Music Notes 7-28-24
This is the last week we get to hear our faithful choir for a while. They get the month of August off and we’ll get to hear them again on September 8th, the Sunday after Labor Day. During the month of August, our section leaders will be filling the gaps, and I’ll take the Sunday of Labor Day weekend so they can take that weekend off. Please take a moment to thank our wonderful choir. Our visiting pastor last week came over to me after the service and said, “You’re doing really good things here!” I know. He said that he’s hearing gossip around the Presbytery about us. It’s all thanks to the faithful members of our choir and staff who contribute their time and talents week after week so our worship can be elevated. Thanks, folks. It’s truly a pleasure.
Mark Hayes is a composer/arranger/pianist based in Kansas City whose music is renowned around the world. He got his degree in piano performance at Baylor University, moved to Kansas City to work as a music editor for Tempo Publishing, and now spends his time writing music for the church and traveling around the world as a clinician and guest conductor. When I met Mark in the late 80’s, I was struck by his pianistic skills – more specifically, the way he manhandled the piano into submission to produce the most wondrous sounds. Mark’s writing is superbly crafted, with influences of black gospel and jazz. He’s one of my favorite contemporary writers. If you play piano and want some music that will both challenge you and satisfy your appetite for delicious piano music, pick up a book of Mark Hayes piano improvisations. You’ll love it. Our anthem this week is a setting of the classic Martin Luther hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. It is one of his more innovative musical settings of a classic hymn tune, something that he truly excels at, and features driving rhythms and outside-the-box harmonic structures. Several years ago, I led a seminar in “Anthems That Work”, sponsored by the National Association of Church Musicians, and this was one of two setting of his I included.
People Need The Lord is a ballad by Greg Nelson and Phill McHugh written in 1983 and recorded by Steve Green. Greg Nelson is a composer/arranger/orchestrator who is also a Nashville record producer with 20 Dove (Christian Music) awards and has produced 13 gold records and 7 platinum records. He gave People Need The Lord to singer Steve Green, who released it on his self-titled album in 1984. It is now considered to be a Christian classic, and I thought it would make a nice duet.
The lyrics to the classic hymn Praise Ye The Lord, The Almighty were written in 1680 by Joachim Neander, who was born in Bremen in 1650. His text, Lobe Den Herren (Praise to the Lord), was written very near to the end of his life and was translated into English by Catherine Winkworth in 1863. She was born in 1827 in London, was initially educated by her mother and lived with relatives in Dresden, Germany in 1845, where she learned German and developed an interest in German hymnody. Upon returning to England, she began translating German hymns into English. Her translations are known as polished and yet don’t stray too far away from the original text. She translated over 400 hymns and Praise To The Lord, The Almighty appears in over 300 hymnals around the world. The melody first appeared in 1665 in the German hymnbook Stralsund Ernewerten Gesangbuch and was harmonized into the hymn tune we know now by Sir William Sterndale Bennett. Bennett was born in Sheffield, England, in 1816 and studied first at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1826, and then in Leipzig, Germany, in 1836. The hymn, in the form we know now, first appeared in The Chorale Book For England in 1863, and has appeared in over 40 hymnals.
Matt Redman is an English Christian worship leader currently based in Brighton. He has won 10 Dove Awards for everything from Worship Song of the Year 2005 (for Blessed Be Your Name) to Songwriter of the Year 2013. His album 10,000 Reasons was released in 2012 and the title track went on to be #1 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, where it remained for 13 weeks. 10,000 Reasons also won Grammy Awards in 2013 for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song and Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance. One Day (When We All Get To Heaven) is a new song from a new album – Glory Song, released in September of 2017. Glory Song takes a more “gospel” approach, using lots of background singers that gives the album a choral feel. Today, Matt and his wife, Beth, are members of St. Peter’s Church in Brighton, England and have 5 children.