From: Richard Thomas
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2014 7:12 PM
Subject: Music for the Service of September 7, 2014
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2014 7:12 PM
Subject: Music for the Service of September 7, 2014
The opening hymn is Hymn No. 485, “To God Be the Glory.” The congregation sang this Fanny Jane Crosby hymn on September 6, 2011, after not singing anything at all on the preceding Sunday, as the service of August 28 had been canceled by Hurricane Irene. (Claudia’s granddaughter was going to play a piece by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that week too, and we also missed that.)
http://youtu.be/5NH0wWzL5YQ “To God Be the Glory” sung by a large congregation, a cappella, as recorded for the TV program, “Let the Bible Speak”
If you listen closely, you can hear that they are singing in parts.
This is a Church of Christ congregation. Churches of that denomination generally reject the use of instrumental music in worship (as do also the Primitive Baptists, the Plymouth Brethren, the Amish, and the Old Order Mennonites). So their congregations have had a lot of practice in singing a cappella.
Fanny J. Crosby (1820-1915)
You can also hear a spectacular version, as done in the once glorious Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (organ, choir, congregation, and chimes, with a descant!) here:
http://youtu.be/EBqcIymsE_I “To God Be the Glory,” Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (chimes at 2:40, followed immediately by the descant)
Both the text and the tune date from 1875. The tune was composed for the text by William Howard Doane. W. Howard Doane also composed the tune for another Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) text, “Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet.” You can hear a beautiful a cappella rendition of “Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet” here:
http://www.churchofgodsinging.com/index.php?do=p&id_song=19 Valerie Eck sings all parts of “Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet” (using multi-track recording)
W. Howard Doane (1832-1915) was born in Preston, Connecticut. He became the superintendent of a large Baptist Sunday School in Cincinnati, Ohio. He composed 1,000 hymn tunes, including the tunes for “Tell Me the Old, Old Story,” “Near the Cross,” “Rescue the Perishing,” and “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”
The second hymn is Hymn No. 175 “The Lord’s My Shepherd, All My Need.” The text, by Christopher L. Webber, is recent, 1986.
Christopher L. Webber (1932- )
Christopher Webber is a graduate of Princeton University and of the General Theological Seminary in NYC. He now lives in Sharon, Connecticut. He has written a number of books, including Beyond Beowulf, Welcome to the Episcopal Church, and Re-Thinking Marriage. He also makes maple syrup.
The tune, EVAN, is usually attributed to William Henry Havergal (1793-1870). He was born at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Oxford. He won the Gresham Prize for an anthem in 1845. [John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907).]
Here is a choir singing different words to the tune:
The communion hymn is Hymn No. 516, “Lord We Have Come at Your Own Invitation” (1977) by the British Methodist minister and hymn-writer, the Rev. Fred Pratt Green (b. 02 Sep 1903, Roby, Merseyside, UK; d. 22 Oct 2000). He was also the author of a book: The Last Lap: A Sequence in Verse on the Theme of Old Age, published in 1991, when Rev. Green was 88. He also wrote The Skating Parson (1963) and The Old Couple: Poems New & Selected (1976), published by Peter Loo Poets, from which, we have the following (http://www.peterloopoets.com/html/stocklist_175.html ).
The Old Couple
The old couple in the brand-new bungalow,
Drugged with the milk of municipal kindness,
Fumble their way to bed. Oldness at odds
With newness, they nag each other to show
Nothing is altered, despite the strangeness
Of being divorced in sleep by twin-beds,
Side by side like the Departed, above them
The grass-green of candlewick bedspreads.
In a dead neighbourhood, where it is rare
For hooligans to shout or dogs to bark,
A footfall in the quiet air is crisper
Than home-made bread ; and the budgerigar
Bats an eyelid, as sensitive to disturbance
As a distant needle is to an earthquake
In the Great Deep, then balances in sleep.
It is silence keeps the old couple awake.
Too old for loving now, but not for love,
The old couple lie, several feet apart,
Their chesty breathing like a muted duet
On wind instruments, trying to think of
Things to hang on to, such as the tinkle
That a budgerigar makes when it shifts
Its feather weight from one leg to another,
The way, on windy nights, linoleum lifts.
The old couple in the brand-new bungalow,
Drugged with the milk of municipal kindness,
Fumble their way to bed. Oldness at odds
With newness, they nag each other to show
Nothing is altered, despite the strangeness
Of being divorced in sleep by twin-beds,
Side by side like the Departed, above them
The grass-green of candlewick bedspreads.
In a dead neighbourhood, where it is rare
For hooligans to shout or dogs to bark,
A footfall in the quiet air is crisper
Than home-made bread ; and the budgerigar
Bats an eyelid, as sensitive to disturbance
As a distant needle is to an earthquake
In the Great Deep, then balances in sleep.
It is silence keeps the old couple awake.
Too old for loving now, but not for love,
The old couple lie, several feet apart,
Their chesty breathing like a muted duet
On wind instruments, trying to think of
Things to hang on to, such as the tinkle
That a budgerigar makes when it shifts
Its feather weight from one leg to another,
The way, on windy nights, linoleum lifts.
(I like that image, as we have some linoleum that has lifted in our kitchen.)
The tune is O QUANTA QUALIA (1681), which we probably associate most often with “God of Compassion, In Mercy Befriend Us.”
The closing hymn is Hymn No. 419, “How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord,” also by the Rev. F. Pratt Green.
The tune is REPTON (1888) by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (b. 27 Feb 1848, Bournemouth, UK; d. 07 Oct 1918, Rustington, West Sussex).
He attended Eton, then Exeter College, Oxford. He was director of the Royal College of Music from 1895 until his death and was also professor of music at the University of Oxford from 1900 to 1908. Although made a baronet in 1902, the baronetcy became extinct upon his death. He died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic in October 1918. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. [From Wikipedia.org.]
C. Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918)
He is best known for JERUSALEM, which we all know from the movie Chariots of Fire. The tune is the setting for a poem by William Blake, “And Did Those Feet, in Ancient Times, Walk Upon England’s Mountains Green.” (The poem alludes to the legend of Glastonbury when Mary’s uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travels to England to the tin mines and brings his nephew, Jesus, along for the trip.) From that visit, Welsh queens and kings traced their genealogy, as does Elder Deitz (through King Cunedda), which thus makes John a relation of Mary, the virgin mother of the Son of God.
a Cornish story how "Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the child Jesus with him, and the latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its wolfram. This story possibly grew out of the fact that the Jews under the Angevin kings farmed the tin of Cornwall." In its most developed version, Joseph, a tin merchant, visited Cornwall, accompanied by his nephew, the boy Jesus. C.C. Dobson (1879–1960) made a case for the authenticity of the Glastonbury legenda.
Assuming the legend to be true, we could work out how many of the Virgin Mary’s genes are likely to be the same as those inherited by John. Not many, I suspect. He doesn’t look a thing like her.
William Blake’s poem,
And did those feet, in ancient times
Walk upon England’s mountains green
And was the Holy Lamb of God
In England’s pleasant pasture’s seen?
. . .
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
“Jerusalem” was sung at Kate and Prince William’s wedding.
http://youtu.be/4yIWBO_7nio “Jerusalem,” words by William Blake, music by Sir C. Hubert H. Parry. You get to see Queen Elizabeth II and Elton John and his hubby sing it --- and all the ladies in their glorious hats
Well, back to another work by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, the tune REPTON, to which the hymn is sung, you will recognize the tune as that used for “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.”
The Co-operative Funeralcare Band has existed for over ninety years (and is a product of the 19th century Co-Operative Movement in Great Britain). It is “the most successful band in the history of Scottish brass band music.”
Instrumental Music – unknown. We have a guest organist on Sunday, Douglas Moreland, and his selections aren’t in the bulletin.
The Westhampton Presbyterian Church was giving away its old hymnals, so I asked Tom to get some for Old South Haven. We now have enough so that every choir member can take one home.
Richard
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ReplyDeleteLEGENDARY compilations indicate ~19 generations between Joseph of Arimathea and the early (first?) Welsh King Cunedda, and Elder Deitz's genealogy suggests perhaps ~53 generations between himself and King Cunedda, for ~72 generations between Joseph and Deitz. Humans have 2^32 base pairs in their genomes, and only about half of a person's genes are passed on in reproduction. A person's genes will be more or less completely flushed out of their descendants' genomes after 32 generations — or just about 1,000 years.
ReplyDeleteJoseph provided Jesus' tomb. Some legends (not Biblical) indicate that Joseph was Mary's uncle. If Joseph was Mary's uncle, they would have shared (by inheritance) about 1/4 of their genetic material on average (depending on the luck of the draw). While some legends indicate that Jesus was Joseph's "nephew," more likely he was Joseph's grand-nephew.
Jesus shared 1/2 of his DNA with his mother, Mary, and 1/2 with his father, God. And therefore he would have shared, on average, 1/8 of his genetic material with Joseph.
While there is some very, very small chance that Elder Deitz's inherited DNA contains some of Mary's & Jesus', he obviously shares none of God's.
Corrects and replaces previous post.