Music Notes from Music Director and Organist, Michael Latsko:

Friday, June 19 is known as Juneteenth, the oldest known African-American celebration. On June 19, 1865, slaves in Galveston, Texas, received word of their emancipation two months after the Civil War had ended, and two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect on January 1, 1863. Today, forty-seven of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have recognized Juneteenth as either a state or ceremonial holiday, a day of observance.

The prelude, while not traditionally associated with Juneteenth, has a musical calmness to serve as an antidote to our current times. The Chant de Paix (Song of Peace) is the third of Neuf Pièces (Nine Pieces), composed in 1942-43 as the opus 40 by French organist and composer Jean Langlais (1907-1991). Blind from the age of three, Langlais composed these pieces on a commission during World War 2. He dedicated the piece to the daughter of a friend whom he described as “a peaceful soul, so uncomplaining, so calm in the face of life.” Shimmering strings in the Swell division accompany a gorgeous melody played with the feet using the Choir division 4-foot Harmonic Flute, arguably one of the most beautiful stops on the organ. Listen for a delightful (yet faint) surprise at the end!

The postlude is “Lift every voice and sing,” often referred to as the Black national anthem (number 599 in Hymnal 1982). The song was originally written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) in 1900 and set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1905. I will only play only one full verse; the complete text is powerful:

I.

Lift ev’ry voice and sing, / ‘Til earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; / Let our rejoicing rise

High as the list’ning skies, / Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun / Of our new day begun,

Let us march on ’til victory is won.

II.

Stony the road we trod, / Bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; / Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet / Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past, / ‘Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

III.

God of our weary years, / God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; / Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light, / Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, / May we forever stand,

True to our God, / True to our native land.

Officiant and Homilist: Fr. Miles Smith

The liturgical excerpts are from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.