JS Bach's "Wachet Auf..."

 

One of my favorite organ pieces for the Season of Advent – J. S. Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme – opens our service this week. The German title is often translated “Wake, Awake, a Voice is Calling.” After all, isn’t that sentiment partly why we live so fully into Advent? We are urged to be alert and prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ.

 

This chorale prelude of Bach’s comes from his collection known as the “Schübler Chorales,” so named for the engraver – Johann Georg Schübler – who published this set of six chorale preludes towards the end of Bach’s life (around 1747). None of the six pieces in this collection began their lives as organ pieces. Instead, they were movements from some of Bach’s many cantatas that he wrote during his tenure in Leipzig. Bach selected these six movements to be transcribed from their cantata (three musicians, often two instruments and a singer) to pieces for organ (one musician).

 

In Wachet auf..., you’ll notice a catchy, dance-like theme at the outset (played by the right hand) paired with a harmonic framework (played in the pedal). In the original cantata, this would have been high strings/violins and low strings/cello, respectively. The left hand remains unneeded until several measures into the piece and then only sporadically throughout. This is because the left hand is playing the part of the original cantata movement that would have been sung by a singer; in this case, a tenor, who would have sung the chorale melody phrase-by-phrase in the original cantata. So, when the chorale melody comes in, the left hand plays in the tenor register on a trumpet stop. No doubt Bach specified one of the loudest stops of the organ for this “voice” as a means of painting the text of the chorale: Wake up! A voice is calling!

 

I hope this piece helps you begin this season with a smile. I find it hard to listen to without doing so myself!

Christ the King Sunday

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you may recall a post here a few months ago describing the beginning of the Season of Pentecost. (See https://musicatpcd.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-season-of-pentecost.html) Well, here we are some 5+ months later at the conclusion of the season – in a liturgical day known as Christ the King Sunday. It only seems good and orderly to conclude the season in a similar way to which I began it here.

 

As the longest season of the liturgical year, Pentecost starts 50 days after Easter and ends the Sunday before Advent begins – a day also known as Christ the King Sunday. In some ways, CtK Sunday is the church’s New Year’s Eve because the new liturgical year begins next week on the First Sunday of Advent. The Episcopal Church’s online glossary describes CtK Sunday as “celebrating Christ’s messianic kingship and sovereign rule over all creation.” This denomination also offers a prayer on this day that God, “whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” will “Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule.”

 

But where did Christ the King Sunday come from? (After all, there’s no mention of this liturgical day in the Bible!) Believe it or not, Christians have only been celebrating Christ the King Sunday for just under a century. It was established as a Catholic feast day in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. David Ouzts explains:

In the aftermath of World War I, Pope Pius noted that, while hostilities had ceased, true peace had not been restored to the world and the different classes of society. His first encyclical (a papal letter sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church) after the war was Ubi arcane Dei consillo (“On the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”) in December 1922. He deplored class divisions and overt nationalism, and he maintained that true peace may only be found under the Kingship of Christ as the “Prince of Peace.”

 

In 1925, the pope formally introduced and established the Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical Quas primas (“In the First”): “When we pay honor to the princely dignity of Christ, men will doubtless be reminded that the Church, founded by Christ as a perfect society, has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state; and that in fulfilling the task committed to her by God of teaching, ruling, and guiding to eternal bliss those who belong to the kingdom of Christ, she cannot be subject to any external power.”

 

I think you will find the service music this week that exemplifies this notion of Jesus Christ as King over all. I’m grateful to Casey Tibbles for her artistry and collaboration. May the music enrich your Christ the King Sunday, and... Happy New Year!

Fred Pratt Green

Our offertory this Sunday – “Harvest Hymn” – features a text by one of the last century’s most prolific hymn writers: Fred Pratt Green. (For an interesting discussion of this particular text, check out: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-for-the-fruit-of-this-creation.)

 

Fred Pratt Green’s life encompassed nearly the entirety of the 20^th century. Born in 1903 near Liverpool, he enjoyed a long career (44 years) as a Methodist minister before turning his attention to hymn writing. Nearly all of his 300 hymn texts were penned during the 70s-80s, after his retirement from the ministry. He died peacefully in Norwich, his retirement home, at the age of 97 in 2000.

 

Pratt Green’s interest in hymn writing during his retirement may have been a very logical hobby. After all, he had only recently completed some four decades of pastoral ministry and was well-versed in theology. He was also an amateur poet and playwright, so the two – creative writing and theology – seem to combine well into the creation of hymn texts. Because his background was in preaching and church administration, his hymn texts are relevant to the contemporary church and often fill a void of topics not often covered by other hymn writers of the past.

 

His “Harvest Hymn” – now usually referred to by its first line, “For the Fruits of This Creation” – is one of FPG’s hymns most often chosen by hymnal committees in the United States. Indeed, it is included in Glory to God. C. Michael Hawn explains: “...published as “Harvest Hymn” in the British Methodist Recorder in August 1970, this hymn combines our gratitude to God for the bounties of the earth with our responsibility to care for our neighbor through “the harvests we are sharing” (stanza 2). Green’s concern for justice and spreading a social gospel is almost always evident in his hymns.”

 

In our service this weekend, I’m joined by my friend, Zack Morris, in the offering of this text. It is set to a familiar Welsh tune, Ar Hyd Y Nos, which means “throughout the night.” Enjoy!

Felix Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words"

 Do you ever get bogged down and/or completely overwhelmed with the amount of information thrown your way? As folks living in the ‘digital age,’ it is nearly impossible to escape it: print news stories about the pandemic, reports on the radio about the election, friends’ anxiety-ridden social media posts, emails, text messages, a barrage of advertising everywhere, and the list can go on... Words, words, and more words.

 

If we rewind time by 200 years and go ‘across the pond’ to Germany, we’d find ourselves in Felix Mendelssohn’s world. Mendelssohn was a prolific composer who wrote in a variety of media, including choral, orchestral, chamber, and keyboard works. A staple of his compositions for piano are sets of pieces he called Lieder ohne Worte, or in English, Songs Without Words. In total, he wrote 48 of these Songs Without Words, and they are divided into eight books of six each. Two of the books were published posthumously. (The opus numbers of the eight books are: 19b, 30, 38, 53, 62, 67, 85, and 102.)

 

In a week, where we’ve again been inundated with words, messaging, reporting, etc., I thought we might do well to experience some music without any sort of subtext. In other words, music for music’s sake that frees the listener to interpret and think about whatever passes through their mind. Mendelssohn himself said of his Lieder ohne Worte:

If you ask me what I had in mind when I wrote it, I would say: just the song as it is. And if I happen to have certain words in mind for one or another of these songs, I would never want to tell them to anyone, because the same words never mean the same things to others. Only the song can say the same thing, can arouse the same feelings in one person as in another, a feeling that is not expressed, however, by the same words.

 

These pieces are some of my favorites of the entire piano repertoire – both for playing and for teaching. I’ve included two of these Songs Without Words as part of our service this weekend. I hope you enjoy them as well.