Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
Prelude: Kingsfold Te Deum, Sondra Tucker
The Prelude Sunday morning, Kingsfold Te Deum, will be offered by our Trinity handbell ringers. Both the KINGSFOLD (Hymn 292/480) and TE DEUM (Canticle 21) tunes are heard separately in the beginning, then together in the final stanza. A great festival piece! This will be the Trinity Ringers first time playing together in service again since before summer, so we are excited to have them back!
Processional Hymn: Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation/Westminster Abbey
The opening hymn Sunday morning is a very familiar hymn tune we know here at Trinity- Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation. The hymn tune was written by none other, Henry Purcell, who was perhaps the greatest English composer who ever lived, though he only lived to the age of thirty-six. The hymn tune, Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation, was translated in 1851 by John Mason Neale from the second part of the 6th- or 7th-century Latin monastic hymn Urbs beata Jerusalem.
Anthem: The Majesty and Glory of Your Name Tom Fettke
The Choir Anthem on Sunday is the classic by Tom Fettke. The text is based on the Psalm appointed for Sunday, Psalm 8. This anthem came out in the early 90's and has become a favorite and church choirs throughout the world. Fettke took the text by Linda Lee Johnson and married it with music that paints a perfect picture of creation and our place in it.
Here is a link to a story by Tom Fettke on the writing of this song.
Be sure to listen to this arrangement sung on YouTube. It is different from most because it sung by an all male group, but I found it to be most helpful because it helped me focus on the words, not the instruments.
Closing Hymn: Hymn to Joy
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is based on a simple musical theme, yet it has magic beyond words! Not only grabs the heart, but its message represents everything humanity should stand and fight for! The Ode to Joy (A die Freude) is an ode composed by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller in the summer of 1785 and published the following year in the magazine Thalia. A slightly revised version was published in 1808, changing two lines of the first stanza and removed the last one.
The poem in the first version was composed of 9 stanzas of eight lines each and then reduced to 8 in the second version. Each verse is followed by a 4-line refrain, which is characterized as “chorus.”
It is well known throughout the World for having been used by Ludwig van Beethoven as a text of the choral part of the fourth and final movement of his Ninth Symphony. Micki was blessed to sing this with the Dallas Symphony in the early 90's!
Postlude: Concerto No II in a minor, Movement III, J.S Bach/Vivaldi
Vivaldi's original concerto's figured bass continuo part was fleshed out by Bach, with the two solo parts and accompaniment spread out over the manuals of the organ. It is interesting to compare the original with Bach's transcription, as it gives some idea of Bach's skill and knowledge of what the organ was capable of. Bach was a literal 'one man band' when he played the instrument. Bach maintained the Italian style of the originals as well as most of the notes contained in the two solo violin parts. The violin and organ are two vastly differnet instruments, so the literal transrciption of most of the solo parts causes some real difficulties for the organist, but as Bach made these transcriptions for his own use, that was probably of no concern. The concerto is in three movements, but Sunday morning you will be hearing the third.
III. Allegro - The music returns to a brisk tempo and the key of A minor. After the initial statement is repeated, Bach changes the chords played by one of the solo violins to running sixteenth notes while keeping the original eighth notes of the original, one of the few actual alterations to the notes of the original. This adds brilliance to the music, perhaps Bach was flexing his organ playing muscles. He must have liked the effect for he repeats the changes later in the movement.
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