Gretchaninoff's "Passion Week"

The choir's music for the five Sundays of Lent preceding Palm Sunday and the music for our Good Friday evening service all share a common composer - in fact, each of the pieces is taken from a larger, multi-movement work.

The large work is Passion Week, by Russian composer Alexander Gretchaninoff (1864-1956).

Had it not been for the stubborn opposition of his uneducated father, who could barely read, Grechaninov may have developed sooner. He began study on the piano at the relatively late age of 14, mainly owing to the urging of a caring sister-in-law. Grechaninov enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory in 1881 over the objections of his father.

He left Moscow in 1890 for further study with Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His Concert Overture (1892 - 1893) gave Grechaninov his first success, and his 1894 String Quartet captured a prize at the Belyayev Chamber Music Competition. He supported himself and his wife (whom he married in 1891) during this time as a piano teacher.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Grechaninov arranged many songs of ethnic origin for children, producing several popular numbers and giving him great prominence among Russian composers. In 1906, he accepted teaching posts at the Moscow Conservatory and Gnessin School of Music. Throughout his career, Grechaninov composed many works in the sacred genre and in recognition of this continuing work, the Tsarist government granted him a yearly stipend of 2,000 rubles. 

After the Bolshevik Revolution, he lost the stipend and ultimately his faith in his homeland, feeling his religious and political convictions were at odds with those of the Communist regime. After several trips abroad, he emigrated to Paris in 1925, where he established a career as a pianist and still managed to devote much time to composition.

In 1929, he made the first of several trips to the United States, a country he felt increasingly drawn toward. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States, ultimately making New York his home (1940). He became a U.S. citizen in 1949, at the age of 85.

Passion Week, composed in 1911, premiered in 1912, then lay dormant for 80 years, finally being revived in the early 1990s by the Russian State Symphonic Cappella. A 2007 recording of the work by the Phoenix Bach Choir and Kansas City Chorale brought it international attention.

Passion Week is made up of 13 choral pieces, each setting a text from an Orthodox liturgy or from scripture. The texts are written (and will be sung) in Old Church Slavonic (roughly akin to the Ecclesiastical Latin in pre-Vatican II Catholic masses) - don't panic; we'll include a translation.

We'll be presenting 4 of the works - 3 during the first 5 weeks of Lent, the fourth on Good Friday.

The texts are fascinating; while they refer to stories and concepts altogether familiar to us, they often use an imagery very different from that to which we're accustomed. The opening line of the work we'll sing the evening of Good Friday is a good example; it refers to Christ as:

     Thou, who clothes Thyself with light as a garment

Nothing objectionable there; it's just a different way of looking at a familiar scene (this one happens to be about taking Christ down from the cross).

I'll have more to say about the individual texts as we proceed through Lent.

But the texts, interesting as they are, pale next to the music. Simply put, this is stunningly gorgeous music. It relies heavily on the bass section, and their deep, sonorous voices help create a solemn tone in each piece. The music is never in a hurry; think of long arcs, think of high, old cathedrals, think of mountain valleys - think of anything majestic and a little bit larger than life.

The function of this music in our worship is a little bit different from our usual anthems. Our standard practice is to present choral works which either reinforce one of the lessons of the day or provide a general element of praise to God.

These pieces are more to carve out a moment in the service when you might commune with God, an extra moment of meditation or prayer, perhaps. I think the best way to listen to these works is to close your eyes and let the music take you where it will. Their majesty and solemnity tell us that God is bigger and more powerful than anything which confronts us.

I hope you will be as moved by the music of Passion Week as are those of us preparing to share it with you.

The Senior Choir Sings the Blues

This week's lectionary relates the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well. The choir is hard at work, preparing an anthem based on this story, helping to reinforce at least part of the message of the morning. Congregants at the 10:30 service will hear the piece.

Now, we've sung a number of masterworks over the last several years, including Renaissance motets and mass movements, excerpts from oratorios by Handel and Mendelssohn, Bach chorales, a portion of the Brahms Requiem, sublime sacred music from Russia and major works of more recent vintage.

This will not be one of them. But I think we'll still have a good time.

The anthem for this Sunday is Jesus Met the Woman at the Well. Readers of a certain age may remember the tune from recordings by Peter, Paul and Mary. Readers of another certain age may remember performances of it by the Pilgrim Travelers, or by Mahalia Jackson, Rev. Gary Davis or Bob Dylan.

It's difficult to ascertain just where the song came from - it's invariably listed as "Traditional" on record labels. It seems to have been a big Gospel hit during the 1940s and 50s, moving more into a folk idiom with the 1964 PP&M release, which seems to be based more on Mahalia Jackson's 1954 recording than on Bob Dylan's performances of the song in 1961 and 1963.

Regardless of the style, one element runs true throughout: this is a blues song. It may not have strict blues musical structure, but it's the blues.

You can tell this from two things.

First, the structure of the lyrics. The first verse is:

   Jesus met the woman at the well,
   Jesus met the woman at the well,
   Jesus met the woman at the well,
   and he told her everything she'd ever done.

This AAAB configuration is common in blues lyrics (as is AAB, which Dylan used). Every verse has the same structure - AAAB, and there's no chorus. Repetition is a hallmark of the blues, and this song nails it.

Secondly, the chord structure suggests the blues. It's not exactly the standard 12-bar blues one might expect, which would look something like this:

   A-A-A-A7
   D-D7-A-A7
   E7-D7-A-A

Jesus Met the Woman uses 16-bar phrases. It looks something like this:

   A-A-A-A7
   D-D-A-A7
   D-D-C#7-F#m
   B-B7-E-E9
 
Even with their differences there's a great similarity between the two progressions, with them being virtually identical in the first 2 phrases of the song.

So, we'll be singing the blues this Sunday. Wear your toe-tapping shoes.

'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.

No ganging aft a-gley

This week's Biblical text includes the story of Manna in the Wilderness. This was an easy one to find music to fit - after a fashion.

First off, the Handbell Choir makes its debut this Sunday, offering the prelude at both services.

Their selection will be Holy Manna (I told you it was an easy fit), a setting by Susan Geschke of one of the oldest American folk hymns. This Appalachian tune first appeared in 1825's Columbian Harmony, a four-note shaped note tune book published by William Moore, who wrote the music. Moore wrote the tune as a setting for Brethren, We Have Met to Worship, an 1819 hymn lyric by George Atkins. Atkins was a Methodist pastor and newspaperman. Not much is known of Moore, other than he, like Atkins, lived in Tennessee.

The tune is folklike in both its form and use of the pentatonic (5-note) scale. The AABA form, also known as rounded bar form, consists of a verse, a second verse, a bridge, and a third verse. It's called rounded because of the return of the verse after the bridge. Each verse usually has a different set of words.


The AABA form has been heavily used in popular music - think Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I Got Rhythm, I Want to Hold Your Hand, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - you get the idea.


The pentatonic scale? Think using just the black keys on a piano. It's been used all over the world - it's very basic to Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian music, Javanese Gamelan, Scottish music and Appalachian tunes. Some of our favorite hymns are based on it - Amazing Grace, for instance.

The Handbell Choir's presentation has a little fun with the tune. The hymn itself is usually pretty uptempo, anyway, and the arranger played facilitates this by calling for the entire piece to be played with mallets. The group has fun with the mallets, and we hope you'll enjoy this prelude.

Susan Geschke has for 10 years been the Director of Music at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Crystal Lake, Illinois. She's published 75+ handbell pieces.

Worshipers at the 10:30 service will get a double portion of the Holy Manna hymn tune - the choir's presenting an anthem version of the original hymn (really easy fit, eh?). The setting is a cappella (without accompaniment), and I think listening to it will take you back to Early America - though it has a couple of interesting harmonic twists along the way.


In this hymn, the final A of the form (AABA, remember?) is either this line or some variant of it:
Brethren, pray, and holy manna will be showered all around.


The choral version has a few very nice canonic structures in it. In music, a canon is a round - like Row, Row Row Your Boat or Frère Jacques. Pentatonic tunes (black keys, remember?) are particularly well-suited for canons - no half-steps ganging merrily aft a-gley to make utter hash of your once well-tuned harmonies. Pentatonic canons sort of police themselves and keep the train on the rails.

This arrangement was done by John Carter, who was until recently Director of Music at University Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio. Carter is a well-known composer with several hundred choral compositions to his credit as well as several musicals, an opera, and a dozen collections for keyboard and organ.

A treat for the early service...

This Sunday's lectionary text focuses on Jacob - and includes the story of his dream about the ladder reaching up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it.

Craig Courtney, a composer with hundreds of publications and an impressive resume - including a six-year stint on the piano faculty of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria - published a choral anthem last year galled The Gate of Heaven. It was written in memory of Burke Rice, a young man who was preparing to enter the police force. Burke's family requested the song be based on Genesis 28:15-18, which includes the text:

 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

Lyricist Susan Bental Boersma took this request - as well as the family's wishes to incorporate the spiritual Jacob's Ladder and a cello part (in honor of Burke's best friend, a cellist) in the piece - and fashioned a sublime text, which begins:

God of the cloud and fire, my heart is in your hand.

This is a stunningly beautiful piece. The piano accompaniment, played with exquisite musicianship by Dr. Mary Newton, could stand on its own for a solo, as could the cello part, presented molto espressivo by WHS senior Maggie Matejcek. The anthem has already become a favorite of many in the choir, and I think you may well agree.

We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder arose as an African-American spiritual in the antebellum South. The words reflect confidence and hope in the face of difficult, horrible circumstances:

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.

Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Every round goes higher, higher,
Soldiers of the cross. 

The story of Jacob’s ladder, found in Genesis, is told in all three of the Abrahamic faith traditions. Though it might be interpreted differently in Judaism, Christianity or Islam, its basic message of connecting with God and aspiring to ascend to some higher meaning for our lives runs through the three traditions.


In his novel, The Oath, Elie Wiesel tells the story of a Jewish survivor of a pogrom, and at one point Wiesel writes:

“Through song,” said the Rebbe,“ man climbs to the highest palace.  From that palace he can influence the universe and its prisons. Song is Jacob’s ladder, forgotten on earth by the angels.  Sing and you shall defeat death, sing and you shall disarm the foe.”

Amen, and amen.

Lamb of God

I mentioned in an earlier post how tricky it can be to find choral works which connect in some way to the lectionary text of the day.

Not so this week. There are thousands of pieces which relate - and probably 99% of them have the same text:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

which is to say,
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

We have before us the story of Abraham and Isaac. The key part of text, at least for these musical purposes, is Genesis 22:8 - Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." It presages John the Baptist's remark when he first spied Jesus, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). And those are the sources for our text.

The text was a Syrian custom introduced into the Roman rite by Pope Sergius I (can you believe - there were four Popes named "Sergius?"). Sergius (c.650-701) was born to a Syrian family who settled in Sicily. He added the text to the Fraction of the mass - that moment when the bread is broken by the priest. He did this in protest against the Quinisext Council, which forbade the worship of Christ as the Lamb of God.

The Quinisext Council didn't garner rave reviews - "reprobate synod" and "erratic council" were the more family-friendly terms used to describe it. The text stayed in.

We'll be presenting the text - or a portion of it, anyway (see below) - as set by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594).

From Wiki:

Palestrina was born in the town of Palestrina, near Rome, then part of the Papal States. Documents suggest that he first visited Rome in 1537, when he is listed as a chorister at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. He spent most of his career in the city.

Palestrina came of age as a musician under the influence of the northern European style of polyphony, which owed its dominance in Italy primarily to two influential Franco-Flemish composers, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez, who had spent significant portions of their careers there. Italy itself had yet to produce anyone of comparable fame or skill in polyphony.

Polyphony is a style of music with 2 or more independent lines of melody. This distinguishes it from our more familiar homophonic style, with its one melody and chords.

Palestrina's particular brand of polyphony is called Imitative Counterpoint - the voices enter at different times, singing the same music (though sometimes with variations). You'll hear this quite clearly in the Choir's presentation.

About that "portion" of the text comment: In this particular mass (Missa Aeterna Christi Munera - Mass for the Eternal Gifts of Christ), Palestrina divided the Agnus Dei into 2 parts. The first part, Agnus Dei I, is in 4-part harmony (SATB) and sets the text Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. The second part, Agnus Dei II (what else?), is in 5 parts (SATBB) and sets the last line, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem. It's this second portion we'll be singing Sunday.

You can hear the entire Agnus Dei here - Agnus Dei II starts at about 2:08.

The mass (one of 104 Palestrina is known to have composed) was written in 1590 - one of 7 masses he created that year. It's known as a paraphrase mass - a method of creating large structures based on a single tune, in this case the hymn, Aeterna Christi Munera, which is attributed to (though with a measurable degree of uncertainty) to St. Ambrose (c.340-397), who is credited with being the Father of Christian Hymnody.

I should probably mention that Palestrina didn't write for SATB and SATBB choirs; women were not included in the choirs of the day, so the arrangements were TTBB and TTBBB - and in a different key from what we'll do. Still, the music has beautiful lines and almost shimmering textures - hallmarks of Palestrina's style.

One last thing: Palestrina died in 1594 on Groundhog's Day, Old Style. I don't really think that means anything.

We shoulda charged admission...

GREAT choir rehearsal last night! Whereas last week's rehearsal was primarily concerned with simply reading through and getting a feel for a stack of music mostly new to the group, last night we had a chance to work more in depth on some of the pieces.

And the results were wonderful: There were moments of great music-making, passionate singing that were simply thrilling to hear. This is one of the marvelous secrets the congregation doesn't get to share - the magic moments of transcendent music-making which occur when talented singers "get it," all at the same time. When I worked in musical theatre, we talked about "finding the groove," those occasions when a show finally set, when we all knew exactly what to do, what to expect, anticipating and preparing for each passage in each song in the show.

Last night, the Senior Choir began to find its groove. It's something we have to work for on each piece, and we have a long way to go (9 of the 15 pieces we'll sing this fall are new to the group - a larger than average percentage of new works for a church choir's schedule). But we had some glorious moments, some amazing sounds last night. Driving home, I found myself wondering: If they sound like this the second rehearsal of the season, just where might this choir go this year? Interesting question; time will tell.

This Sunday we begin our second year using the Narrative Lectionary, and the text for the day is Genesis 1 - Creation. The choir's anthem is a choral setting of the hymn I Sing the Mighty Power of God by Anna Laura Page.

It's an altogether grand setting of the piece. The choir is accompanied by organ, piano, brass quartet and handbells. Festive, it is.

The words to the hymn come from Isaac Watts (1674-1748), the Father of English Hymnody (he's credited with writing about 750 hymns).

Watts' taste for verse showed it­self in ear­ly child­hood, and his prom­ise caused a lo­cal doc­tor and other friends to of­fer him a un­i­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, as­sum­ing he would be or­dained in the Church of Eng­land.


How­ev­er, Watts de­clined and in­stead en­tered a Non­con­for­mist (non-Anglican) Acad­e­my. He left the Acad­e­my at age 20 and spent two years at home; it was dur­ing this per­i­od that he wrote the bulk of his Hymns and Spir­it­u­al Songs.
The present work comes from Di­vine and Mor­al Songs for Child­ren (1715). The text echoes a creation text from Jeremiah 10:12-13:

It is he who made the earth by his power,
    who established the world by his wisdom,
    and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.
When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,
    and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightnings for the rain,
    and he brings out the wind from his storehouses.

The tune for this hymn is Forest Green, a traditional English tune arranged by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams for the English Hymnal of 1906. Interestingly, the same tune as been used for O Little Town of Bethlehem.

The choir (and accompanying musicians) will present the work at both the 9:00 and 10:30 services on Sunday.