Music Notes 5-19-24

Pentecost has always been an important holiday on the Christian calendar.  It falls on the 49th day after Easter and is one of the great feasts in the Eastern Orthodox church, a Solemnity in the Roman Rite of the Catholic church, a festival in the Lutheran church and a principle feast in the Anglican Communion.  Musically, it is associated with certain hymns, like Martin Luther’s Come, Holy Spirit, God and Lord, Charles Wesley’s Spirit of Faith Come Down and Hildegard von Bingen’s O Holy Spirit Root of Life.  Other related hymns include Oh that I had a Thousand Voices and O Day Full of Grace.  In the Catholic church, Pentecost closes the Easter season, and they sing a double Alleluia at the end of Mass as a dismissal.  Trumpeters or brass ensembles are often specially contracted to accompany singing and provide special music at Pentecost services, recalling the sound of the mighty wind.  While this practice is common among a wide spectrum of Western denominations (Eastern Churches do not employ instrumental accompaniment in their worship) it is particularly typical, and distinctive, to the heritage of the Moravian Church.

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, 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 in April).  This week’s anthem, The Lord Bless You and Keep You, is also considered to be a “top 10” anthem in the world of church choral music.  It was composed in 1981 for the memorial service of Edward T. Chapman, the director of music at Highgate School, London, with whom Rutter had studied when he attended the school, and is an adaptation of a 1900 choral anthem by Peter Lutkin.  It was sung at the 100th birthday party for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in 2000 and at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.  It has what I personally consider to be one of the great “Amens” in the world of choral anthems, and the piece is so well known that most choirs are able to trot it out at a moment’s notice.   Personally, I like the singability of Rutter’s music, and the widespread appeal is undeniable.    

Come Thou, Almighty King is a classic hymn with a murky authorship.  The earliest known publication of this hymn is a leaflet that was bound into the 6th edition of George Whitefield's Collection of Hymns for Social Worship, 1757.  In this leaflet, the hymn had five verses of seven lines each, and was titled An Hymn to the Trinity.  The leaflet also contained the hymn Jesus, Let Thy Pitying Eye by Charles Wesley, and because of this hymnologist Daniel Sedgwick attributed Come Thou Almighty King to Wesley as well.  However, there is no record of this hymn in any of Wesley's collections of hymns, nor is there any hymn known to be Wesley's that uses the same meter as this hymn does.  These days, Come Thou Almighty King is usually sung, as it is in our hymnbook, to the tune Italian Hymn (also called Moscow or Trinity), which was written as a musical setting for this hymn by Felice Giardini at the request of Countess Selina Shirley. This hymn tune along with three others of Giardini's were first published in Martin Madan's Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1769.