This week's broadcast of Choral Evensong from the BBC is a service recorded at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas.
The canticles are, fittingly, Herbert Howells Dallas Service.
Don't delay! As with these BBC webcasts only four weeks to listen before it disappears.
Introit: King of glory, King of peace (Harold Friedell) Responses: Bruce Neswick Psalm 105 (Ritchie, Dettra, Fenstermaker) First Lesson: Song of Solomon 3 Office Hymn: Lift your voice rejoicing, Mary (Fisk of Gloucester) Canticles: Dallas Service (Howells) Second Lesson: Matthew 28 vv.16-20 Anthems: I was glad (Leo Sowerby) Light's Glittering Morn (Horatio Parker) Organ Voluntary: Toccata (Vincent Persichetti) Scott Dettra, Director of Music L. Graham Schultz, Assistant Organist.
Labels: Evensong, Friedell, Horatio Parker, Howells, Incarnation (Dallas), Neswick, Sowerby
The lectionary gives us a beautiful resurrection story on Easter, but it's not the story of Easter morning. It's the story of Easter evening found in Luke 24:13-53.
In fact, this story is so dearly beloved by the Church that we hear it three times this year.
Note that the Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year cycle, so this year we hear the road to Emmaus story on the Third Sunday of Easter, but even in years B and C the story appears twice.
I love this story, which appears immediately after the story of Jesus' resurrection in Luke's gospel. It is the first resurrection appearance.
The meal at which the two disciples (one of whom is named Cleopas; the other's name is lost to history) recognize Jesus involves the breaking of bread. And in the same moment that they finally recognize him, Jesus vanishes into thin air.
It's a mysterious story.
Leo Sowerby set a good bit of this story to music (using the words of the King James Version). And it is splendid. Sowerby unspools the threads of this story in his inimitable style. The revelation of Jesus identity is powerful. But just as powerful is the turn that Sowerby takes in the music to accompany Jesus' disappearance. It is a mystery in music. We are left with these very "James Bond" sounding chords at the end of this anthem that let us know that this isn't the last time we're going to encounter the resurrected Christ. He'll be back.
A year ago, I found that this anthem was ideal for an Eastertide Evensong
At the root of the Greek word for beauty (kalon) is a connection to a sense of call. If you have felt your heart stirred by the beauty of the Easter Gospel (whether it was for the first time or the most recent of many times) you are invited to encounter the risen Christ again on the road to Emmaus at Choral Evensong. In this and every service of Evensong, we seek to worship God through word, song, and sight.Before our first Evensong this season I wrote about Evensong having a sense of “surrender,” but when the presence of God reaches us, even when it is unexpected, we also feel a quickening of our hearts – an awakening. We worship God who is the source of all beauty and calls to us through the same. And it is “in the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act” (John O’Donahue).
This year I find that this marvelous anthem is just right for the Third Sunday of Easter. And I wonder how it's "flavor" will change. I think that the disappearance of Jesus will be just as mysterious at the end, but I wonder how much more revelatory the breaking of bread will be when this anthem is sung in the context of a service Holy Communion in the Easter season.
28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. 29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. 30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
See also: 5 Sowerby Anthems That Every Church Musician Should Know
Labels: Communion, Easter, Evensong, John O'Donohue, Sowerby
If you're looking of canticles in the key of E for Evensong, here are some suggestions:
1. Herbert Murrill: Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in E
A solid, straightforward setting in which the organ ducks and weaves in and out of the choral texture. This one probably doesn't get enough respect.
Here's the Magnificat:
2. S. S. Wesley: Evening Canticles in E
A grandiose (long!) service, but with every ounce of Wesleyan refinement.
3. Pelham Humfrey: Evening Service in E minor
Humphrey (1647-1674) died at age 27, but not before leaving us this gorgeous verse service.
(A popular performing edition has this piece in F minor, but Humfrey wrote it in E so we include it here.)
4. Sydney Watson: Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in E
Watson was the conductor of the first performance of William Walton's The Twelve. Here's his contribution to the genre in this key: a quick, well-crafted, no nonsense setting. The Gloria is particularly arresting.
Watson in E - St. John's, Cambridge
5. Leo Sowerby: Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in E minor
And of course this list wouldn't be complete without the most famous American setting of the evening canticles in this key.
The Magnificat is wonderful, of course, but the Nunc dimittis is particularly expansive, as only Sowerby write. And, wait a minute, wasn't the Magnificat in minor? What key is this in?
Labels: canticles, Evensong, Humfrey, Murrill, Sowerby, Watson, Wesley
Leo Sowerby was affectionately known as the "Dean of American Church Music". He was an incredibly prolific composer of music in many genres, including choral anthems.
Here are five Sowerby anthems that every church musician should know.
1. I will lift up mine eyes
This is probably the most popular of Sowerby's anthems. While employing a good bit of chromaticism this anthem is well within the grasp of many church choirs. It requires an alto soloist.
2. I was glad
If Sowerby's setting of Psalm 121 (above) is rather constrained in scope, some of his music takes place on a somewhat larger scale and can unfold rather deliberately.
His setting of Psalm 122 ("I was glad") begins with a grand organ introduction and declamatory singing from the choir. Several minutes in a more lyrical, imitative section begins with the words "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem". The music picks up in intensity again at the concluding section, "For my brethren and companions' sakes".
Hallmarks of Sowerby's anthem writing are on display here with lyrical, soloistic organ interludes and a quiet, ecstatic organ coda.
3. Eternal light
Among his shorter works, the unaccompanied "Eternal light" is a work of near perfection, with shimmering harmonies at key moments. Most performances are around two minutes.
4. Now there lightens upon us
A passionate panegyric for the Epiphany season. This work unfolds slowly and smoothly, like a brilliant sunrise. The recording from St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle gives the organ solo line to a viola, adding even more expressive possibilities.
5. Come, Holy Ghost
A freely composed work for Pentecost. Sowerby is unwavering in his 5/4 time signature.
Labels: church music, Sowerby
I moved to St. Louis exactly a year ago, and I knew that there was a great big arch here. Everybody knows about it. It's the totem of this region, like the Space Needle in Seattle, or the Eifel Tower in Paris.
What I didn't know is that it looms so large. You can see it from many different vantage points throughout the city. You see its image plastered everywhere. And the arch itself is a sublime chameleon of the urban skyline.
On a dark winter day I've seen it as a foreboding bent rod of cold iron. When all is gray I've seen it as a careful charcoal sketch in the distance. In the spring I've seen it covered with gleaming foil. One memorable approach I saw it penetrate a persistent December cloud from underneath, the two arms thrust up defiantly into the late-night muck, the top of it invisible to me but still meeting together somewhere in the chaos. Of course it can entirely disappear in the rain, but it still lurks. You know it's still there. It lingers. It looms.
You live with the presence of the arch in this town. It is captivating. And maybe I'm a little obsessed with it. And being a musician I can't help but consider the sonic implications of its form.
When I moved to town a year ago I was sure that the arch was a Howells Psalm-Prelude: an "arch form", as music theorists like to say. Something that starts soft, rises to a thundering climax, and then recedes once again into memory.
But that's not quite right. This concept of the arch form assumes that the listener is taken along for the ride, tracing the sweep of the arch. And while it is interesting (really cramped and a bit bumpy) to ride a tram to the top of the Gateway Arch, this isn't really the point of the structure. And much to Howells's chagrin, there is no such thing as a smooth ride to the top. At least, not with this arch.
No, it is really something else. It is, as its name suggests, a gateway.
The gateway involves movement. Movement toward or away, or around. But ultimately (even if it is only in the psychological dimension) movement through.
And there is perhaps no piece of American music more suggestive of this kind of movement than the Passacaglia from Leo Sowerby's Symphony for Organ.
It is a new kind of "arch form", one that music theorists have overlooked. So today I hereby introduce you to the "St. Louis arch form", or, more accurately "Gateway Arch form".
I might say that my symphony [for organ] has no "program" or extra-musical significance or intent. It is as much a piece of architecture in sound as any of the works of the masters of the Baroque, though I do not pretend to make any further comparisons.Sowerby, in the liner notes for RCA Victor Musical Masterpiece Series M-894, a recording of the Symphony for Organ by E. Power Biggs, quoted in A Performer's Companion to Leo Sowerby's Symphony in G Major for Organ, a doctoral dissertation by Robert William Parris, Eastman School of Music, 1982. Emphasis added.
Sowerby wrote the Passacaglia first, likely before the rest of the Symphony was conceived. The work was completed in 1930 and published by Oxford in 1932.
The theme, remarkably, is in major. Most organ Passacaglias tend to be firmly in minor. I remember in an organ improvisation class with Jeffrey Smith that he asked that students bring in a ground bass in a major key (other than Pachelbel, which I think we identified during the class). At the next session someone had found something (I think by Handel), but that was it. Just a window into 1) how rare Passacaglias in a major key are and 2) how this Sowerby Passacaglia seems to be on the edge of obscurity.
The theme itself is an arch, and it's high point is in the middle (a rarity for a passacaglia theme).
There is a blue note when Sowerby places a natural sign on the second-highest pitch in the theme, an F. But this isn't by accident. If Sowerby is to be believed, he spent an entire day just crafting the theme of this passacaglia.
One of the best bits in Robert Parris's dissertation is Example 8, found on page 40. It chronicles the harmonic exploits of this F-natural at its every appearance in the piece.
The piece is a model of organic compositional development. But Sowerby guides the music's natural inclinations as only a master composer can do.
I think it's interesting to note the similarities in "organic" composition between Sowerby, an American, and Jean Sibelius, the famous Finnish composer. It's more intriguing still to think that the architect of the St. Louis arch was Eero Saarinen, a Finnish American.
The ethos of the passacaglia is telestic, teleological. It's rooted to an idea, but it's going somewhere. It has big plans. It is transformative.
But this is not your usual passacaglia. Composers so often become hostage to the form's own intensity and cannot help but build the music in one ceaseless, massive crescendo. Sowerby provides another solution.
In "Gateway arch form" we discover that the journey is every bit as important as the destination. At a certain point we "arrive", and then we stop and look up in quiet wonder.
photo by the author
We wonder about what we have done, and where we have been. We wonder, with James Agee, about the miraculousness of life together and wonder "who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth." We wonder what we have lost, and what we will gain. We wonder about who we are, and who we will become.
So halfway through Sowerby's Passacaglia, we arrive. And it really is halfway; there's a symmetry to this, like the arch itself. There is a thundering climax. Massive textures. And then the variation ends abruptly, and a new quiet one simply begins, as it was always destined to do. And after a moment, we emerge from our unexpected contemplation and take a step through the other side.
We keep walking. The arch is a portal. It's not the destination. We have another place to go.
This is hopeful, expansive music. This is American music. This is music to accompany a great journey: one of an individual, one of a family, one of a nation.
This is sacred music. It is a great piece of architecture in sound.
Labels: architecture, Gateway Arch, music theory, National Cathedral, Saarinen, Sowerby, St. Louis
American Symphonies for Organ
David Diamond wrote his Symphony for Organ in 1987, thus culminating the tradition of the American "organ symphony" in the last century. The beginning of the American tradition dovetails nicely with the late Symphonies of Louis Vierne.
Warning: There's a doctoral thesis here somewhere. If you write it, you owe me $20. If you are already writing it, sorry I spilled the beans.
Symphonic nomenclature
With regard to the title, the term "organ symphony" has always been a bit of a colloquialism. Widor and Vierne simply titled their large multi-movement solo organ works "Symphonies". Only in America do we then pound the term "organ" into the title of symphonic works for the solo instrument. This becomes either a descriptive title ("Symphony for Organ") or a full-fledged proper name ("Organ Symphony"), a term that brings to mind the Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3, the orchestral symphony that prominently features loud organ chords in the final movement.
No American composer has actually given their work the title Organ Symphony, but this is the title that Gunther Schuller will use when referring to Leo Sowerby's Symphony for Organ.
From Widor to Copland: American beginnings
The strands of the organ symphony movement in America begin with Aaron Copland. His Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924) was in many ways the first major work of his career. While not a solo organ work, it does of course feature prominent writing for the instrument. There are also obvious ties to the French organ symphony genre. The organist for the work's premiere was Copland's composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger studied organ with Louis Vierne, and composition with Charles-Marie Widor, the two titans of the French organ symphony.
Leo Sowerby: a large American organ work
In the same year that Vierne wrote his last symphony, Leo Sowerby wrote his first: the Symphony for Organ. Written in 1930, the work was published in 1932 (See Robert Parris's dissertation). Vierne's final symphony, written after a tour of the United States, maintained his favored five-movement structure. The "Dean of American church music" left us with a non-traditional, three-movement work with a quintessentially American character. The first movement begins "very broadly" outlining the expansive sweep of the American landscape. The second movement is marked "fast and sinister", arguably description of the frenetic pace and character of American life. The third, composed first, is a telestic passacaglia.
Eventually this article/dissertation will have to be expanded to include a study of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, published two years after Sowerby's Symphony for Organ. Common themes: Americans in France, American Francophilia in the early Twentieth Century, acting, love, etc.
Gunther Schuller: reinventing the past
Gunther Schuller's Symphony (1981), the fourth work titled "symphony" that he composed, is scored for solo organ. In his Musings you can read that he was describing his own forthcoming work a "four-movement Symphony for Organ" and says that it is "perhaps the first of its kind since Sowerby's Symphony for Organ Symphony of 1936."
Discounting Sowerby's own smaller Sinfonia Brevis (1965), Schuller is likely correct in his assumption. The intervening years were largely devoid of organ symphony composition, but the 1980s saw a flurry of activity; beginning with Schuller's three such works composed by major composers.
Schuller is, however, misinformed about some of the details of the larger Sowerby work. First of all, Sowerby called the work "Symphony for Organ" not Organ Symphony and the work was written in 1930. This errant date seems to have popped up in the New York Times a few years later.
Mr. Schuller believes that his symphony may be the first essay in this form since Leo Sowerby's Symphony in G (1936); he may well be right. In any event, this is a major work.Mr. Schuller seems to have built his symphony around the pattern established by Charles-Marie Widor, complete with a toccata finale. He has neither Widor's gift for melody nor the French composer's ability to create irresistible musical sequences that, heard once, are impossible to forget. But Mr. Schuller's harmonic sense is sure, his conception grand, and he displayed an acute understanding of the organ's innate power and possibilities.
Page, Tim. "RECITAL: NEW MUSIC IN VILLAGE" New York Times 22 April 1985. Emphasis added
Here again there are problems. The Sowerby Symphony for Organ is called "Symphony in G" and the date again is given incorrectly as 1936.
William Albright: bridging the gap
There are some notable omissions in the organ symphony movement. Ned Rorem studied composition with Sowerby and might have been a logical torch-bearer for the American organ symphony. His "organ books" fall short of symphonic stature, but share the genre with William Albright, another composer of the American livre d'orgue movement. Albright has also composed a Symphony for Organ.
The Symphony for Organ, which arguably occupies a dominant position in Albright's oeuvre, was commissioned by the University of Evansville and the Friends of UE Music with the support of the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. The work, completed in July 1986, was premiered by Douglas Reed (to whom the work is dedicated) on the Holtkamp organ in Wheeler Concert Hall at the University of Evansville on 4 November 1986. Percussionist Ted Rubright assisted. This thirty-minute work consists of four movements in which an overall conceptual simplicity contrasts with a richness of subtle musical detail. In the booklet accompanying his recording of Chasm (William Albright, Music for organ and Harpsichord [Arkay Records AR6112]), Reed notes:The work grows out of the genre of large multi-movement compositions for solo organ developed primarily by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century French composers, Charles-Marie Widor and Louis Vierne. Each movement explores a primary color: principals (first movement), flutes (second movement, ["Cantilena"]), reeds and mixtures (third movement, ["Tarantella macabra"]), and foundation stops including strings and celestes (fourth movement, ["Ritual"]).
Mary Ann Dodd. "Symphony for Organ: Organ Solo with Percussion." Notes Sept 1997.
Albright's addition of percussion in the final movement of what is otherwise a typical organ symphony is analogous to Saint-Saëns use of the organ at the end of his Symphony No. 3 or the use of trombones in Beethoven's choral and orchestral Symphony No. 9. In all these cases, the introduction of a "foreign" element expands the boundaries of the work as it draws to a close. Like Sowerby's Passacaglia, a teleological goal is evident.
Percussion is a natural ally to the organ as many organs include percussive effects including the classic zimblestern, and those effects associated with French storm fantasies: the rossignol, the effet d'orage, and, rarely, the rain machine. Lou Harrison's earlier Concerto for Organ and Percussion (1973) makes full use of the relationship.
This article will be continued.
Labels: Albright, David Diamond, organ music, Schuller, Sowerby
Look, Sowerby, I don't know what you're trying to pull, but I can't find your anthem texts anywhere! You don't cite any author or scripture, and Google doesn't pull up anything for key phrases (like "Now there lightens upon us"). What's going on with you?
Are you writing these yourself?
Wait, I see now that "Like the beams that from the sun", your delightful Pentecost anthem is from a volume called Hymns of the Russian Church published in 1920.
But even my mad skillz combined with that great musicological tool that is the internet can't determine the authorship of some of your texts. What gives?
Did you know that Sowerby won the Pulitzer prize in 1946, the year before Charles Ives?
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