Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.

Christ the King Sunday

This will be the final Sunday of the Liturgical Year which began on Advent Sunday, 2010.  In the past twelve months we have retraced the life of Jesus from His divine conception to His birth, baptism, wilderness experience, ministry, miracles, arrest, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.  Then we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday and, with it, the birth of the Church.  Finally, we wrap it all up this week by celebrating the Feast of Christ the King.  With dictatorships and secularism on the rise in Europe and respect for the authority of Christ and the Church declining, Pope Pius XI formally instituted the liturgical commemoration of Christ the King in 1925.  Since then it has spread well beyond its Catholic roots and is now celebrated by many Protestant and liturgical churches.  To some, celebrating Jesus’ kingship may form an uncomfortable association with the world’s ruling monarchies and too-often oppressive regimes.  Consider Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus at His mock trial: “Are you the King of the Jews?” and Jesus’ reply, “My kingdom is not of this world.”  In fact, Jesus redefined kingship entirely.  His kingdom is governed with humility, providing justice, equality, unconditional love, forgiveness and peace. 

On Sunday we honor our King, the Servant Christ, inviting Him anew to occupy the throne of our hearts.  There’s a rousing old Sunday school song which says, “Love is the flag flown high in the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there.  So let it fly in the sky, let the whole world know that the King is in residence there.”  May Christ’s royal banner of love wave prominently above our church and above our lives.

Music Fit for a King

Prelude: March upon a Theme of Handel by Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)  Serving as inspiration for this composition is a theme from Handel’s Messiah.  [LISTEN] It is sung to verses from Psalm 24: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates…and the King of glory shall come in.  Who is the King of glory?  The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of glory.”  In his March, French organist and composer Alexandre Guilmant  slows the tempo down to that of a stately procession, and for his theme he focuses on Handel’s descending four-note motif.  [LISTEN]  The theme first appears a somber chorale in the lower register of the organ, a quiet entrance for a humble King.  A brisk middle section introduces a fugue in the parallel minor key, but Handel’s tune soon begins to weave its way into Guilmant’s fugue subject.  Over an extended low ‘C’ pedal point the music begins a dramatic crescendo, culminating in the regal restatement of the opening theme on full organ. [LISTEN]  The once humble King has now become the triumphant, conquering hero.  (I highly recommend this recording of Organ Fireworks, played masterfully by Christopher Herrick.)

Alexandre Guilmant was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in Northwest France.  In 1871 he moved to Paris, taking over the organ bench at Sainte-Trinité for thirty years.  As a revered teacher at the Paris Conservatoire his notable students included Joseph Bonnet, Nadia Boulanger and Marcel Dupré.  Along with his composer counterpart Charles-Marie Widor, and the great organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, Guilmant helped propel the organ into a new era as a symphonic instrument.  Guilmant concertized extensively throughout the world, touring the US on three occasions and establishing the Guilmant Organ School just down Fifth Avenue at First Presbyterian Church.  In 1904 he performed forty recitals at the St. Louis World’s Fair on what was then reputed to be the largest organ ever built.  This organ was later installed in the famous Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia (now Macy’s) where it has undergone further expansion and is considered one of world’s greatest instruments.

Invitations to the Grateful

Introit: Zion’s Walls by Aaron Copland (1900-1990)  In 1950 Copland completed his first set of Old American Songs based on 19th-century folk melodies.  They were premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival by tenor Peter Pears with Benjamin Britten at the piano.  Their enthusiastic reception prompted Copland to compose a second set in 1952, from which Zion’s Walls is taken.  (We will present a choral adaptation of the song.)  [LISTEN] This second set of Old American Songs was premiered by William Warfield with Copland at the piano.  Subtitled ‘Revivalist Song’, the melody and text of Zion’s Walls originated in an 1855 collection of shape-note hymns called the Social Harp.  In his 1954 opera The Tender Land, Copland transformed the same music into a stirring vocal quintet entitled The Promise of Living, which serves as a stirring finale to Act I.

The text is a joyful invitation to praise.  “Come fathers and mothers, come sisters and brothers, come join us in singing the praises of Zion!”  Mount Zion was the term used for the Temple Mount, the heart of Jerusalem.  Therefore this is really an invitation to enter into the temple – the  house of God – with exuberant singing and praise.  Mount Zion is not merely a physical, historical place, however.  It is also the heart of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly fulfillment for all believers, our eternal home with God.  In Revelations 21:22 John writes, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”  When the choir sings “We’ll shout and go round the walls of Zion,” it can be interpreted as an invitation to gather in heaven and spend eternity singing glorious praise around the very throne of God.

Hymn: Come, Ye Thankful People, Come – St. George’s Windsor  Coinciding with the season we will open the service with one of the most beloved of all Thanksgiving hymns. [LISTEN]  The text first appeared in 1844 while its author, Henry Alford (1810-1871) was serving a rural parish in England.  Alford would rise rapidly within the Anglican Church, eventually becoming Dean of Canterbury Cathedral.  Throughout his ministry Alford maintained strong evangelical convictions and stood in opposition to the Anglo-Catholic impulses of the Oxford Movement. 

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come was written for an autumn Harvest Home Festival, a popular event in farming villages that were utterly reliant upon a bountiful harvest to sustain them through the long, harsh winter.  In some rural parishes each family would donate a sheaf of grain towards making bread for the following year’s communion services.  In light of this tradition Alford’s final stanza takes on deeper significance:  “We ourselves are God’s own field, fruit unto His praise to yield.”  Just as farmers offered a portion of their grain for sacred use, so are we to present our very selves as an offering of thanksgiving to God.  The composer of the tune, St. George’s, Windsor, was Sir. George J. Elvey, who served for forty-seven years Windsor Castle’s royal chapel.  He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1871 for his many years of faithful service to the royal family.  His other best-known tune is Diademata, a majestic melody which we sing to the text Crown Him with Many Crowns.
 
Thankfulness, Bach-Style

Postlude: Wir Danken Dir, Gott (We Thank Thee, God) by J. S. Bach (1685-1750) 
Wir Danken Dir, Gott, is a double transcription of sorts.  Bach first published it in 1720 as the Prelude to Partita No. 3 in E Major for unaccompanied violin.   Always ready to borrow from his own works, Bach then recreated it for orchestra as the Sinfonia from Cantata 29, which was performed at the inauguration of a new town council in Leipzig in 1731.  Marcel Dupré (1886-1971), the concert virtuoso and organist of Saint-Suplice in Paris, then transcribed Bach’s orchestral Sinfonia for organ.  [LISTEN]  Dupré championed the music of Bach and earned a sizable reputation for having performed his complete works (from memory, no less!) in a series of ten recitals in Paris in 1920.  The perpetual motion of the original solo violin melody permeates the work, causing it to sparkle with nonstop energy.

What Belief Will You Inspire?

Offertory: I Believe In Christ by John Longhurst, arr. Mack Wilberg  The musical climax of our divine coronation comes as the combined Festival of Voices and Sanctuary Choir sing this powerful anthem arranged by Mack Wilberg, the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  [LISTEN]  Bruce McConkie’s text combines with a soul-stirring, soaring melody to convey the truth that our whole life flows from our core beliefs.  Or put another way, who we are flows from Whose we are.  Following one of the exalted modulations for which Wilberg is well known the choir proclaims,  “I believe in Christ…and while I strive through grief and pain, His voice is heard, ‘Ye shall obtain.’  I believe in Christ, so come what may, with Him I’ll stand on that great day.”

This week I shared a theological conversation over a beer with a friend who is in seminary.  He announced with great fanfare, “I now believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus!”  He has been working through this issue and we’ve discussed it from time to time.  It’s never been a belief I’ve wrestled with or questioned, which seems odd since I’d be hard-pressed to provide physical evidence before a grand jury to the effect that Jesus arose from the dead.  For me, Christ’s incarnation and resurrection form the two pillars of faith.  Playing O Come, All Ye Faithful on Christmas Eve and Jesus Christ Is Risen Today on Easter morning are the two most important things I do in music ministry each year.

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson recounts a visit by the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Sitting in his living room listening to Yo-Yo Ma play Bach, Jobs was moved to tears.  “Your playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.”  Already aware of his diagnosis of cancer, Jobs made Ma promise to play at his funeral. 

We may not be able to inspire someone’s total allegiance to Christ the King or unwavering belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  But, in the way that we live and in the way we share the gifts we have been given, I do believe we can become someone’s best argument for the existence of God, a living proof that apart from God we could not do what we are doing.