Music Notes 9-8-24
The summer break is behind us and the season is before us. This Sunday we welcome back our illustrious choir, who should be well rested after the August break. Our wonderful Jose has been consumed by his job – his boss retired and he got promoted – so he has handed the baton to James Gillen, from whom we will be hearing a lot of wonderful things. James, originally from Philadelphia, PA, is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, where he studied voice and music directing, as well as the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he studied voice and dialect coaching.
How Marvelous! How Wonderful! was composed by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (1856-1932) in 1905. It is also known by the first line “I stand amazed”. The tune My Savior’ s Love shows up in 127 hymnals. He is said to have composed between 7,000 and 8,000 songs, which were published under several pseudonyms, including Charlotte G. Homer, H. A. Henry, and S. B. Jackson. There is one folklore story, that the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Wilton (Pastor Pollock or McAulay) once saw Gabriel walking in town early in the week. He asked Gabriel if he knew a good song to go along with his sermon. The pastor shared the sermon topic and by the end of the week the boy had written a song for that Sunday, words and music. The Rev. N. A. McAulay was a pastor at the Wilton church for many years, and it is also said that young Gabriel wrote the music for one of McAulay's songs. The song, How Could It Be, was later published in Songs for Service, edited by Gabriel, with the music being credited to "Charles H. Marsh," possibly one of Gabriel's pseudonyms. He eventually served as pastor of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. He died in Hollywood and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1982.
John Rutter is a British composer, born in London in 1945, and one of the most recognized composers of church music in the world. His work includes carols (both original and arrangements of familiar carols), anthems (including All Things Bright and Beautiful, our anthem for this week), choral works and larger musical compositions. He has written for the King’s Singers and regularly records his music with his own chorus, the Cambridge Singers. Many of his larger works, including his Gloria and his Requiem, are considered classics and are part of standard repertoire (our choir sang the first movement of the Gloria on Easter morning this year). He’s also known for having reconstructed and published the original version of the Faure Requiem. Gabriel Faure originally wrote his Requiem orchestrated for a chamber orchestra, but his publisher suggested that he re-orchestrate it for full orchestra so that it would become part of standard concert repertoire, which he completed in 1900. The original 1893 version was lost until Rutter found Faure’s original sketch books in a closet at Faure’s church, the Madeleine Church (or, more formally, L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, which Eileen and I visited when we were in Paris in April). John Rutter’s A Gaelic Blessing, also known by its opening line Deep Peace, was commissioned by the chancel choir of 1st United Methodist Church of Omaha, Nebraska, and their conductor Mel Olsen in 1978. The original text was not a specifically sacred text, but rather an old Gaelic rune that made reference to elements of nature. Rutter added a line referencing Jesus and Amen to it to make it a Christian anthem. It has become popular for baptisms, weddings and funerals, and was performed at the funeral Mass for Tip O’Neil. It became a hit when a recording by Aled Jones was released in 2003, and has been recorded often, including by the composer with the Cambridge Singers and the City of London Sinfonia.
Awesome God is a song written and recorded by Rich Mullins and first recorded in 1988 on his album Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth. It was the first single released from the album and rose quickly to #1 on all the charts, spending several months on Christian radio. It was so popular that it became his signature song and became a popular congregational song. Since his passing in 1997, it has been covered by numerous artists, including Michael W. Smith and the heavy metal band Unashamed.