats’ proposals for open borders, which would be a death sentence for millions of Americans, especially blacks, Hispanics, and the elderly. Democrats from the Upper East Side can hide in their second or third or fourth homes. The poor and elderly cannot.

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My Wife’s Cousin and the Easter Parade

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The Rev. Francis. Effingham Lawrence is my wife’s second cousin four times removed. He was a High Church Episcopal clergyman who lived from 1827-1879. From 1839 to his death he was assistant and then rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in Manhattan, a church founded by Dr. William Muhlenberg, an Evangelical Catholic.

Muhlenberg, like the Ritualists of England, used Catholic paraphernalia to appeal to the poor, who found bare churches and hour-long Calvinist sermons a touch on the cold side. He thought that the poor should be served with grace and beauty.

The Church of the Holy Communion was the first church to use flowers on the altar, and after the Easter service the congregation in procession brought the flowers to the sick in the hospital the church had founded. This seems to have been the origin of the New York custom of the Easter Parade.  Other churches took up the custom of Easter flowers; as Francis Lawrence said in thus funeral sermon of 1877, it was –“a practice now indeed carried to such a silly and wasteful extreme, many churches seeming rather flower-shops at Easter than Sanctuaries of the Almighty, that he almost regretted that he had introduced the custom.”

And the Easter Parade no longer was in service to the poor:

As Irving Berlin’s song has it in the Judy Garland and Fred Astaire Easter Parade:

In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade.
I’ll be all in clover and when they look you over,
I’ll be the proudest fellow in the Easter parade.
On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us,
And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure.

The Baltimore Sun in 1927 reported that 100,000 Baltimoreans participated in the Easter Parade on Charles St. The women wore wore fashionable black and white, but the men added color with their morning clothes and top hats or grey suits.

The parade was still a custom in 1950:

 

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Thoughts during a Lockdown

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Like almost all Catholics, I find the closure of churches painful. This will be first time in the 73 years of my life that I have not been to church on Easter. But we are not the first Catholics to suffer thus. Over the centuries churches have been closed for epidemics. St. Charles Borromeo closed the churches of Milan for two years during the plague. Italian cities under quarantine would have altars at intersections so that people could see mass. At that time communion was a rare event for the laity.

Church buildings present unique hazards. They are enclosed spaces, which rarely are designed to have significant fresh air ventilation. Several hundred people in such a space, just breathing, can transmit respiratory infections. The hazard increases when they are speaking, and increases even more when they are singing, forcing air from deep in the lungs and spitting droplets when they enunciate consonants. This environment continues for an hour, an hour and a half. Supermarkets and big box stores do not have these specific hazards, nor do people linger in them for an hour.

The problem will continue for a long time. Some people have the virus, have no symptoms, but can transmit it to others. Some hazards can be lessened. Our church will offer communion only by intinction. But the problem of a large number of people in an enclosed space will remain. I am a male over 70 and therefore in a group most at hazard. Will I ever be able to go to church again? Perhaps I can find a cavernous cathedral with a sparsely attended early mass and do the Catholic thing of sitting in the rear. It will a less intimate than watching a live streamed mass, during which for the first time in years I can hear everything the priest is saying.

I do not know what the solution is for vulnerable populations. Should we simply accept the danger? I have revised my will and am contemplating how to phrase a Do Not Resuscitate order. Even if I survived a heart attack and coma, I would probably be bedridden for the rest of my life. I would prefer to have my purgatory place less of a burden on others.

After 9/11, the United States was suddenly aware of its vulnerability and mortality. The national mood was in a fluid state and could have crystalized into an awareness of our dependence on our Creator. The churches in general offered nothing; the president told us to go shopping. We have another crisis that makes us aware of our vulnerability and mortality. But now the churches are closed. But they have the internet and the possibility of reaching beyond their active members. I do not want the churches to say we are being afflicted for specific sins, whether abortion or racism. But we should be gently but firmly reminded that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that our life is short, and ways of life can be gone with the wind, and we can be one with Nineveh and Tyre. Such sobriety makes us humble, and God does not despise the humble.

But is Pope Francis doing this? He has an idée fixe about the environment, and says Nature is mad at us and has sent the virus. This is not the response of a Christian, and is also nonsense, because the virus has nothing to do with climate change or environmental damage. Alas, our pope is shallow and erratic. I pray that God raise up prophets and preachers who will transmit to us the message He wants us to hear in this world-wide crisis. And I am sure it is not Go Shopping.

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Mount Calvary: Lent IV: March 22, 2020: Music

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Mount Calvary will livestream its mass at 10 AM on Sunday March 22 at this YouTube channel. The arrangement of the church permits the presence of a small choir, so the mass will be a sung High Mass with this music. There will be no congregation.

Jesus heals the man born blind

Mount Calvary Church

Lent IV

Laetare Sunday

_________

Common

Missa de Angelis

__________

Anthems

Come, Let’s rejoice, John Amner (1579-1641)

Come let’s rejoice unto the Lord: let us make joy to God our Saviour. Let us approach to his presence in confession: and in psalms let us make joy to him.

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God so loved the world,  John Stainer (1840-1901)

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

It is from the oratorio The Crucifixion: A Meditation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer. John Stainer  was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.

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Hymns

When I survey the wondrous cross (ROCKINGHAM) is by Isaac Watts (1674—1748). When preparing for a communion service in 1707, when he himself was thirty-three years old, Watts wrote this personal expression of gratitude for the love that Christ revealed by His death on the cross. Watts echoes Paul: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6: 14). The third stanza repeats almost verbatim phrases from St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s hymn “Salve mundi salutare”:  such sentiments would be felt by any sincere Christian who meditated upon the crucifixion.

Edward Miller (1735-1807) adapted ROCKINGHAM from an earlier tune, TUNEBRIDGE, which had been published in Aaron Williams’s A Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature (c. 1780).  The tune title refers to a friend and patron of Edward Miller, the Marquis of Rockingham, who served twice as Great Britain’s prime minister. 

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Nearer my God to Thee (BETHANY) is by the Unitarian Sarah Flower Adams (1805-1848). It is based on the story of Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28:10-22), and presents a potent combination of two themes: human suffering (the cross in stanza 1 is not the Cross of Jesus, but a cross that has to be borne) and the merciful presence of God. The stone of Jacob’s pillow becomes the stony griefs out of which the commemorative stone of Bethel will be raised, marking the place where he had his vision of the angels passing up and down between earth and heaven. The hymn rejoices in God, either through sorrow:

...Out of my stony griefs
  Bethel I'll raise:
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to thee,
  Nearer to thee!

or through the joy of flying upward to God:

Or if on joyful wing
  Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
  Upwards I fly,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to thee,
  Nearer to thee!

The legend is that it was played by the band on the Titanic as the ship was sinking.

The tune  BETHANY is by the Presbyterian Lowell Mason (1792-1872), the father of American church music.

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Rock of ages (TOPLADY) has been a stay and comfort in days of peril, and in the hour of death. No other English hymn can be named which has laid so broad and firm a grasp upon the English-speaking world. It was written by the Rev. Augustus Toplady (1740–1778), an Evangelical priest of the Church of England, who was first a friend of John Wesley but who quarreled with him over predestination.

The tune TOPLADY is by the American Thomas Hastings (1784-1872). As a teenager, Hastings led a village choir, taught singing, and was active in the musical society of Oneida County. By 1832 he had moved to New York City where he conducted the Bleeker Street Church and by 1858 the University of New York awarded him an honorary Doctorate in Music. He composed over 600 tunes used for hymns.

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