December 23, 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:

Shepherd's Dance - Robert Lau

Robert C. Lau (b. 1943) holds degrees in music from Lebanon Valley College, the Eastman School of Music and Catholic University of America. Currently an adjunct member of the School of Humanities of Penn State Harrisburg, Dr. Lau was formerly a member of the faculty of Lebanon Valley College, chairing the Department of Music from 1978-89. An active composer, Lau has over 150 choral and organ works published by the leading music publishing companies of the United States. In addition to his work at Mount Calvary, he frequently adjudicates and conducts choral and orchestral festivals and workshops. Lau holds professional affiliations with the American Guild of Organists, the American Choral Directors Association and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and teaches in the Leadership Program for Musicians jointly sponsored by the national Episcopal and Lutheran churches.

Lau included this inscription above this dance, from Luke 2:20:

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen.

Bring a Torch - Keith Chapman

"Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella" (French: Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle) is a Christmas carol which originated from the Provence region of France in the 17th century.  The carol was first published in France, and was subsequently translated into English in the 18th century. The song was originally not meant to be sung at Christmas; it was considered dance music for French nobility.  It seems likely that the melody was written by Charpentier, derived from the air à boire Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille jolie from the now lost Le médecin malgré lui.

The song title refers to two female farmhands who have found the baby and his mother in a stable. Excited by this discovery, they run to a nearby village to tell the inhabitants, who rush to see the new arrivals. Visitors to the stable are urged to keep their voices quiet, so the newborn can enjoy his dreams.  To this day, on Christmas Eve in the Provence region, children dressed as shepherds and milkmaids carry torches and candles while singing the carol, on their way to Midnight Mass.

Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella, Bring a torch, to the cradle run!

It is Jesus, good folk of the village; Christ is born and Mary's calling;

Ah! ah! beautiful is the Mother,  Ah! ah! beautiful is her Son!

It is wrong when the Child is sleeping,  It is wrong to talk so loud;

Silence, all, as you gather around. Lest your noise should waken Jesus.

Hush! hush! see how fast He slumbers!  Hush! hush! see how fast He sleeps!

Hasten now, good folk of the village; Hasten now the Christ Child to see.

You will find Him asleep in the manger; Quietly come and whisper softly,

Hush! hush! Peacefully now He slumbers.  Hush! hush! Peacefully now He sleeps.

Softly to the little stable. Softly for a moment come;

Look and see how charming is Jesus  How He is sweet, His cheeks are rosy!

Hush! hush! see how the Child is sleeping; Hush! hush! see how He smiles in his dreams.

Keith Chapman (1945-1989) was an American concert organist known best for his flair at playing in the symphonic style of organ performance, and particularly for his long and distinguished association (1966-1989) with the Wanamaker's Department Stores of Philadelphia as their principal organist of the Wanamaker Organ.  Dr. Chapman came to Philadelphia where he attended the Curtis Institute of Music. He received a master's degree from Temple University and an honorary doctor of musical arts degree from Combs College of Music. He also had several original compositions published for organ solo.  In addition to his appointment at Wanamaker's, Dr. Chapman performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and served as organist and choirmaster at Philadelphia's First Presbyterian Church, Wayne United Methodist Church in suburban Philadelphia and Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel.

About the Piano Music:

Do You Hear What I Hear - Jim Brickman

Many people mistakenly assume this Christmas classic has been around for years and that it is of European origin. But it was written in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis as a powerful plea for peace by a man who had experienced the horrors of war.  The song’s message of peace is as desperately needed today as it was then.

A brilliant musical career seemed assured for the French-born Noel Regney (1922-2002). He had studied at Strasbourg Conservatory and at the Conservatoire National de Paris.  Then came the Second World War, when France was overwhelmed by Hitler’s German troops. Much against Regney’s will, he was drafted into the German army.  He hated the Nazis who occupied the land where he was born. So, while still in the German army, Regney became a member of the French underground. His assignments required him to remain in a German uniform. He collected information and, when possible, warned French resistance fighters of attacks the Germans were planning against them.  One mission would continue to haunt Noel Regney: He was assigned the task of leading a group of German soldiers into a trap where the French fighters could catch them in a crossfire.  Although Regney was shot that day, he survived. The French suffered only minor injuries. But the memory of the enemy soldiers falling to the ground, most of them dead, was etched in Noel Regney’s mind.  He never commented publicly on what took place that terrifying day. It has been said that he was intentionally wounded by the French to protect him from the Germans, in the belief that his injury would indicate he had no knowledge of the trap that had been set for the enemy.  Not long after this encounter, Regney deserted the German army and lived underground with the French for the rest of the war. “Only then did I feel free,” he once observed.

After the war, he worked for a number of years as the musical director of the Indochinese Service of Radio France and as music director at Lido, a popular nightclub in Paris.  In 1952, Noel Regney moved to Manhattan. He composed music for many early TV shows and commercial jingles, in addition to writing serious musical compositions. In the late ’50s, Noel Regney married pianist Gloria Shayne. In October 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in a crisis centered on missiles the Russians had installed in Cuba. The United States threatened military action if the missiles were not removed. The world trembled and prayed as these two nuclear powers stood eyeball-to-eyeball.  That October, as Noel Regney walked through the streets of New York, a sense of despair was in the air.  Christmas, which was supposed to be a time of peace and goodwill, was approaching. Noel Regney had been asked by a record producer to write a holiday song.  “I had thought I’d never write a Christmas song,” he recalled. “Christmas had become so commercial. But this was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the studio, the producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated.  “En route to my home, I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other and smiling. All of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary.”  A glimpse of these babies filled Noel Regney’s heart with poetry. The little ones reminded him of newborn lambs. Thus, the song begins, “Said the night wind to the little lamb….”  As soon as Noel arrived home, he jotted down the lyrics. Then he asked Gloria to write the music to accompany his words. “While walking down the street in New York, my mother heard trumpets playing the melody in her head,” explains Gabrielle Regney.  “Noel wrote a beautiful song,” Gloria said later, “and I wrote the music. We couldn’t sing it, through; it broke us up. We cried. Our little song broke us up. You must realize there was a threat of nuclear war at that time.”

There have been over 100 versions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” but it was the Bing Crosby 1963 recording that brought Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne’s song of peace to the nation’s attention.“Do You Hear What I Hear?” carried a beautiful message close to people in all walks of life. It became a popular Christmas carol, “a song high above the tree, with a voice as big as the sea.” But the message of peace was lost on many people.

“I am amazed that people can think they know the song and not know it is a prayer for peace,” Noel Regney once told an interviewer. “But we are so bombarded by sounds and our attention spans are so short.”  Let us hope and pray that this song of peace will remind us that “The Child, The Child sleeping in the night” came to “bring us goodness and light.”

Said the night wind to the little lamb, do you see what I see?

‘Way up in the sky, little lamb, do you see what I see?

A star, a star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a kite.

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy, do you hear what I hear?

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy, do you hear what I hear?

A song, a song, high above the tree, with a voice as big as the sea.

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king, do you know what I know?

In your palace warm, mighty king, do you know what I know?

A child, a child, shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold.

Said the king to the people everywhere, listen to what I say!

Pray for peace, people everywhere.  Listen to what I say!

A child, a child sleeping in the night, He will bring us goodness and light.

Jim Brickman (b. 1961) is an American songwriter and pianist of pop music, as well as a radio show host. Brickman has earned six Gold and Platinum albums. He has earned two Grammy nominations for his albums Peace (2003) for Best Instrumental, and Faith (2009) for Best New Age Album; an SESAC "Songwriter of the Year" award; a Canadian Country Music Award for Best Vocal/Instrumental Collaboration; and a Dove Award presented by the Gospel Music Association.

About the Choral Music:

Come to Set Us Free - Lloyd Larson

Jean Anne Shafferman is Managing Editor, Sacred Choral Music for The Lorenz Corporation, Dayton, Ohio and Music Assistant at College Hill Presbyterian Church, Easton, Pennsylvania.  Previous professional experience includes serving as Director of Church Choral Publications for Alfred Publishing Company, Los Angeles, California; Director of Choral Activities and Instructor in Music Theory and History at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania; and Instructor in Music Theory at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, where she received B.M.E. and M.A. (music theory) degrees. In 2002, she was inducted into the University of Kentucky School of Music Alumni Hall of Fame.  She wrote the words and melody of “Come to Set us Free”, based on a Puerto Rican folk hymn.

Lloyd Larson (b. 1954) is an active composer and arranger for several major publishing companies of church and school music. His compositions and arrangements include well over 1,000 published works—including choral anthems, numerous extended Christmas, Easter and non-seasonal works, keyboard collections, vocal solo and duet collections, instrumental works for solo and ensembles, orchestrations, and handbell settings. It is Lloyd's work in his local church that continues to be the catalyst for much of his writing. He currently directs the adult choir in his home church in addition to being involved in worship planning and leadership.

Come, O come, Emmanuel!  Come, O come, on earth to dwell!

Come, deliver Israel!  Come to set us free!

All the angels in the sky sing their praise to God on high.

Soon He come on Christmas night, come to set us free!

Halle, Hallelujah!  Come, O come, Emmanuel!  Come to set us free

Every valley, lift your voice.  Every creature, now rejoice.

Everywhere a joyful noise, come to set us free!

Halle, Hallelujah!  Come, O come, Emmanuel!  Come to set us free!

About the Hymns:

Love Came Down at Christmas

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) came from a family steeped in the arts. The author of three collections of mostly religious poetry and four devotional books, she suffered poor health from age 16. Her deep faith is thought to be partially due to the solace she found in writing.
Her father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a professor of Italian at King’s College, London, living in exile in England. Her brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael gave birth to a 19th-century art movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, for which the beautiful Christina often served as a model, especially for portraits of the Madonna. Among the family friends was Charles Dodgson—under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Rossetti’s best-known hymns are the Christmas carols “In the Bleak Midwinter” (1872) and “Love Came Down at Christmas,” the latter appearing first in Time Flies: a Reading Diary (1885), as her entry for Dec. 29.  While the first stanza of “In the Bleak Midwinter” paints a vivid picture of an unwelcoming and desolate landscape—a symbolic representation of the state of the world encountered by the incarnate God—“Love Came Down at Christmas” presents an inviting image of incarnate “Love” descending to Earth, heralded by “star and angels.” Indeed, if one includes the word “lovely,” “Love” is mentioned 12 times in three short stanzas.  The personification of “Love,” an inanimate concept, as the name for the incarnate God is not a new idea in Christian hymnody. More than a century before Rossetti’s hymns, Charles Wesley’s “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” (UMH No. 386) and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (UMH No. 384) show a similar anthropomorphic use of “Love.”

Though Rossetti’s poems were not composed as hymns for congregational use, this one first appeared in the Oxford Hymn Book (1908) as a hymn. Hymnal editor Percy Dearmer (1867-1936), editor of the famous Oxford Book of Carols (1928), championed the cause of incorporating English poems as hymns. He included this text in the influential Songs of Praise (1925).

The poem is based on 1 John 4:7-11, a passage that mentions “love” in some form 11 times: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

The author modified the original final line herself from “Love the universal sign” to “Love for plea and gift and sign.” In doing so, she eliminated the one four-syllable word “universal,” and maintained the utter simplicity of one- and two-syllable words throughout with the exception of “incarnate” in stanza two.  As British hymnologist Richard Watson notes, “The sublime simplicity of this hymn is the mark of a very great writer.”

This poem is the perfect antidote for those who find themselves recovering from the stress of the Christmas season induced by materialism, extensive shopping, travel and multiple gatherings of family and friends—in short, everything except for a moment to reflect on the gift of “Love incarnate, Love divine.”

Star Child

New Zealander Shirley Erena Murray (b. 1931), one of the most accomplished living hymn writers in the English language, wrote this poignant text set to a beautiful melody by Carlton Young (b. 1926). The text "Star-Child, earth-Child" (1994) has a New-Age sound to it at first, but a closer examination of the words reveals a song rooted in Christian and human reality.

Shirley Murray, the wife of Presbyterian minister John Murray, studied Classics and French at the University of Otago in Dunedin in the far south of the lower island, where she was granted an M.A. with Honors. Her career has included experience as a teacher, researcher, and radio hymn program producer.  She began to write hymns in the 1970s to undergird the theology of her husband's progressive theology and the work of Amnesty International. The first independent publication of her hymns was In Every Corner, Sing (1987), a collection that featured many themes that she would continue to develop. Fellow New Zealander and hymn writer, Colin Gibson highlights these themes: "The search for peace, justice and human rights, inclusiveness, the honoring of women and the feminine element in spirituality, celebration of the natural world and the New Zealand environment, a call to social responsibility and a life of faith lived out with compassion and hopefulness.”  Shirley Murray’s awards and honors are numerous, including the New Zealand Order of Merit (2001) and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music (2006), and she has been honored as a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada (2009).

Murray writes series of short descriptive modifiers before "child." In very economical language she catalogues children of all ages and stations of life: "street child, beat child," "hurt child, used child," "grown child, old child," "sad child, lost child.”  All of these children are created in the image of the "Star-Child, earth-Child" of stanza one and the "Hope-for-peace Child" of stanza five. The refrain, "This year, let the day arrive," is a petition for the presence of the "Christ Child" for "everyone alive.”  Carlton Young's musical setting captures the lyrical quality and warmth of a traditional Christmas carol.