Sunday off

The new year has barely turned the page of my calendar when I have the first Sunday off. It is Epiphany (Wise Men find the manger). By the time the coffee is aromatizing the kitchen I pop in a Westminster Choir College CD and hear organ, bell choir, and vocal choir while I meditate at home. Here's an online image of Westminster, where I got my master's degree in music in 1977.

While appreciation for Neffsville is mingling with the cup of coffee, thanks goes out for pianist Carolyn North who is subbing for me. My mind recollects the recent Christmas season and all the magnificent music (Al's bell tree and Doug's brass ensemble for two examples). Many cookies and gifts helped brighten the December days. Thanks to all.

Advent IV

We had guest musician, a son of the congregation, Clifford Leaman of the University of South Carolina, and his daughters Biranna (oboe) and Aubrey (piano). They presented exquisite carol arrangements for prelude and offertory. Clifford is professor of saxophone. He played a B-flat soprano sax. The saxophone journal saluted him as "an artist of the first order…intuitive, exciting, and enthralling." I wrote an arrangement of our last hymn, Angels We Have Heard on High, for him and he told me he liked the arrangement. I thought it went pretty well, myself.

For the first hymn, O Come, All Ye Faithful, I used the well-known arrangement by David Willcox. The middle hymn, Lo How a Rose, was sung very sensitively by the 400 in the congregation, with just 8 and 4 foot principals and flute on the organ, which is soft.

Advent I new music

What a musical feast today! Carol Horning did a magnificent job leading the congregation singing Sleepers Awake; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; and Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus. The organ backed them up with moderate settings. The offertory was an arrangement I made of O Savior Rend the Heavens Wide, for flute, oboe and trumpet accompanied by organ. Julia Nolt played flute, Caitlin Landis, oboe, and Doug Brubaker, trumpet. My major prelude piece was also Sleepers Awake, the well-known Wachet Auf of J. S. Bach. I also improvised on The Angel Gabriel from the spiral hymnal.

special music offering

The offertory today, Oct. 24, was played on the piano by Carolyn North, who presented a Jos. Martin arrangement of "Nothing But the Blood," a Gospel song by Robert Lowry. Click and see the words and hear a computer play the tune. Details: Lowry wrote the words and music, published in 1876. If you follow hymns, you recognize the name Lowry. He was one of the long-lasting composers and lyric-writers of the 1800s.

Go figure: Our blue hymnal has six works of his. He wrote the music for #14, Come We That Love the Lord. He wrote words and music for #124, O Worship the Lord. He wrote words and music for Low in the Grave, to give three examples.

Lowry's hymn is not found in as many hymnals as early in the 20th century. The Church Hymnal of 1927 includes it. The words imitate a catechism, with a series of questions and answers, and then a chorus of adoration: "O, precious...."

If you can't sing very high or very low, this is the tune for you. It packs all its catchiness and beauty and rhythm in four notes of the scale: do, re, mi, sol. It can be played on the black notes of a piano. Go to the piano and start on F#. What a feat! With merely four notes, you try to write a whole song that people sing 134 years later!

The arrangement chosen by Carolyn North was not easy. It was beautiful. Thank you Carolyn!

hand chimes as prelude

This past Sunday an octave of hand chimes chimed in on the prelude. They joined with the organ in performing the hymn tune Picardy, which is a French carol first published in 1860. In our hymnal we find it at #463, set to the words, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. Thanks to Al, Claire, Velma, and Eunice, we made sounds which set a very quiet beginning to the worship time. Hand chimes were invented as a training tool for hand bells. Here's a photo from online.