'Tis the season...

One of the many joys of working at St. Barnabas is the opportunity to make music with so many talented people - both members and guest musicians.

The Senior Choir has been in rare form this fall - I hope you've had a chance to catch them. I've thrown a very challenging schedule at them - 10 of the 16 tunes we'll have done by Christmas Eve have been new to all or most of the choir. That's 62.5%. Usually, church choir directors figure having about a third of the repertoire new is ample challenge for an amateur group.

But the Choir has risen to the challenge - and just as a side note, their attendance at rehearsals has been nothing short of stellar. And that's a very good thing. Some of our rehearsals remind me of a Music History teacher I had who spoke so fast, covering so much material, that if you broke the lead in your pencil (yes, this was Back In the Day), you missed 200 years.

Our rehearsals are a lot like that. Singers come ready to work, and I try to see they're not disappointed. ;)

We've also had a run of wonderful guest artists - violin, cello, brass, percussion - who have added wonderfully to our worship in music.

And that's about to kick into high gear, starting this week.

At Sunday's second service, the Choir will be singing Maple Grove resident Lloyd Larson's Joy of Every Longing Heart, an anthem which smashes together a 4th-Century Christmas text, its 19th-Century translation (Of the Father's Love Begotten), a 13th-Century plainsong (chant) and - finally - the 1723 10th and last movement of Bach's cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life): a tune we know as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - which is actually an early-20th-Century translation by English physician Robert Bridges of a 1681 poem by German poet Martin Jahn.

The result of all this musical carnage is not nearly so irritating as you might expect. To begin with, it certainly doesn't hurt to be pairing a couple of very strong tunes, each well able to stand in its own right. And it all actually turns out rather nicely, especially when you add to the mix LOMOMO (Laid Off Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra - speaking of musical carnage) violinist and SBCA teacher Alexandra Early and amazing Wayzata High School Senior cellist Maggie Matejcek on the noodles (violin) and figured bass line (cello) of Bach's piece.

Composer Larson starts the piece out as something of a quodlibet - think of it as a musical mashup, alternating and overlaying tunes - but before long he ditches the plainsong altogether, keeping only its words and stringing them out on the Bach melody.

And now you know way more than you ever wanted to know about the Choir's 4 minutes of fame this coming Sunday. And no, you will never get those 4 minutes back. But I think you'll be okay with the tradeoff.

Just a bit more about these two talented musical guests. Jesu probably sounds a little more difficult than it actually is, especially for players of this ilk. It seemed a shame to bring them out here for just 4 minutes, so we're asking them to join Dr. Mary Newton in a trio for the preludes on Sunday. They'll be playing a setting of Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus - but quite possibly not the tune you associate with these words attributed to Charles Wesley. As a hymn text, it's something of a shameless hussy, sitting down with the tune Jefferson in Lutheran hymnals, but playing fast and loose with Hyfrydol - Love Divine, All Loves Excelling in ELW parlance - in Episcopalian, Methodist and just about everyone else's hymnal.

All except the Presbyterians. Apparently they couldn't make up their minds, so they included Hyfrydol, but they also sing it to yet a third tune, Stuttgart (ELW: everyone's toe-tapping favorite, Crashing Waters at Creation). It's the kind of thing that happens when your text has a metrical index of 8 7 8 7 D - that's a line of 8 syllables, then a line of 7 syllables, then 8 again, then 7 more. The D means the pattern is repeated in each verse - making it actually 8 7 8 7 8 7 8 7. It's a common metrical setup - it applies to 34 hymns in ELW.

This is one sassy text, I have to say.

We picked the Hyfrydol version because it shows off the considerable skills of our visitors; I hope you'll enjoy it.

Even if it is the wrong tune.