All Saints

Trumpets seem appropriate for today…

As does quiet reflection…

The celebration of our brothers and sisters who have gone on into the hereafter naturally combines these disparate emotional states – triumph and wonder – into one rich, life-enhancing perspective. And so, this morning, we oscillate back and forth between the two…

Stephen Paulus, the native of New Jersey who is now part of the very fabric of the Minnesota musical establishment, lives a bit of a fairy-tale life. A handsome, skilled and humorous man, he lives with his beautiful wife and sons in a very big house on the nicest street in St. Paul, MN – from which he writes, prolifically and well, for a vast and eager public. ‘The Road Home,’ written on commission from the Dale Warland Singers [until its disbanding two years ago, the finest professional a capella choir anywhere…], sets Michael Browne’s yearning meditation with clarity, warmth and the ‘trademark’ Paulus harmonic flavor – a sound solidly tonal, but with gently dissonant highlighting…

S. Drummond Wolff, a British organist and composer who spent most of his working life in the United States, wrote and published a great deal of useful, quality church music. This ‘Chorale Concertato,’ which means, basically, a hymn with all the trimmings, takes us on a grand tour of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ beloved All Saints hymn. Please join in the singing of the four outer verses – 1, 2, 7 and 8. Rarely do we get to indulge in all eight verses – please have a glance at the full text ahead of time, and delight in the vividness of Wolff’s arrangement.

Charles Ives drives home the sense of two verses of Whittier’s comfortable, humbling words with the musical equivalent of a velvet sledge hammer. An airborne and hypnotic piano ostinato frames, in a glorious limbo, a tune of startling and disquieting simplicity. Even a look at the printed score soothes the frantic mind…

Please note that the final hymn will be sung to a different, but utterly familiar tune, Hyfrydol. The choir will sing in unison throughout – in an effort to lead the way.

And to close, we offer a short unison anthem of Vaughan Williams, a vivid piece which sets the standard verses from Ecclesiastes 44. As is my habit now when singing ‘politically incorrect’ texts, I point out that: we try not to judge previous generations their lack of gender sensitivity… Please be assured that when we sing ‘men,’ we mean all people.

-Keith Weber