January 24, 2016

Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas.  Some of this information is original; much of it is "borrowed" from other sources such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org.  It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.  

About the Organ Music:

Shepherd Me, O God – Jeffrey Honore

Marty Haugen (b. 1950) was raised in the American Lutheran Church (ALC) in Minnesota, and also writes contemporary hymns and liturgies for the Lutheran church despite being a member the United Church of Christ. Despite being a non-Catholic, his music has found favor in the both liberal Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations. Haugen holds a B.A. degree in psychology from Luther College and an M.A. degree in Pastoral Studies from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. For the past 25 years Haugen has pursued a career as a liturgical composer and workshop presenter.

His best-known works are two Lutheran liturgies, "Holden Evening Prayer" and "Now the Feast and Celebration", and settings of the Catholic mass, the most widely-know being the Mass of Creation. He has also composed dozens of other works, including liturgy settings, choral arrangements, sacred songs, and hymns, including "Here in this Place (Gather Us In)", "Canticle of the Sun", "We Are Many Parts", "We Remember", and "Shepherd Me, O God," as well as several psalm settings and paraphrases.

“Shepherd Me, O God” is a responsorial which is used in alternatum with the reading or chanting of Psalm 23 from the Psalter.

Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants,
beyond my fears, from death into life.

Jeffrey Honoré has served as a choir director in churches of many different denominations and worked as an organist, trombonist and voice teacher. He is the liturgical music director of St. Matthias Parish in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and directs the archdiocesan choir. Jeffrey received the Vatican II Award for Distinguished Service in 1999.

Il Pastor Fido – G. F. Handel

Georg Friederich Handel (1685-1759) became a musician and composer despite objections from his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer. Handel studied music with Zachau, organist at the Halle Cathedral, and became an accomplished violinist and keyboard performer. He traveled and studied in Italy for some time and then settled permanently in England in 1713. Although he wrote a large number of instrumental works, he is known mainly for his Italian operas, oratorios (including “Messiah”, 1741), various anthems for church and royal festivities, and organ concertos, which he interpolated into his oratorio performances. He composed only three hymn tunes, one of which still appears in some modern hymnals. A number of hymnal editors, including Lowell Mason, took themes from some of Handel's oratorios and turned them into hymn tunes.

Il pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was set to a libretto by Giacomo Rossi based on the famed and widely familiar pastoral poem of the same name by Giovanni Battista Guarini. It had its first performance on 22 November 1712 at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, London.  The German-born Handel, after spending some of his early career composing operas and other pieces in Italy, settled in London, where in 1711 he had brought Italian opera for the first time with his opera Rinaldo. A tremendous success, Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. Rinaldo, a "magic" opera featuring enchantments, sorceresses and scenic ingenuity, was followed by Il Pastor Fido, a shorter and simpler opera, which was not a success with London audiences at its first performances. The substantial revision of 1734, with the famed castrato Carestini, was much more successful, and the subsequent revival the same year featured dances by celebrated French ballerina Marie Sallé and her troupe, with specially composed music by Handel.

Trumpet Tune in C – Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell (1659^-1695), was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest English composers; no other native-born English composer approached his fame until Edward Elgar.  As the son of a musician at Court, a chorister at the Chapel Royal, and the holder of continuing royal appointments until his death, Purcell worked in Westminster for three different Kings over twenty-five years. In addition to his royal duties Purcell also devoted much of his talent to writing operas, or rather musical dramas, and incidental stage music.  He also wrote chamber music in the form of harpsichord suites and trio sonatas, and became involved with the growing London public concert scene. One of the most important musical developments in Restoration London was the gradual establishment of regular public concerts.  The writing of incidental theater music was not to regarded as embarrassing or beneath Purcell’s dignity as Organist of Westminster Abbey. He was in the very midst of a tradition that not only permitted but actually encouraged well-known church musicians to provide lighter music for the theatre and opera.  Purcell contributed to every genre of music known in his day with true distinction. His anthems rank with the great music of the church; there are fine orchestral movements in his works for the theatre; his fantasies and sonatas and keyboard works contributed much to chamber music of his time; his one true opera, Dido and Aeneas, is an enduring masterpiece, and his other dramatic works (sometimes called operas) contain significant music; Purcell's songs are characterized by a great sensitivity to text. His reputation was so strong that a popular wedding processional was incorrectly attributed to Purcell for many years. The Trumpet Voluntary and Trumpet Tune were, in fact, written for harpsichord around 1700 by a British composer named Jeremiah Clarke.

A cibell, alternatively spelled cebell, is a gavotte-like musical piece in duple metre, predominantly heard in Baroque music. It is named after the chorus praising the goddess Cybele in Jean Baptiste Lully's Atys. Later cibells have been written either for voice or a variety of instruments, such as the trumpet or harpsichord. A typical example is Henry Purcell's Cebell for trumpet, strings and basso continuo in C major, which is frequently played as a trumpet tune for organ.

About the Choral Music:

Psalm 23 – Howard Goodall

Howard Goodall (b. 1958) is an award-winning composer of choral music, stage musicals, film and TV scores, is well known as a TV and radio broadcaster, and from 2007-11 was England’s first ever National Ambassador for Singing, leading a program (Sing Up) to improve the provision of group singing for all primary-age children. His best-known TV & Film themes & scores include Blackadder, The Gathering Storm, The Borrowers, Red Dwarf, Q.I., Mr Bean, Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, Mr Bean’s Holiday, Island Parish and The Vicar of Dibley. His score for the HBO film Into the Storm won him the Primetime EMMY award for Original Dramatic Score in 2009. In the theatre his musicals, from The Hired Man with Melvyn Bragg in 1984 to Love Story in 2010, have been performed in the West End and throughout world, winning many international awards.

His music has been commissioned to mark national ceremonies and memorials and his choral works, Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd and Love divine are featured on several platinum-selling CDs. His Eternal Light: A Requiem won  a Classical BRIT Award for Composer of the Year. In November 2011 Howard conducted the première in Westminster Abbey of his Every Purpose Under the Heaven: The King James Bible Oratorio, to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication. In June 2012 his Rigaudon formed part of the New Water Music that accompanied Queen Elizabeth II on her Diamond Jubilee Regatta.

For the past 15 years Howard has written and presented his own TV documentary series on the theory and history of music. For these he has been honored with a BAFTA, an RTS Judges’ Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Education in Broadcasting and over a dozen other international broadcast awards. He is recipient of the Sir Charles Grove/Making Music Prize for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, the Naomi Sargant Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in Broadcasting, the MIA/Classic fm Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music Education and in January 2011, he was appointed CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours for services to music education.

Many of you may recognize his setting of Psalm 23, as it was used to the opening and closing credits of The Vicar of Dibly.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,

he maketh me to lie down in green pastues.

            He leadeth me beside the still waters.

            Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

            I will fear no evil for you are with me, you will comfort me.

            Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

            And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

About the Hymns:

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” was published in 1887 with music by Anthony J. Showalter and lyrics by Showalter and Elisha Hoffman.  Elisha Hoffman (1839-1929) after graduating from Union Seminary in Pennsylvania was ordained in 1868. As a minister he was appointed to the circuit in Napoleon, Ohio in 1872. He worked with the Evangelical Association's publishing arm in Cleveland for eleven years. He served in many chapels and churches in Cleveland and in Grafton in the 1880s, among them Bethel Home for Sailors and Seamen, Chestnut Ridge Union Chapel, Grace Congregational Church and Rockport Congregational Church. In his lifetime he wrote more than 2,000 gospel songs including "Leaning on the everlasting arms" (1894). The fifty song books he edited include Pentecostal Hymns No. 1 and The Evergreen, 1873.

Anthony J. Showalter received letters from two friends who had lost their wives about the same time. He wrote back to express his sympathy, and included a verse of Scripture: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27 KJV). As he thought about that text, he wrote the music and refrain to this hymn. He asked Elisha Hoffman to write the stanzas. The hymn was first published in 1887 in The Glad Evangel for Revival, Camp, and Evangelistic Meetings, for which Showalter was an editor.  The text has three stanzas and a refrain. The theme of the text is the peace that comes from knowing that God will protect us, and how that knowledge removes our fears.

The King of Love My Shepherd Is

“The King of Love My Shepherd Is” is an Anthony G. Petti (1932-1985) adaption of the 1868 Sir Henry W. Baker (1821-1877) paraphrase of Psalm 23. Baker took Holy Orders in the Church of England in 1844. He was closely associated with hymnody in the Church. Besides writing, translating, and composing a number of hymns, his most notable role was as Ed­it­or-in-Chief of the first edition of Hymns An­cient and Mo­dern (1861) which sold over 60 million copies.  “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” has proven to be his most enduring work. It is said that as he lay dying his final words were those of the 3rd 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." It is sung to the tune: St. Columba, a traditional Irish melody.

Be Thou My Vision

"Be Thou My Vision" (Old Irish: Rop tú mo baile or Rob tú mo bhoile) is a traditional hymn from Ireland. The most well known English version, with some minor variations, was translated by Eleanor Hull and published in 1912. In 1919, the lyrics were set to the tune of the Irish folk tune "Slane", to which the song is sung to this day, both in English and Irish. The song dates from at least the eighth century, though the text dates to the sixth-century.

The original Old Irish text, "Rop tú mo Baile" is often attributed to Saint Dallán Forgaill in the 6th century. Eochaid Mac Colla (c. 530 – 598), better known as Saint Dallan or Dallán Forgaill (Old Irish: Dallán Forchella; Latin: Dallanus Forcellius), was an early Christian Irish poet whose writings include the "Amra Choluim Chille" ("Elegy of Saint Columba") and "Rop Tú Mo Baile" ("Be Thou My Vision").  Saint Dallan was Chief Ollam of Ireland (similar to poet laureate), as well as a scholar of Latin scriptural learning. He helped to reform the Bardic Order at the Convention of Drumceat.  He reputedly wrote Amra Choluim Chille, which he completed shortly after the death of Saint Columba in 597, because Columba had successfully saved poets from expulsion from Ireland at the assembly of Druim Cett in 575. The “Amra Choluim Chille,” is the earliest Irish poem that can be dated.

"Rop tú mo Baile" had been a part of Irish monastic tradition for centuries before its setting to music. It was translated from Old Irish into English by Mary Elizabeth Byrne in Ériu (the journal of the School of Irish Learning), in 1905. The English text was first versified by Eleanor Hull, in 1912, and is now the most common text used.