Music Notes from Director of Music and Organist, Michael Latsko:

Musical selections this week are hymn-based. The prelude is based on “Jesus calls u o’er the tumult.” The text (at #549 & 550 in Hymnal 1982) was written by Irish poet (Ms.) Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895) in 1852 specifically for St. Andrew’s Day (November 30). H1982 editors chose not to include the more familiar tune “Galilee” which I play (#566, 2d tune, in The Hymnal (1940)). The tune was published in 1887/8 by Englishman Wm. H. Jude (1851-1922), described as a “keen writer of high-Victorian hymns.” The gospel reading for St. Andrew’s Day is about Jesus' calling of Simon Peter and Andrew, but I chose this hymn because its rollicking melody reminds me of the bounding main.

The mid-service meditation incorporates “They cast their nets in Galilee,” (#661 in H1982), unusual both for its irregular tune (measures of unequal length) and graphic text inspired by Mark’s gospel reading. Mississippi planter and poet Wm. Alex. Percy (1885-1942) penned the text in a 1924 volume of poems. Percy’s autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941), was a bestseller and remains a seminal book on the American South. The tune (“Georgetown”) was specifically written for H1940 by Welsh-born American church musician David McK. Williams (1887-1978). Williams began his career as a teenager in Denver, CO. He moved to NYC in 1908, then to Paris in 1911 to study with some of the best-known French organists. After serving in WWI, he returned to NYC eventually becoming organist/choirmaster of St. Bartholomew's Church until he retired in 1947. There are four other of his tunes included in H1982: #s 312, 316, 514 & 614.

Monday was the Feast of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), so the gospel hymn “We’re marching to Zion” (found as #12 in Lift Every Voice and Sing: An African American Hymnal) is the postlude. The text is by Englishman Isaac Watts (1674-1748), called "the greatest name among hymn-writers" for publishing more than 800 hymns. The music is by Philadelphia-born Robert S. Lowry (1826-1889) whose interest in music began at an early age. When asked "[d]o you write the words to fit the music, or [vice versa]?" Lowry replied, "I have no method. Sometimes the music comes and the words follow, fitted insensibly to the melody. [W]hen anything good strikes me…no matter where I am…I jot it down…[T]here is music running through [my brain] all the time. I do not pick out my music on the keys of an instrument. The tunes [are]…completed on paper [first]. Frequently the words of the hymn and the music [are] written at the same time." About Lowry, the Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writerssaid, “Dead, yet he lives and his sermons in gospel song are still heard…. Dr. Lowry… is highly worthy of a place among the world's greatest gospel song and hymn writers.” If you don’t know this hymn, you should learn it. The refrain is “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion. We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”

Officiant and Homilist: The Rev. G. Miles Smith

Liturgical excerpts are from The Book of Common Prayer 1979