October 28, 2018

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:

Now We Offer - Jeffrey Honore

The composition and dissemination of music from cultures in the southern hemisphere began in earnest in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1960s following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) whose documents acknowledged the “genius of all races” and encouraged congregational singing.  Compositions in vernacular musical styles followed. Early folk Masses paved the way for reinforcing cultural identity through congregational music. Even though the forms of the Mass are set, composers found ways to contextualize them for their own situations.  Spanish language Masses reflected the dance forms, musical instruments, and folkloric patterns of specific cultures throughout Central and South America as well as in the Caribbean. 

“Now We Offer to the Father” is an offertory song from one of the earliest of the Central American Masses, the Misa Popular Nicaragüense (c. 1968). The dance-like cross rhythms give a sense of celebration (fiesta) as the people make their offerings and prepare to receive communion.

Now we offer to the Father, with the bread and with the wine,

All our joys and all our sorrows; all our cares, Lord, all are thine.

From the country, from the city, from the riches of the land,

We bring back to our Creator many gifts of heart and hand.

All your people here together bring you offerings of love,

Joining with your whole creation, seeking liberty and peace.

Glory be to God, the Father, and to Christ, the living Son,

Who together with the Spirit make the holy Three-in-One.

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.

Caprice - Maurice Greene

Maurice Greene (1696-1755) was an English composer and organist.  Born in London, the son of a clergyman, Greene became a choirboy at St Paul's Cathedral under Jeremiah Clarke and Charles King. He studied the organ under Richard Brind, and after Brind died, Greene became organist at St Paul’s.  With the death of William Croft in 1727, Greene became organist at the Chapel Royal, and in 1730 he became Professor of Music at Cambridge University. In 1735 he was appointed Master of the King's Musick. At his death, Greene was working on the compilation Cathedral Music, which his student and successor as Master of the King's Musick, William Boyce, was to complete. Many items from that collection are still used in Anglican services today.

About the Piano Music:

Here’s One - Mark Hayes

Of all Negro Spirituals, "Here's One" can undoubtedly be counted among the most affecting of all. The lyrics are a simple expression of devotion to God.

Talk about a child who do love Jesus,
Here's one, here's one.

Ever since I heard the gospel story,
I've been walking up the road to glory.
Talk about a child who do love Jesus, Here's one.

Talk about a child who's been forgiven,
Here's one, I said, here's one,

Ever since I heard the gospel story,
I've been walking up the road to glory.
Talk about a child who’s been forgiven, Here's one.

Talk about a child who's been converted,
Here's one, here's one.

Ever since I heard the gospel story,
I've been walking up the road to glory.
Talk about a child who's been converted, Here's one.

Talk about a child who do love Jesus, Here's one, here's one.
Here's one, here's one.  Here's one, here's one.

Mark Hayes is an award-winning concert pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. His personal catalog, totaling over 1,000 published works, includes work for solo voice, solo piano, multiple pianos, orchestra, jazz combo, small instrumental ensembles, and choruses of all kinds.  Mark received a Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude in Piano Performance from Baylor University in 1975. He has conducted the SWACDA and MCDA Community and Church Honor Choir, and served as guest conductor at Carnegie Hall, featuring his Te Deum and Magnificat. In 2010, Baylor University Center for Christian Music Studies awarded Mark the Award for Exemplary Leadership in Christian Music. Mark arranged and orchestrated the music for Civil War Voices, which won six awards including "Best Musical" in the 2010 Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York. He conducted the world premiere of his work for chorus, orchestra and narrator, The American Spirit, at Lincoln Center in May 2011 and the world premiere of his Requiem in Lincoln Center in May 2013.  Whether concertizing on the other side of the globe or composing at his home in Kansas City, Missouri, Mark is blessed to live out his mission "to create beautiful music for the world”.

About the Choral Music:

The Majesty and Glory of Your Name – Tom Fettke

Tom Fettke has taught music in both public and Christian schools and has served as a church choir director and minister of music in churches large and small for over 30 years. He is a composer, arranger, clinician, and producer of Christian music recordings.  Fettke was the creator and senior editor of the Hymnal for Worship and Celebration (1986).  

Ever since The Church Music Report's "Favorite Anthem Survey" began surveying music ministers decades ago, only one anthem has appeared every year at the top of their "All-time Favorite Anthems" list: Tom Fettke's "The Majesty and Glory of Your Name."  This is his story of that anthem:

This work is not mine.  The text is Psalm 8 and I wasn’t the author of Psalm 8.  The lyric  setting is by Linda Lee Johnson and this was her first attempt at lyric writing.  She was a choir member at a church where I was Minister of Music.  Linda had written a children’s Sunday School Program which revealed some of her creative abilities.  When I asked her to try writing a text based on my favorite Psalm, her response was less than confident, but she was willing to give it a try.  A few days later she presented to me a lyric that I felt was nearly perfect and ready for my attempt at a musical setting.

The original piece ended with “little children praise You perfectly, and so would we”.  However, it never felt quite right and remained in a drawer in its old form for several months.  Then, during a concert in which my choir performed the Ken Medema anthem, “Moses”, I realised what was needed was a warm, emotional, more fully developed personal response to God’s majesty and glory.  The next day, I wrote the “Alleluia” section.  Playing through the completed work was an incredibly moving experience, and I just knew that God had chosen to touch this musical and textual creation.

That’s the story.  This song is not mine, it’s God’s.  It is one of those things in life that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you had nothing to do with; you were only a tool in the hands of God to display His handiwork.

When I gaze into the night skies
and see the work of your fingers;
The moon and stars suspended in space.
Oh, what is man that you are mindful of him? 

You have given man a crown of glory and honor,
And have made him a little lower than the angels.
You have put him in charge of all creation:
beasts of the field, The birds of the air,
The fish of the sea.
Oh, what is man?
Oh, what is man that you are mindful of him? 

O Lord, our God the majesty and glory of your name
Transcends the earth and fills the heavens.
O Lord, our God; little children praise You perfectly,
And so would we.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
The majesty and glory of Your name.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

About the Hymns:

A Mighty Fortress

"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"  (“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”) is one of the best known of Martin Luther's hymns. Luther wrote the words and composed the melody sometime between 1527 and 1529.  It has been translated into English at least seventy times and also into many other languages.  The words are a paraphrase of Psalm 46.  "A Mighty Fortress" is one of the best loved hymns of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. It has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation" for the effect it had in increasing the support for the Reformers' causeHeinrich Heine states that it was sung by Luther and his companions as they entered Worms on 16 April 1521 for the Diet.

The earliest extant hymnal in which it appears is that of Andrew Rauscher (1531), but it is supposed to have been in Joseph Klug's Wittenberg hymnal of 1529, of which no copy exists. Its title was “Der xxxxvi. Psalm. Deus noster refugium et virtus.”  Before that it is supposed to have appeared in the Hans Weiss’ Wittenberg hymnal of 1528, also lost.  This evidence would support its being written in 1527–1529, since Luther's hymns were printed shortly after they were written.

Tradition states that the third Protestant King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, had it played as his forces went to battle in the Thirty Years' War. The hymn had been translated into Swedish already in 1536, presumably by Olaus Petri, with the incipit, “Vår Gud är oss en väldig borg.”  In the late 19th century the song also became an anthem of the early Swedish socialist movement.

It was first translated into English by Myles Coverdale in 1539 with the title, “Oure God is a defence and towre.” The first English translation in common usage was “God is our Refuge in Distress, Our strong Defence” in J.C. Jacobi's Psal. Ger. in 1722. The most popular English version is “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing” and was translated by Frederick H. Hedge in 1853.

The hymn's enduring popularity in Western Christendom has breached boundaries set in the Reformation as it is now a suggested hymn for Catholic Masses.  It currently appears in the second edition of the Catholic Book of Worship, published by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, though its adoption is not without controversy.

Luther composed the melody, named "Ein feste Burg" from the text's first line, in meter 87.87.55.56.7. This is sometimes denoted "rhythmic tune" to distinguish it from the later isometric variant, in 87.87.66.66.7 meter which is more widely known and used. In 1906 Edouard Rœhrich wrote, "The authentic form of this melody differs very much from that which one sings in most Protestant churches and figures in (Giacomo Meyerbeer's) The Huguenots. ... The original melody is extremely rhythmic, by the way it bends to all the nuances of the text ..." While 19th-century musicologists disputed Luther's authorship of the music to the hymn, that opinion has been modified by more recent research; it is now the consensus view of musical scholars that Luther did indeed compose the famous tune to go with the words.

What Gift Can We Bring?

Jane Manton Marshall (b. 1924) has established herself as a leading composer of church music, teaching conducting and composition for more than two decades at Southern Methodist University. From 1975-2010, she served an integral role in the Church Music Summer School, hosted by Perkins School of Theology, to provide training for musicians who have not usually attended seminary. As a clinician and composer, Marshall has had a profound influence on at least two generations of church musicians.

Her anthems are carried by numerous publishers, and she has received lifetime achievement awards for her contribution to church music by the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference and the Fellowship of United Methodist Musicians and Worship Arts. In addition to "What Gift Can We Bring," Marshall contributed greatly to The United Methodist Hymnal (1989), especially in the area of responses for the psalms. Grace, Noted, a collection of her homilies and essays, was published in 1992.  Many of her compositions are standard items in academic and church choral libraries. Marshall is in a very select group of successful composers/lyricists, a dual-talent exemplified in her early works: 'Awake my heart,' 'My Eternal King,' 'He Comes to Us,' the first setting of Albert Schweitzer's words; and 'Fanfare for Easter.'"

The Rev. John Thornburg, a United Methodist hymn writer, served as her pastor during the 1990s. She mentored the Rev. Thornburg, and they often partnered, pairing texts he wrote with tunes she composed for them. Examples of their work may be found in Can God Be Seen in Other Ways (2003) and What Gift Can We Bring (2003). The second volume derives its title from her most well known hymn, "What gift can we bring."

Jane Marshall’s "What gift can we bring" is a hymn of pure gratitude. A lifelong Dallas resident, she composed this hymn in 1980 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of her congregation, Northaven United Methodist Church. Stanza two reflects on heritage, giving thanks for the past and those "who planted and watered so dreams could come true." Stanza three looks to the future that is "full of surprises," yet knowing that regardless of what happens, "we rest in God’s keeping and live in God’s love.”