Music Ministry Musing from Mary
Music Ministry Musings from Mary
Greetings, everyone. Today we look at the music line-up for this coming Sunday, June 14. Both of our hymns have enjoyed enduring popularity across denominational lines for several hundred years. The text of our first hymn, #686, ‘Come thou fount of every blessing’ had its origin in England in 1758, and first appeared in an American Episcopal hymnal in 1826. The tune, Nettleton, first appeared in the shape-note Hymnal, Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music: Part Second, Harrisburg, PA, 1813. Shape-note singing was a popular early American method of teaching people to read music by differently shaped notes in community ‘singing schools’.
Shape-note singing originated in New England and spread quickly to the South as well. Shape-note hymns often have a lively strong beat and in addition to learning to read the music by the aid of the different shaped notes, singers would incorporate vigorous arm motions to set and maintain the beat. Foot stamping was also encouraged.
Last summer, I was fortunate to attend the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) conference in Boston, MA, where we were all instructed in the art of shape-note singing, had a rousing practice (on a very hot day in an un-airconditioned church!) and then employed our new knowledge the next day in a service of Morning Prayer at Old North Church (also un-airconditioned!) raising the roof with our vigorous singing and arm motions. One of the delights of going to AAM conferences is the daily offering of worship and the incredible singing of 300 organists and choir directors! You may also remember that the 2003 film Cold Mountain prominently used shape-note singing in the soundtrack and the plot.
Our second hymn, #377, All people that on earth do dwell, (tune name Old 100th) enjoys universal hymnal citizenship as well. The text is a metrical setting of Psalm 100, and its accompanying tune dates back to the English Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, when metrical psalm translations and singing gained popularity through the Genevan practice of psalm singing. This practice spread to Scotland in 1564 with the first edition of the Scottish psalm book, and from there to England. It enjoyed similar popularity in America, where it was printed in 226 American publications between 1698 and 1810.
Enjoy listening to the St. Thomas-Epiphany Choir sing the first verses of both of these enduring hymns by viewing the video.
In addition this Sunday, we have our tenor, Darrius Pugh singing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ as a solo at the Gradual. This gospel hymn, written by Harry Dixon Loes in the 1920s, gained popularity in the civil rights movement, and continues to be popular among protestors and activists in addition to enjoying a place in our hymnody.
Rounding out our music for Sunday, my organ prelude features a work by composer Undine S. Moore (1904-1989), known as the ‘Dean of Black Women Composers’. A grand-daughter of slaves, she attended Fisk University and went on to attain degrees at the Juilliard School of music (B.Mus cum laude 1926), and a Masters degree from Columbia University. She went on to teach at Virginia State College from 1927-1972, and helped to found the Black Music Center at Virginia State. Her Variations on ‘Nettleton’ heard on Sunday, is the only surviving of her two organ works. She is known primarily for her choral compositions and chamber music.
Sunday’s postlude features our intrepid and talented Director of Communications, Lesa Gould, on trumpet, and my bassoonist husband Bill Spencer in a rendition of Sing a New Song by American composer Dan Schutte, author also of the popular hymn “I, the Lord of sea and sky”, and over 150 popular hymns and Catholic Mass settings.
