It was when Christ died.
A not very good Friday.
—
Lutheran Hymnal Project: Good Friday, by Erik Ellestad
8 track album
Source: erikellestad.bandcamp.com/album/lutheran-hymnal-project-good-friday
Tag: Good Friday
089.OPerfectLifeOfLove
Please turn to number 89 and join with the clarinets in “O Perfect Life of Love”.
Number: 89
First Line: O Perfect Life of Love
Name: GORTON.
Meter: S.M.
Tempo: Devotionally
Music: Ludvig Von Beethoven, 1770-1827
Text: Henry Williams Baker, 1821-77
Clarinet Arrangement: 089-OPerfectLifeOfLove
This is a beautiful hymn with wonderful consonant harmonies.
Oh, right, some dude named Ludvig Van Beethoven. No big deal.
The tune GORTON derives from the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23, Opus 57 (1807); however, the arranger and any significance to the tune title are unknown. GORTON was published with this versification of Psalm 79 in the 1912 Psalter. Sing this tune in parts, beginning very quietly and building to a fuller sound on each successive stanza. Try the first stanza in parts but unaccompanied after a chord or two on the organ to get the congregation started. Sing two long lines for each stanza.
A giant in the history of music, Beethoven (b. Bonn, Germany, 1770; d. Vienna, Austria, 1827) progressed from early musical promise to worldwide, lasting fame. By the age of fourteen he was an accomplished viola and organ player, but he became famous primarily because of his compositions, including nine symphonies, eleven overtures, thirty piano sonatas, sixteen string quartets, the Mass in C, and the Missa Solemnis. He wrote no music for congregational use, but various arrangers, including Gardiner (PHH 1ll), adapted some of his musical themes as hymn tunes; the most famous of these is ODE TO JOY from the Ninth Symphony. Although it would appear that the great calamity of Beethoven’s life was his loss of hearing, which turned to total deafness during the last decade of his life, he composed his greatest works during this period.
—Psalter Hymnal Handbook
088b.OSacredHead
Please turn to Number 88 (Second Tune) and join with the clarinets in “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”.
Number: 88 (Second Tune)
First Line: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Name: PASSION CHORALE.
Meter: 7 6, 7 6. D.
Tempo: With devotion
Music: Hans Leo Hassler, 1564-1612
Adapted and Harm. by J. S. Bach, 1685-1750
Text: Ascribed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1091-1153
Paul Gerhardt, 1607-76
Tr. James Waddel Alexander, 1804-59 a.
Clarinet Arrangement:088b.OSacredHeadNowWounded
So we covered that Paul Simon used the melody from a song by Hans Leo Hassler:
“The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret”, which first appeared in print in the 1601 Lustgarten Neuer Teutscher Gesäng.”
But, really, Simon was probably stealing from J.S. Bach, who had stolen the tune for the hymn from Hassler via Cruger.
“The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in the St Matthew Passion. He also used the hymn’s text and melody in the second movement of the cantata Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159.[4] Bach used the melody on different words in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first part (no. 5).”
The Bach arrangement of the hymn is much closer to the tune Simon used than the original.
Hans Leo Hassler was an interesting, and important, German composer, who straddled the Renaissance and Baroque styles, bringing the innovations of Italian Baroque music to Germany and Europe.
Hassler is considered to be one of the most important German composers of all time.[4] His use of the innovative Italian techniques, coupled with traditional, conservative German techniques allowed his compositions to be fresh without the modern affective tone.[12] His songs presented a combined vocal and instrumental literature that did not make use of the continuo, or only provided it as an option,[12] and his sacred music introduced the Italian polychoral structures that would later influence many composers leading into the Baroque era.
088a.OSacredHead
Please turn to number 88 (First Tune) and join with the clarinets in “O Sacred Head”. It is also permissible to sing Paul Simon’s “American Tune”.
Number: 88 (First Tune)
First Line: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Name: PASSION CHORALE.
Meter: 7 6, 7 6. D.
Tempo: With devotion
Music: Hans Leo Hassler, 1564-1612
Text: Ascribed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1091-1153
Paul Gerhardt, 1607-76
Tr. James Waddel Alexander, 1804-59 a.
Clarinet Arrangement: 088a.OSacredHead
I was practicing this and my wife said, “Are you learning Paul Simon’s ‘American Tune’ as a Valentine’s Day Surprise?”
I said, “Funny you mention that. I was just reading how Paul Simon used ‘O Sacred Head’s’ tune for his song, ‘American Tune’!”
This hymn is well enough known that it has its very own entry in wikipedia: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Original Latin
Further information: Membra Jesu NostriThe hymn is based on a long medieval Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare,[1] with stanzas addressing the various parts of Christ‘s body hanging on the Cross. The last part of the poem, from which the hymn is taken, is addressed to Christ’s head, and begins “Salve caput cruentatum.” The poem is often attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), but is now attributed to the Medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). The seven cantos were used for the text of Dieterich Buxtehude‘s Membra Jesu Nostri addressing the various members of the crucified body.
German translation
The poem was translated into German by the Lutheran hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676). He reworked the Latin version to suggest a more personal contemplation of the events of Christ’s death on the cross.[2] It first appeared in Johann Crüger‘s hymnal Praxis pietatis melica in 1656. Although Gerhardt translated the whole poem, it is the closing section which has become best known, and is sung as a hymn in its own right. The German hymn begins with “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”.
English translation
The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold (1711–1771), an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire. His translation begins, “O Head so full of bruises.” In 1830 a new translation of the hymn was made by an American Presbyterian minister, James Waddel Alexander (1804-1859). Alexander’s translation, beginning “O sacred head, now wounded,” became one of the most widely used in 19th and 20th century hymnals.
The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret“, which first appeared in print in the 1601 Lustgarten Neuer Teutscher Gesäng. The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in the St Matthew Passion. He also used the hymn’s text and melody in the second movement of the cantataSehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159.[4] Bach used the melody on different words in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first part (no. 5). Franz Liszt included an arrangement of this hymn in the sixth station, Saint Veronica, of his Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross), S. 504a. The Danish composer Rued Langgaard composed a set of variations for string quartet on this tune. It is also employed in the final chorus of “Sinfonia Sacra”, the 9th symphony of the English composer Edmund Rubbra.
The melody of “American Tune” by Paul Simon is based on the hymn.
Peter, Paul & Mary and the Dave Brubeck Trio performed “Because all men are brothers” on their album “Summit Sessions”.
087.ODarkestWoe
Please turn to number 87 and join with the clarinets in, “O Darkest Woe”.
Number: 87
First Line: O Darkest Woe
Name: O TRAURIGKEIT.
Meter: 4 4, 7 7, 6.
Tempo: Tenderly
Music: Mainz, 1628
Text: St. 1, anonymous
St. 2-4, Johann Rist, 1607-67
Tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1829-78
Clarinet Arrangement: 087-ODarkestWoe
Another gloomy, minor hymn. Just the sort of thing I enjoy.
O DARKEST WOE Words: Verse 1 from the Catholic Würzburg Gesangbuch, 1628; verses 2-4, Johann Rist, Himmlische Lieder (Lüneburg, Germany: 1641) (O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid). Translated from German to English by Catherine Winkworth, Chorale Book for England, 1863. Rist wrote:
The first verse of this funeral hymn, along with its devotional melody, came accidentally into my hands. As I was greatly pleased with it, I added the other seven as they stand, since I could not be a party to the use of the other verses.
Music: O Traurigkeit, composer unknown (Mainz, Germany: 1628)
O darkest woe! Ye tears, forth flow!
Has earth so sad a wonder?
God the Father’s only Son
Now lies buried yonder.
O sorrow dread!
God’s Son is dead!
But by His expiation
Of our guilt upon the cross
Gained for us salvation.
O sinful man, it was the ban
Of death on thee that brought Him
Down to suffer for thy sins,
And such woe hath wrought Him.
Behold thy Lord, the Lamb of God
Blood sprinkled lies before thee,
Pouring out His life that He
May to life restore thee.
O Ground of faith,
Laid low in death,
Sweet lips, now silent sleeping!
Surely all that live must mourn
Here with bitter weeping.
O blest shall be
Eternally
Who oft in faith will ponder
Why the glorious Prince of Life
Should be buried yonder.
O Jesus blest, my Help and Rest!
With tears I pray, Lord hear me,
Make me love Thee to the last,
And in death be near me.
086.OComeAndMournWithMe
Please turn to number 86 and join with the clarinets in “O Come and Mourn with Me”.
Number: 86
First Line: O Come and Mourn With Me
Name: ST. CROSS
Meter: L.M.
Tempo: Slowly
Music: John Bacchus Dykes, 1823-76
Text: Frederick William Faber, 1814-63
Clarinet Arrangement: 086-OComeAndMournWithMe
I really like this hymn.
However, regarding Mr Dykes, while popular in Victorian times, his tunes fell out of favor in the 20th Century.
Whereas the proliferation of Dykes’s tunes in hymnals published throughout the nineteenth century, together with some surviving correspondence by hymnal compilers and by clergymen, in the UK and overseas (including the US and Nyasaland (now Malawi)), show that his compositions were highly regarded, the end of his century brought a widespread reaction against much of the Victorian aesthetic, and Dykes’s music did not escape a censure which was often vituperative. In particular, his music was condemned for its alleged over-chromaticism (even though some 92% of his hymn tunes are either entirely, or almost entirely diatonic) [34] and for its imputed sentimentality. (Speaking of Victorian hymn-tunes generally, but evidently with Dykes in his sights [35] Vaughan Williams wrote of ‘the miasma of the languishing and sentimental hymn tunes which so often disfigure our services’ [36]) Whereas it is indeed reasonable to characterise his music as often being sentimental, his critics never paused to explain why nineteenth century church services, which were replete with sentimental imagery, prose and choreography, should not be accompanied by music of a like kind. Nor did they explain why sentimentality per se is a bad thing, nor why music invariably improves in inverse proportion to its sentimental content. As one writer put it, in a wider consideration of the subject: “Something is wrong with sentimentality: the only question is, What is it?” [37] As for Dykes’s harmonies generally (of which the twentieth century writers Erik Routley and Kenneth Long were outspoken in their disparagement), scholars in recent years have questioned the twentieth century orthodoxy which condemned Dykes’s music out of hand, with Professors Arthur Hutchings, Nicholas Temperley and (especially) Jeremy Dibble seeing the importance of Dykes’s pioneering work in moving hymn-tunes from the bland and four-square long metre tunes which had been the staple of Tate and Brady’s New Version of the Psalms.
And regarding the author of this hymn, which is nothing if not sentimental…
Frederick William Faber was born in 1814 at Calverley, then within the Parish of Calverley in the West Riding of Yorkshire,[1] where his grandfather, Thomas Faber, was the vicar. His father served the local bishop of the Church of England as his secretary.[2]
Faber attended grammar school at Bishop Auckland in County Durham for a short time, but a large portion of his boyhood was spent in Westmorland. He afterwards attended the Harrow School for five years, followed by enrollment in 1832 at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. In 1834, he obtained a scholarship at the University College, from which he graduated. In 1836 he won the Newdigate Prize for a poem on “The Knights of St John,” which elicited special praise from John Keble. Among his college friends were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne. After graduation he was elected a fellow of the college.
Faber’s family was of Huguenot descent, and Calvinist beliefs were strongly held by them. When Faber had come to Oxford, he was exposed to the Anglo-Catholic preaching of the Oxford Movement which was beginning to develop in the Church of England. One of its most prominent proponents was the popular preacher John Henry Newman, vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Faber struggled with these divergent forms of Christian beliefs and life. In order to relieve his tension, he would take long vacations in the Lake District, where he would write poetry. There he was befriended by another poet, William Wordsworth. He finally abandoned the Calvinistic views of his youth and became an enthusiastic follower of Newman.[2][3]
O come and mourn with me awhile; O come ye to the Savior’s side; O come, together let us mourn: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.
Have we no tears to shed for him, While soldiers scoff and foes deride? Ah! Look how patiently he hangs: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.
Seven times he spake, seven words of love; And all three hours his silence cried For mercy on the souls of men: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.
O love of God, O sin of man! In this dread act your strength is tried, And victory remains with love: For he, our Love, is crucified!
085.AhHolyJesus
Please turn to number 85 and join with the clarinets in, “Ah, Holy Jesus”.
Number: 85
First Line: Ah, Holy Jesus
Name: HERBSTLIEBSTER JESU.
Meter: 11 11 11, 5.
Tempo: Slowly and solemnly
Music: Johann Cruger, 1598-1662
Text: Johann Heerman, 1585-1647
Tr. Robert Bridges, 1844-1930
Text from The Yattendon Hymnal, edited by Robert Bridges
It appears that Robert Bridges was a rather well known English poet in the early part of the 20th Century.
Robert Seymour Bridges, OM (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was Britain’s poet laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is the author of many well-known hymns. It was through Bridges’ efforts that Gerard Manley Hopkins achieved posthumous fame.
Bridges made an important contribution to hymnody with the publication in 1899 of his Yattendon Hymnal, which he created specifically for musical reasons. This collection of hymns, although not a financial success, became a bridge between the Victorian hymnody of the last half of the 19th century and the modern hymnody of the early 20th century.
His translation of the hymn is a bit Masochistic. I suppose that is very English, as well.
Ah, holy Jesus, how has thou offended,
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
That man to treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.Lo, the good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave has sinned, and the Son has suffered;
For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.For me, kind Jesus, was thine Incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and they life’s oblation;
Thy death of anguish and thy bitter Passion,
For my salvation.Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will every pray thee,
Think on they pity and thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving. Amen.
084.AtTheCrossHerStationKeeping
Please turn to number 84 and join with the clarinets in “At The Cross, Her Station Keeping”.
Number: 84
First Line: At the Cross, her station keeping
Name: STABAT MATER
Meter: 8 8 7. D.
Tempo: Slowly, with dignity
Music: Mainz Gesangbuch, 1661
Text: XIII cent.
Tr. Edward Caswall, 1814-78, and others
Clarinet Arrangement: 084-AtTheCrossHerStationKeeping
The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Catholichymn to Mary, which portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ‘s mother during his crucifixion. Its author may be either the FranciscanfriarJacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III.[1][2][3] The title comes from its first line, Stabat Mater dolorosa, which means “the sorrowful mother was standing”.[4]
The hymn is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many Western composers, most famously by Palestrina (~1590), Vivaldi(1712), Domenico (1715) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1723), Pergolesi(1736), Joseph Haydn(1767), Rossini(1831-42), Dvořák(1876–77), Verdi(1896-97), Karol Szymanowski(1925–26), Poulenc(1950) and Arvo Pärt (1985).
I wanted to do something unusual with this rather well known and short hymn.
I played first played through the hymn 3 times at 35bpm. Then I doubled it and played at 70bpm. Finally I finished it playing at 140bpm. I was tempted to add another verse at 280bpm, but that proved a bit elusive.
An interesting exercise, trying to keep the beats in all the parts lined up despite the different tempos.
083.BeholdTheLambOfGod
Please turn to number 83 and join with the clarinets in “Behold the Lamb of God”.
Number: 83
First Line: Behold the Lamb of God
Name: WIGAN
Meter: 6 6 6 4, 8 8 4
Tempo: Devotionally
Music: Samuel Sebastian Wesley, 1810-76
Text: Matthew Bridges, 1800-94 a.
Clarinet Arrangement: 083.BeholdTheLambOfGod
This is the first hymn in celebration (if that is the appropriate word) of Good Friday. Supposedly the day Jesus Christ was crucified.
The lyrics are not particularly amazing, but the tune is pretty cool. I always like a minor hymn.
This hymn is a bit challenging for Hymprovisation as it’s kind of hard to exactly tell what the keys should be. It starts in G minor, modulates to G major for a bit, then to (maybe) d major, back to d minor, and finishes in d major. All within the space of 15 measures.
However, you can mostly play in G minor for the whole thing, if you are a bit careful.
Samuel Sebastian Wesley (14 August 1810 – 19 April 1876) was an English organist and composer.
Born in London, he was the eldest child in the composer Samuel Wesley‘s second family, which he formed with Sarah Suter having separated from his wife Charlotte.[1] Samuel Sebastian was the grandson of Charles Wesley. His middle name derived from his father’s lifelong admiration for the music of Bach.
Famous in his lifetime as one of his country’s leading organists and choirmasters, he composed almost exclusively for the Church of England, which continues to cherish his memory.
—
One notable feature of his career is his aversion to equal temperament, an aversion which he kept for decades after this tuning method had been accepted on the Continent and even in most of England. Such distaste did not stop him from substantial use of chromaticism in several of his published compositions.
While at Winchester Cathedral Wesley was largely responsible for the Cathedral’s acquisition in 1854 of the Father Willis organ which had been exhibited at The Great Exhibition, 1851. The success of the Exhibition organ led directly to the award of the contract to Willis for a 100-stop organ for St George’s Hall, Liverpool built in 1855. Wesley was the consultant for this major and important project, but the organ was, arguably, impaired for some years by Wesley’s insistence that it was initially tuned to unequal temperament.
Wesley, with Father Willis, can be credited with the invention of the concave and radiating organ pedalboard, but demurred when Willis proposed that it should be known as the “Wesley-Willis” pedalboard. However, their joint conception has been largely adopted as an international standard for organs throughout the English-speaking world and those exported elsewhere.