Sacred Music

A Mysterious Text with Three Beautiful Settings and a Bonus: “Gaelic Blessing/Deep Peace”

by
Image by SEIMORI from Pixabay

The miniature gem “Gaelic Blessing” written by John Rutter in 1978 has an interesting connection with the choral music scene in the US. How did that happen with an English composer and a Scottish text? It all started with one of those inexplicable human connections that can never be completely teased out.

John Rutter started his long relationship with America in 1974 when he was contacted by a church choir director, Mel Olson, in Omaha Nebraska, and asked to write a 20-minute piece for Olson’s Chancel Choir. How did someone from Omaha even know about John Rutter, then in the very early stages of his composing career? I don’t know for sure, but it seems possible that Olson had gotten hold of Rutter’s early Christmas music and liked it. Whatever the reason, Rutter was very pleased to get the commission and ended up writing his magnificent Gloria. As he said in answer to my inquiry when I wrote about that piece, “Other commissions from the USA just seemed to follow, to the point where I was able to look upon America as my second home.” And one of those commissions was for “Gaelic Blessing” in 1978, but this time it was the Chancel Choir that reached out for a piece they could dedicate to Olson. I haven’t been able to find a detailed description of Olson’s career, but I’m wondering if this was a farewell gift to him from that choir because he was leaving Omaha. He ended up at in California, where in 1985 he was involved in the initial performances of Rutter’s Requiem.

Read more

The Concept of the “Kyrie”

by
Image by falco from Pixabay; do you recognize what story is being portrayed in this sculpture and how it relates to the concept of mercy?

The choir to which I belong, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is privileged to include a composer, Gloria Srikijkarn, whose works we have performed at several concerts. For our October 2022 concert Songs of Thanksgiving we have a section titled “The Valley of the Shadow” that includes her setting of “Kyrie.” She says that she wrote this moving and beautiful piece “at a very dark time in my life.”

The simple text comes from the service of the Roman Catholic Mass but is often, as here, used as a stand-alone piece. It’s always helpful, though, no matter how separate from the original a version is, to look at how it was used in the first place. So if you were to attend an actual service of the Mass you’d participate in singing the text right after the priest or minister had addressed the congregation by saying,

Read more

Follow the Sheep and the Shepherd All Through Psalm 23

by
Image from the website “The Expeditioner”

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff, They comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou hast anointed my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord,
Forever,  forever.

Read more

How an Obscure Shaker Hymn Gave Elaine Hagenberg Her Start

by
“The Ritual Dance of the Shakers,” Shaker Historical Society, public domain, image accessed via Wikimedia Commons

“I Will Be a Child of Peace” by Elaine Hagenberg offers an origins two-fer: the beginning of her career as a published choral composer/arranger and the source of the music itself. “Peace” was Hagenberg’s first published piece back in 2013. The piece has now been voiced for SATB, TTBB, and SSA. She must really like it!

The original song is a Shaker hymn:

“O Holy Father,” according to manuscripts, originated in 1851. [The manuscripts] attribute it to Alonzo Gilman of the community in Alfred, Maine. [Sister] Mildred said that in her youth the song was used very frequently “at the close of prayer services while we were on our knees.” The song is in 5/4 time. (Notes on Songs in the Film, Shakers)

Read more

The True Story Behind the Text of “Even When He Is Silent”

by
Image accessed via website humanistseminarian.com; no attribution given

Who wrote the text of “Even When He Is Silent” and under what circumstances? Do these questions matter?

I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.
I believe in love when I feel it not
I believe in God even when he is silent.

Found written on a concentration camp wall after World War II

That’s the text used in the lovely piece that my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing/has performed in October 2022, a setting written in 2011 by the Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen. Given my own fascination with history I was curious to find out a little bit more about these words: Which concentration camp? Who might have written them? My internet diving turned up some surprising facts about the lines, facts that only deepened and strengthened their power.

Read more

Z. Randall Stroope, Heritage and HODIE

by
image accessed via zrstroope.com

A Rich Vein of Influence

The “Z” stands for “Zane.” Just in case you’re wondering.

Now that we have that out of the way we can get to the real stuff, notably the great compositional heritage embodied in the work of this very-active American composer. A look at his teachers and their teachers and their teachers shows a line going all the way back to the great French composer Gabriel Fauré, who lived from the mid-1800’s until the 1920’s and who in turn had been taught by none other than Camille Saint-Saëns. Wow. Ancestry.com should do a family tree on this.

Fauré had a long and varied career as a performer, composer, and teacher. The next step on the ladder of Stroope’s influences came from Fauré’s student Nadia Boulanger. It’s fair to say that while no one today is going to program a concert featuring her own works, she has permeated American music to a surprising degree, with pupils including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach. Two pupils relevant to Stroope were Cecil Effinger and Normand Lockwood, both of whom became Stroope’s teachers and mentors.

Read more

LUX: The Dawn from on High

by

Introduction to the work and its composer Dan Forrest

Image accessed via Pixabay.

Dan Forrest published his first choral piece, an arrangement of the hymn “Sun of My Soul,” in 2001. He was 23 years old and working on a degree in piano performance at the time. Beckenhorst Press, a major sacred music publisher, accepted the work after several others had rejected it, little knowing that Forrest would end up as an assistant editor for the organization and as the primary accompanist for their demo recordings. While Forrest had done some arranging and composing in his high school and college years, he concentrated on the piano until, as he says, “Eventually I just got kind of tired of the piano, where you press a note and it dies.” (See the J. W. Pepper video below for the full interview.) He became more and more interested in vocal music, eventually earning his doctorate in composition. He’s also studied with a number of prominent American choral composers, among them Alice Parker, whom Forrest considers to be a foremost influence.  He’s now much in demand as a composer, arranger, conductor, speaker and clinician and has left full-time teaching so that he can devote more time to his own writing.

Read more

What’s the “Beautiful City,” and why does it have 12 gates?

by
The New Jerusalem. Armenian manuscript by Malnazar and Aghap’ir in New Julfa bible, 1645; accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

There are so many areas of interest implicit in this brief arrangement of several Black spirituals that I hardly know where to begin. I’ll start with encouraging you to read my post “How Did We Get African-American Spirituals?” Got that? Okay, let’s move on to this specific arrangement that includes texts from “Oh, What a Beautiful City” and “In Bright Mansions Above” as well as fragments from other sources. The words from these are melded seamlessly and beautifully, with the slower, quieter phrases from “Mansions” providing the bridge, or contrasting middle section, for the piece. And of course, since the actual spirituals dating from before the Civil War are all anonymous, anyone can do anything with them. Even if we did know authors’ names the copyright would long ago have expired.

So you may have thought when you read the title of this post that the answers were pretty obvious, and indeed they are to some extent. The “beautiful city” is, of course, heaven, and the “12 gates” are the “pearly gates” mentioned in the book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian New Testament. In fact, let’s just stop here for a moment and read the actual description:

Read more

What does “campground” refer to in the spiritual “Deep River”?

by
“Deep River,” like “My God Is a Rock,” belongs in the category of slow, quiet spirituals. These songs of despair and hope were sometimes forbidden by slaveowners or overseers, while more up-tempo songs were actively encouraged as being helpful to keep the work going.
Why do the words say, “I want to cross over into campground”? I’ve noticed before that “campground” doesn’t really fit the rhythm very well. And for me, the image conjured up is that of tents, campfires, and lots of children running around. Almost like a refugee camp. (The fact that I have promised myself that I will never, ever again sleep on the ground in a tent might color my perceptions a bit.) Someone else might think of Civil War soldiers’ camps. Why would persecuted people want to escape to something so . . . unrestful?

Read more

What’s the “rock” in “Elijah Rock”?

by

This seems like a pretty simple question, doesn’t it? But let me tell you, it isn’t! I’ve done lots of trolling the internet looking for answers and come across some pretty convoluted ideas, but there seems to be one answer that makes the most sense. The facts that there are several versions of the lyrics and the ideas seem somewhat truncated mark this as a genuine folk song, passed down orally for a number of years.

Before I get to the various meanings for “rock,” here are some ideas that do seem clear. “Comin’ up, Lord,” has to refer to Elijah’s being taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. One of the choruses in Mendelssohn’s Elijah also vividly depicts that event. Interesting to compare that composer with his background of wealth, privilege and refinement with the unknown slave who first came up with this spiritual and whose hands were roughened from cotton bolls and back was scarred from the whip. Could the two of them have found common ground if they had ever met? I truly think they could.

Read more