INTROIT – Ubi Caritas

This morning, the Children of St. Philip lead us in a congregational Introit using music from the Monastery in rural Taizé, France. Jacques Berthier, one of the Brothers, wrote many simple chants for use in their services, which are attended by as many as 10,000 people from all over the world, mostly teenagers… Because of the number of native tongues spoken by their congregation, the monks chose a “dead” language, Latin, as common ground.

The chant is to be sung by all, as the Spirit moves; the continuous repetitions work like a ‘mantra,’ allowing steady focus on one thought or feeling – or on NO thought or feeling. People who enjoy this style of musical worship have found power in the focusing and/or emptying of the mind. Some find what they describe as the actual ‘presence of God.’

And so, we will let the kids sing it through two or three times, and then we will all join in, as we feel comfortable…

We will repeat the chant many, many times. I invite you to enter into the spirit and style of the proceedings – we will all intuitively know when it has run its course and it is time to stop.

WARHORSES

We have two for you today. One American, one German.

My Eternal King was the first anthem Jane Marshall ever wrote, the first anthem of hers ever published and to this day remains her bestseller – she recently got a royalty check from Norway (!). Commissioned, informally – ‘Well, Jane, why don’t you write something for us to sing...’ – by Federal Lee Whittlesey, Director of Music at the Highland Park Methodist Church in Dallas in 1952 [Elbert and Jane were both in the choir at that point], she found the poem in an old Presbyterian hymnal of hers and “just let the text go where it wanted…” Jane is a little embarrassed, actually, by the success of the piece – she considers it not her best work and feels that at the time she had not the first clue what she was doing. But she hit a mid-20th century, post-Romantic, contrapuntally aware, American, Protestant nail right on the head – and this lush, direct, emotional setting marches on as the quintessence of a style.

He watching over Israel is the best known of the choruses from ELIJAH, the over-scaled and grandiose oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn. The dramatic and musical problems in the lengthy narrative of this piece have not prevented it from being widely loved – largely, I think, because of the lovely and perfectly lyrical choruses...

EXCLAMATION POINT

Matthew dips into ‘The Little Organ Book’ of Bach for an exciting punctuation to our Epiphany observance.

-Keith Weber