World Communion Sunday

Each year on the first Sunday of October, we celebrate World Communion Sunday. This year is no different, and here we are on October 4, 2020. The world is a different place than it was a year ago, but we can still continue to hold fast to some traditions like this one that help us pause and celebrate our unity together.

For me, World Communion Sunday has been something that has been acknowledged and celebrated for as long back as I can remember into my childhood. This week I set out to find some history about it. Here are my results:

• It began as a Presbyterian idea. Pastor Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr first celebrated World Communion Sunday at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1933.

• Three years later (1936), the Presbyterian Church (US) adopted it as a denomination-wide practice. Four years after that (1940), the National Council of Churches promoted the practice to a number of churches around the world. It has since become widespread.

• Dr. Kerr’s son, Donald, also a Presbyterian pastor, notes the significance of the Second World War: “The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

• Today, many churches across the world and across denominational lines celebrate World Communion. Some acknowledge it through their liturgy, others through their musical offerings, and even others through a guest speaker from their global mission work.

In previous years, I have so enjoyed the self-imposed challenge of ensuring that every musical aspect of our service on this day come from a different tradition around the globe. Sometimes that is a big task as our 11:00 service can have upwards to 12-15 pieces of music. During these times of virtual and outdoor worship, we are a bit more limited, but today you experience music from:

• South Africa – an opening song, “Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises” with piano, drum, and voice.

• America – a folk-style communion hymn, “One Brad, One Body” recorded by piano, guitar, and vocalists.

• Jamaica – an organ arrangement of the upbeat and syncopated communion hymn, “Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ.” and

• France – the song “Eat This Bread” from the Taizé Community, offered by a quartet of singers and enhanced by various instrumental sounds from our organ.

"Fairest Lord Jesus"

The hymn we sing in response to the proclamation of the Word today is the long-cherished “Fairest Lord Jesus.” Our Gospel lesson recounts a time in Jesus’ ministry when he is questioned by chief priests and elders. They challenged his authority and demanded to know where the command of his teaching and ministry came from. The hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus,” in response, boldly proclaims that Jesus is sovereign: Ruler of all nature. Ruler of the nations.

Both the text and the tune of this beloved hymn have a storied, if not complex, history. Hymnologist Carl Daw even calls it “a classic example of the persistence of erroneous information.” Our United Methodist friends enjoy a regular column on their Discipleship Ministries website called History of Hymns. Hannah Cruse recently detailed the origins of “Fairest Lord Jesus.” Her article is well-researched and clearly written. Take a look, and enjoy!

https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-fairest-lord-jesus

 

Edward MacDowell and his "Woodland Sketches"

Both of the piano pieces offered in today’s YouTube service are by late-Romantic composer Edward MacDowell (1860-1908). He was among a wave of American born musicians to cross the Atlantic and train in “the old world.” For MacDowell, at age 17, he began his European studies at the Paris Conservatory, but he spent nearly a decade in Germany, first as a student in Frankfurt, then as a composer, performer, and teacher in Darmstadt and Weisbaden. It was during this decade in Europe that the young MacDowell met the love of his life, a fellow American studying abroad – Marian Griswold Nevins. The two married and remained nearly inseparable until MacDowell’s death.

Back stateside after financial difficulty trying to “make it” as a composer in Germany, the MacDowell’s settled first in Boston where Edward became well-known as a concert pianist and teacher. However, he was recruited back to his hometown of New York to become the first music professor at Columbia University in 1896. In addition to his duties at the university, MacDowell engaged in a great deal of musical composition during this period as well. Much of his compositional inspiration came from Hillcrest Farm, where the MacDowell’s made their summer residence in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

The Woodland Sketches, opus 51, are no exception. They include 10 short pieces where MacDowell interprets and reflects on the natural beauty surrounding the Peterborough home. I’ve chosen two of these sketches to share in today’s worship service: In Autumn (with a nod to the autumnal equinox happening on Tuesday) and To a Wild Rose (because I always think of Thomas Moore’s poem “The Last Rose of Summer” when I hear it).

I like what pianist James Barbagallo says about In Autumn: “[it] vibrates with cheer and is brisk and snappy just like a fall day after summer's languor.” In terms of To a Wild Rose, legend has it that Mrs. MacDowell had a part in the naming of this ‘sketch.’ Barbagallo explains, “MacDowell wrote out a short melody every morning which he would later throwaway. In this way he felt he kept his technique of melodic composition finely honed. Upon hearing one of these cast-offs, Mrs. MacDowell remarked that it reminded her of some wild roses growing close to their cabin in Peterborough.” And the rest is history; this short piece is probably the most well-known of MacDowell’s piano pieces today. Enjoy!

hammer dulcimers

In our “Worship On the Grounds” service this week, our service was going to be bookended with music by “The Southwind Players,” a hammer dulcimer quartet consisting of Jim Moore, Victoria Scarborough, Alice Showalter, and Peggy Tudor. Mother Nature, however, had alternate plans, and the rainy conditions are making the service impossible. Through the wonders of technology, however, the music they had intended to offer live will be in the YouTube service.

The dulcimer group will play three pieces in the service, two familiar hymns – “Come, Christians, Join to Sing” and “Amazing Grace” – and a tradition canon, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” This canon is quite possibly familiar to many also. The Latin text of the canon translates to, “Grant us peace.” I certainly need these words streaming through my mind these days!

When I began to think about hammer dulcimers this week, I quickly realized I knew next to nothing about them. What are their origins? When were they first made? And where? How are the strings set-up on the instrument? Like a piano? Like a guitar? Why do they have the trapezoidal shape? I could go on . . .

Luckily, the online Smithsonian Institution answered many of my questions. Perhaps you will find this article interesting as well. Don’t miss the links on the side of the page. Enjoy!

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/hammered-dulcimer

music and geography

In the canon of western classical music, one can easily stumble upon pieces where music and geography intersect. That is, music depicting place – a landscape, nature alive with water and animal sounds, an idyllic reminiscence of childhood, vacation spot, or utopia. For me, this music is the type where one can close their eyes while listening to it and paint their own picture of the geography being explored. When I think of this subsection of classical music, four pieces come to mind right away:

• Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, more commonly known as The New World Symphony. A Czech composer, Dvořák came to America in 1892 to become director of the National Conservatory of Music in America. The New World Symphony is inspired, in part, by the prairies he encountered during his summer visit to the areas in and around Spillville, Iowa. He wrote often of the “wide open spaces” of America.
• Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. This is a piece for solo violin and orchestra often described as “the composer’s love song to the British countryside.” The solo violin plays the part of the lark, singing out the bird’s song in the dizzying heights of the lark’s flight into the sky.
• Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. In a similar vein as the Vaughan Williams piece described above, this theme and 14 variations also depicts the English countryside, specifically the Malvern hills where the composer spent much of his time. The most famous variation – “Nimrod” – is a perennial audience favorite and easily recognizable in pop culture.
• Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England. The three movements in this orchestral suite all portray a specific place in the Northeastern United States: Boston Common, Putnam’s Camp (Redding, Connecticut), and The Housatonic [River] at Stockbridge [Massachusetts].

The two solo piano pieces offered in today’s worship service follow in this tradition. They come from a collection, An American Portrait: The Pacific Northwest, by a composer from that region, Valerie Roth Roubos. In addition to this collection, she has three other books with The American Portrait title – Scenes from the Great Plains, The Oregon Trail, and Views of the West. I hope you will consider closing your eyes while they are played and picture the Lavender Fields of the Olympic Peninsula and the majestic Mt. Rainier – two examples of God’s stunning beauty on the earth entrusted to our care.

virtual choirs

To be sure, our collective cultural vocabulary has been enhanced with pandemic-related words and phrases over the past few months. Words that are now commonplace in our conversations would have sounded so foreign to us in the not-too-distant past. Think about it: Before circa March 15, 2020, how many times had you used the term social distancing? Or personal protective equipment (PPE)? Or aerosols? (I could go on with at least a dozen more...) Can you accurately define and explain the difference between self-isolation, self-quarantine, and shelter-in-place? On a lighter note, Don’t be a ‘covidiot’! and Y’all need to ‘quarantine and chill’! are two social media phrases that make me chuckle.

For musicians – especially singers and choral conductors – another such phrase is virtual choir. Perhaps you have seen such an “ensemble” on YouTube or Facebook or some other online platform. They are carefully produced videos where each member of the ensemble records their own part by themselves in their own space. A (faux) audio/video engineer then compiles and edits each contributor’s video into a collective whole or virtual choir. No doubt, this is a mind-numbing and time-absorbing task!

The term virtual choir is not necessarily a new phrase born out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather, it is the brainchild of composer Eric Whitacre (b. 1970), who coined the term about 11 years ago. CBS Sunday Morning recently aired a spot on this phenomenon a few weeks back. Check it out:

Lest you think singers and choral conductors have lost their zeal for forming and expressing bold opinions, suffice it to say that the reception to Whitacre back in 2009 was all over the map. It continues to be wide and varied even now. Purists among us say that at the heart of choral singing is the communal and corporate experience; they would argue that participants in a choir must be physically present in order to achieve true choral beauty in terms of blend, vowel unification, rhythmic precision, etc. On the other hand, experimentalists posit that we ought to allow the technology at our disposal to enhance our art as musicians; if we must forego some of the technicalities of ensemble music-making, we can make up for it in the symbolism of cohesion that a carefully produced virtual choir makes. From those two extremes, many points of view could be plotted along a purist-experimentalist spectrum.

You may recall a virtual choir being part of our worship experience a few weeks back on July 5. A quartet of singers offered the national hymn “This Is My Song,” set to Jean Seibelius’ famous Finlandia. In that instance, each singer received an audio file of the four-parts being played on the organ. While listening to that file with earbuds from one device (a phone or tablet), the singer recorded a video of themselves singing their part onto a second device. I then collected the four videos, lined them up to the exact millisecond so that each part is played at the exact same time, and worked to achieve a quality performance. Thanks (or not!) to modern technology, one could spend days messing with the details of such things. If one singer’s recording is softer than the others, you simply manipulate that track to the volume level you want or need. If one singer is sharp or flat on a chord, no problem! The software can adjust the pitch. If a word ends with a “dental consonant” (such as ‘t’ or ‘d’) but the consonant sounds in the four videos don’t match, not to worry! The engineer just erases the ones they don’t wish to hear. On July 5, my skills were very much in the early-elementary stage. I hadn’t yet figured out how to make the video match the audio. So, the audio was simply accompanied by still photos of the four singers.

This week, you’ll experience another virtual choir in our worship video – complete with three treble voices and piano, audio and video alike. So, where do you fall on the purist-experimentalist spectrum with virtual choirs? (Or virtual music-making in general.) I certainly long for the day where we can safely make music together in community again, but, for now, I am grateful for the resources and increasing ability to assemble fellow musicians in a virtual, safe, and beautiful way. For me, it is just one option in my “bag of tricks” to allow music to speak to our souls and enhance our worship.

"What is the World Like" -Tice/Morris

This week, I had the opportunity to explore yet another new-to-me text and tune in the Glory to God hymnal. I stumbled upon it because it is a text that, in part, alludes to our Gospel lesson for this Sunday: the familiar parable of the Mustard Seed. I quickly noticed that the hymn was co-written by Adam Tice (text) and Sally Ann Morris (music) – a team that I first experienced at the Montreat Conference in June 2019.

You may recall a few weeks back when I wrote on this blog about the season of Pentecost. I explained that the season is one where we recall the teachings of Jesus (as opposed to important life events of him celebrated in other times of the year). These teachings often come in the form of parables from the Gospel writers. Adam Tice’s text gives a nod to four such parables: the Mustard Seed (Matthew 13 / Mark 4 / Luke 13), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), and the Ten Bridesmaids (Matthew 25). Both of the Matthew texts here are part of the lectionary readings for this year – the Mustard Seed this week, and the Ten Bridesmaids late in the season.

Tice’s text is in five stanzas and is re-printed in full below. He is no doubt a talented poet and theologian! As you read through his text, take note of these three elements:

• the overall sense of unity by allowing the first four stanzas to begin with the same question – What is the world like when God’s will is done? – and end with a This is how God... statement relating to the respective parable
• his predominant use of monosyllabic words, allowing for a feeling of simplicity, directness, honesty, and plainness
• the abab rhyme scheme which makes “done” a rhyme word in each and every stanza as he brilliantly flips the fifth stanza to answer the reiterated question that opens the first four

What is the world like when God’s will is done?
Mustard seeds grow more than we can conceive:
roots thread the soil; branches reach for the sun.
This is how God moves us each to believe. 

What is the world like when God’s will is done?
Witness the wandering child coming home;
watch as the parent breaks into a run.
This is how God longs for us when we roam. 

What is the world like when God’s will is done?
No more is neighbor just ally or friend;
peace thrives in places where once there was none.
This is how God works when rivalries end. 

What is the world like when God’s will is done?
Ready for feasting, we watch through the night,
tending our lamp’s till the new day’s begun.
This is how God readies us for the light. 

These are the stories that Jesus imparts,
filled with the Spirit who joins us as one.
Born through our voices, our hands, and our hearts,
This is a new world where God’s will is done.

Hymnologist Carl Daw has some further insight into this text. He writes, “Each of these [parables] is an indirect description of what Scripture calls ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the kingdom of heaven.’ In other words, these are narrative approximations of what it means to live under the sovereignty of God; as such, parables do not seek to define but to suggest, to awaken the imagination, to free us from our everyday assumptions about life. ... These [first] four stanzas are then summarized in the fifth stanza holding out the possibility that ‘through our voices, our hands, and our hearts’ we can be part of this reign of God on earth.”

I’m thankful for Catherine Hines, who graciously learned this piece with me this week. Now living and working in Lexington, Catherine is a 2019 Centre grad and a former music intern at The Presbyterian Church of Danville.