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Lord, Thou Hast Searched Me – Helvey
Howard Helvey’s Lord, Thou Hast Searched Me (2011, listen) is an implementation of a very old (by American standards) hymn tune Tender Thought paired with a John Milton (1608-1674) paraphrase of Psalm 139:1-12. Per the music publisher MorningStar, this text is among Milton’s earliest documented writings, at age 15.
Tender Thought first appeared in Kentucky Harmony (1816 – Ananias Davisson), a shape-note songbook said to be the first from south of the Mason-Dixon line. Tender Thought can be seen in Kentucky Harmony here. Note the melody in the tenor line.
Howard Helvey (b. 1968) is a musician engaged on several fronts, having published numerous sacred choral works and involved in leading a church music program and a professional choir, guest conducting, and so on. He lives and works in Cincinnati. His Lord, Thou Hast Searched Me brings a fine accompaniment and obbligato to the traditional tune along with some variant takes on rhythm and harmonization.
Tender Thought as it appears in Kentucky Harmony is in the natural minor key (Aeolian mode). Helvey’s implementation uses the Dorian mode with the Major 6th instead of the minor 6th (except where flatted with accidental). The distinction is only apparent in the harmonization, as the Tender Thought melody itself does not include any 6ths.
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- https://www.ecspublishing.com/lord-thou-hast-searched-me-psalm-139.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Harmony
- https://howardhelvey.com/biography/
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On Making Pots
Old Testament Lesson for 04 September 2022: Jeremiah 18:1-11
Jeremiah received the Lord’s word: Go down to the potter’s house, and I’ll give you instructions about what to do there. So I went down to the potter’s house; he was working on the potter’s wheel. But the piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him. Then the Lord’s word came to me: House of Israel, can’t I deal with you like this potter, declares the Lord? Like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in mine, house of Israel! At any time I may announce that I will dig up, pull down, and destroy a nation or kingdom; but if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I’ll relent and not carry out the harm I intended for it. At the same time, I may announce that I will build and plant a nation or kingdom; but if that nation displeases and disobeys me, then I’ll relent and not carry out the good I intended for it. Now say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem: This is what the Lord says: I am a potter preparing a disaster for you; I’m working out a plan against you. So each one of you, turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions.
Jeremiah 18:1-11 CEBIn technology we use metaphor frequently as we are engaged in abstract concepts and endeavors and frequently need support and approval from those ensconced in the more real, less abstract world. We talk about how developing software is like constructing a building, or growing a crop. Sometimes software with hostile intent is a virus, or a tapeworm, depending on how it behaves. Information security is regularly compared to home security. In fact I think we rely less on metaphor in technology these days, as the workforce now has never known a world in which technology and its attendant development and maintenance is not a part of everyday life [1].
The role of the metaphor is to make the abstract more accessible by employing familiar terms. In Jeremiah, the potter/clay metaphor is invoked to help God’s dazed, disheartened, and doubting Chosen People, exiled to Babylon, understand how and why this terrible thing could happen to them [2]. If the clay fails to become a beautiful pot, it can be a do-over. Likewise for the Judeans.
The clay and the potter is a popular metaphor in the Bible; you can see it plainly in Isaiah 68 and Romans 9, and see it suggested in other places as well. In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul famously refers to our earthly bodies “earthen vessels” or “clay pots”, entrusted in containing our true selves. Pottery was the concrete image for Biblical communicators and, perhaps as a consequence, there are scads of sermon illustrations involving, just like in Jeremiah, the potter and the clay.
One such illustration that has stuck with me over the years imagines the clay and the potter together with the potter’s wheel, just as in Jeremiah. To make the pot rise to life from the inert, spinning clay, the potter applies pressure from the outside of the nascent vessel, and pressure from the inside as well, in order to form up the walls and make beauty. Both pressures must be present and balanced, otherwise the clay will not respond. Pressure from the outside balanced by pressure from the inside. A vessel emerges.
I don’t know if life is harder today than it was in times past, but I’m pretty confident it is faster. Challenges and demands for our attention arrive constantly through our various devices. News no longer arrives in cycles, but constantly. Our favorite diversions, available at our fingertips, call to us. These pressures from the outside need to be met with pressures from the inside. We could insist on device-free periods. We can keep our commitment to date night. We can resist meaningless demands on our time that take us away from family, and remember that in the end, we really are in charge of what we do and don’t do.
And the vessel of our lives will emerge.
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- [1] Linguistically I think “virus”, for example, along with “hub” and “gateway”, cease at some point to be metaphors and become instead additional true implementations of the term. Code that co-opts other code to make instances of itself really is a virus of sorts.
- [2] This is again the theodicy question as Krishna discussed in a recent sermon.
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A Biography of Note – Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Vaughan Williams
- by Eric Saylor
- Oxford, 339 pages
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 150th birthday is upcoming October 12, and that a new biography of the great composer has been released [1].
Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is associated with 22 works in our current hymnal employing 11 hymn tunes. Of these 11, about half are harmonizations of traditional melodies (as mentioned in the Kingsfold post), half are original compositions. Included among the original compositions are favorites The Call (Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life), Sine Nomine (For All The Saints), and Randolph (God Be With You till We Meet Again). The Lark Ascending (listen) is said to be his most famous tune; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (listen), also popular, has been used in at least a half dozen movies (Master and Commander; Zea). His setting of Greensleeves (listen) is also a favorite of many. Vaughn Williams is well-represented in our choral library; some will remember Hodie, the Christmas major work, prepared and performed by the Chancel choir many years ago.
Vaughan Williams composed over six decades, and is noted for his affinity for folk song and his decided Englishness, thought to be derived from his teacher Sir Hubert Perry (composer of the hymn tune Jerusalem – just sung last week) and best friend Gustav The Planets Holst (Cranham – In The Bleak Midwinter), along with his Victorian home upbringing. His The English Hymnal of 1906 is still in use today. In addition to the sacred and secular songwork, he penned nine symphonies and five operas.
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- [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaughan-williams-book-review-composer-more-than-mere-pastoral-charm-11660922287?mod=Searchresults_pos5&page=1
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Praise The Lord – Handel/Hopson
Hal Hopson (b. 1933) has been a prolific producer of all manner of sacred music over the previous few decades, including vocal solos, choral anthems, organ music, and larger works such as cantatas. His works are asserted to number in the thousands; our library at ESUMC includes 46 Hopson works for children, youth, and adult choirs as well as handbells and other instrumentals.
In Praise the Lord (1974 – listen), Hopson has extracted the best parts of two movements (Hail Judea, Happy Land duet, then chorus) of the Handel oratorio Judas Maccabeas (1746) and melded them into a lively two-minute anthem. This is a fine bit of engineering! While the text has the feeling of a Psalm in the high nineties, it is in fact Hopson’s invention and seems to emerge spontaneously from the spirit of Handel’s music.
George Frideric Handel (1685-1769) based Judas Maccabeas on the Jewish revolt from the Seleucid Empire in the second century BC as recounted in the deuterocanonical book 1 Maccabees. In addition to Praise the Lord, Judas Maccabeas is also the source of the hymn tune Judas Maccabeas heard in Thine Be the Glory each Easter. The tune is taken from movement 56: See the Conqu’ring Hero Comes. You can hear Robert Redford and Michael Kitchen sing the last line of See the Conqu’ring Hero Comes in the film Out of Africa (1985).
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Hopson
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Maccabaeus_(Handel)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frideric_Handel
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Kingsfold Fantasia – Hakes
The Kingsfold hymn tune was published in 1893 in a compendium of English country songs; it is thought to date back to the middle ages. Ralph Vaughn Williams heard the tune in Kingsfold, England, and subsequently added the still-used harmony for use in the The English Hymnal of 1906 with the text I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. The tune is minor but most of the harmonization is major, making it a suitable choice as well for O Sing a Song of Bethlehem. This text appears in the current Methodist Hymnal using the Kingsfold tune, along with Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine and To Mock Your Reign, O Dearest Lord. Kingsfold’s meter is Common Meter Doubled [1], making it a possible substitute for a great many texts.
Kingsfold Fantasia (Derek K. Hakes, 2017 listen) is scored for flute, bells/hand chimes, and piano. The interpretation is a rich exchange between the three voices.
Mikey Arichea is a recent addition to the bass section of the Chancel Choir. He is additionally an accomplished flutist, having tired of the tuba in high school.
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- [1] More on this another day.
- https://hymnary.org/tune/kingsfold_english
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A New Hymn
Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) adapted Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird for stage in 2018. The play is currently on national tour and is, at this writing, being performed at the Durham Performing Arts Center. There is much to be said about the play, its voice and message, and its veracity and fidelity to the original work, but that can be taken up in a different forum. Relevant to this forum, however, is the bridge music used during some of the scene changes.
In the most unobtrusive way, the hymn tune Llanfair is used during the some of the scene changes, at first instrumentally, then as the play progresses, the players that are moving props hum along. In the late scenes, verse 5 from Psalm 30 becomes a passing element in the play’s dialogue: Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. In a subsequent scene change, the a couple of players can be heard (barely) vocalizing to the Llanfair tune, singing “… joy will come in the morning” on the refrain.
On returning to various internet-enabled devices, I was looking forward to learning about the Psalm 30-based hymn with Llanfiar, as I did not quite recall ever having heard it before. Turns out it is for good reason: There isn’t one.
There are many texts that are purportedly associated with Psalm 30; even with Psalm 30:5 [1], but none of those texts is associated with Llanfair, and so far none found ending with “joy will come in the morning.”
Sorkin’s play is not a musical, so there is no score to be searched up, so I searched for mentions of the inclusion of Psalm 30 in the play, and about the singing of it. So far I have not located anyone discussing it print.
I wonder how it came to be. Was it organic, in which Llanfair was chosen as the bridge music, the humming evolved, and at some point a cast member recognized that the rhythm of the last phrase matched the “joy will come in the morning” phrase, and ad-libbed it, and it stuck? Unlikely. Then if instead it was engineered from the start, with Llanfair being selected as the bridge music so that the text can be sung later, how and why does one get that kind of musical engagement in a non-musical play? And why only for scene changes, where even when fully developed, perhaps one or two cast members may be singing the text in a distracted, barely audible way?
The inclusion of Psalm 30:5 in To Kill A Mockingbird is unique to the play, and even there has only a tangential or even puzzling relationship to the storyline and dialogue. Presumably it is an association born of Lee’s phrase from the original text, a narrative remark made in passing, which has (surprisingly) become a touchstone quote for many: “Things are always better in the morning”. The Psalm is employed significantly later in the play than the “morning” quote appears in the book.
So what might a Psalm 30 + Llanfair hymn be like? I propose the following:
God has saved us from the grave, sing His praises ever!
Praise the Lord ye saints of His, praise His name together!
Healed our wounds and made us whole, all our fears removing.
Weeping may endure for the night, joy will come in the morning.
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Safe from earthly evils e’re, we shall fear no darkness.
On thy might mountain stand, Satan there is pow’rless.
From that lofty temple raise every voice in singing!
Weeping may endure for the night, joy will come in the morning.[2]
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- [1] Some of the referenced texts have only a passing relationship with the verse, see Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go.
- [2] Llanfair is used in the current Methodist Hymnal once, with the Charles Wesley text Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise, with a meter of 7.7.7.7 with Alleluias. The meter for the proposed text would be 13.13.13.15 which appears to be a first.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Sorkin
- https://hymnary.org/search?qu=psalm+30
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Cover Image: For I Know the Plans I Have for You – Schwoebel
Isaiah by Gustave Doré, 1866. Public Domain Pursuant to some discussion in the choir room, the image of the man praying on the cover of Schwoebel’s For I Know the Plans I Have for You (Jeremiah 29:11-14) is in fact meant to be Isaiah. The image is taken from La Grande Bible de Tours, an 1866 publication of the Vulgate Bible including 241 wood engravings by French artist Gustave Doré (1832–1883). The image is associated with Isaiah 6:8-9, which is the moving culmination of Isaiah’s commissioning (“Whom shall we send? And who will go for us?” “Here am I. Send me.”) [1].
Gustave Doré was a prolific French artist working in several media. His woodcut illustrations used in the printing technology of the day can be found in all manner of work, such as Cervantes, Milton, and the like. At peak he employed some 40 wood cutters to convert his drawings. The Doré signature can be seen in the lower left hand corner of Isaiah, and the engraver (Héliodore Pisan (1822-1890)) in the lower right.
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- [1] In the Year that King Uzziah Died (David McKay Williams) is a big choral anthem in the ESUMC anthem library using the KJV version of Isaiah’s commissioning as the text
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9%27s_illustrations_for_La_Grande_Bible_de_Tours
- https://pitts.emory.edu/dia/image_details.cfm?ID=17157
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Mothering God – Trenney/Janzen
The Trenney arrangement of Mothering God (2020 listen, and see Trenney at the piano playing from manuscript) is a moving work that has breathed a life into the text with music that matches the flow and feeling of the text.
Tom Trenney (b. 1977) is a current force in sacred music with dozens of original works and arrangements published within the last decade. His arrangements encompass the very familiar as well as the somewhat obscure, along with many original works. His big choir works often have a gospel choir feel in both style and text. Some will remember Maya’s Prayer for Peace, one of the many Trenney selections in the ESUMC library, that is illustrative of the style and implementation of progressive lyrics. Trenney is the Minister of Music at First-Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska and is on faculty at Nebraska Wesleyan University.
The text of Mothering God originates with Julian of Norwich, a 14th century mystic in medieval England. The original text was adapted by poet Jean Janzen (b. 1933) for a 1992 Mennonite hymnal. The text has been set to multiple tunes, notably Maryton (H. Percy Smith, 1874), which is also the tune used with O Master Let Me Walk With Thee. This combination appears in the current The Faith We Sing hymnal. Confusingly, Trenney has also arranged Mothering God using the Maryton tune for choir; today’s solo uses the Trenney-composed tune.
Soprano Grace Sugg has sung with the Chancel Choir for over 12 years.
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- https://tomtrenney.com/
- https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-mothering-god-you-gave-me-birth
- https://hymnary.org/tune/maryton_smith
- https://hymnary.org/text/mothering_god_you_gave_me_birth
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Treasures in Heaven – Clokey
Treasures In Heaven (1941 listen) enjoyed immense popularity in the heyday of organized religion in America in the mid 20th century [1]. The work is based on the King James version of Matthew 6:19-21 and 7:7-8, portions of the Sermon on the Mount [2]. The text follows the scripture precisely at the sacrifice of a discernable meter, alternating between phrases rooted three and four beats. The most salient and dramatic feature of the arrangement features the lower three voice parts walking an inverted triad down an entire octave in support of an octave down-jump in the soprano line (Thieves break through and steal!). A soprano solo interlude introduces the Matthew 7 text (Ask and it shall be given…) between portions A and B in an ABA construction.
Joseph W. Clokey (1890-1960), the son of a Presbyterian minister, was Professor of Organ among other capacities at Miami University (Ohio). He was an active composer of sacred and secular works including symphonies, opera, and over 100 choral works. [3]
If the Clokey name has a familiar ring, it may be because the composer’s son Art was the creator of Gumby and Pokey, as well as the Davey and Goliath clay animation figures. [4]
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- [1] https://religionnews.com/2014/12/11/1940s-america-wasnt-religious-think-rise-fall-american-religion/
- [2] We have discussed an aspect of the ASK teaching here .
- [3, 4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_W._Clokey
