Music for the Second Sunday of Advent December 8, 2019

Opening Voluntary Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus (St. Mark’s Ringers)     

setting, Lee Afdahl

Evangelical Lutheran Worship, our hymnal, pairs this Charles Wesley text with the tune Jefferson; however, other denominations sing it with different tunes. Two of the tunes are Stuttgart and Hyfrydol – both of which are utilized in Afdahl’s arrangement. At the end of the piece, we hear both tunes played at the same time!

The panels on St. Mark's  "Seasons of the Church Year" banner, including the one for Advent,
were hand-stitched by Grace Echerer in 1994.

Gathering Hymn Prepare the Royal Highway (Bereden väg för Herran)

ELW 264

Frans Mikael Franzén 

After his ordination in 1803, Frans Mikael Franzén worked on developing his hymn-writing skills and contributed 29 hymns to Svenska Psalm-Boken, a collection of psalms for Swedish churches that was published in 1819. Franzén was bishop of the Härnøsand diocese until his death in 1847.

The tune, first published in 1694, has an undeniable dance quality.

In 1536, King Gustav I of Sweden, separated the national church from the Roman Catholic Church. Sweden’s national church has been Lutheran ever since.

Hymn of the Day There’s a Voice in the Wilderness (Ascension)

ELW 255

This certainly feels a like a hymn that must have been written for Advent, but James Lewis Milligan (1876 – 1961) wrote the text to celebrate the creation of the United Church of Canada. The UCC was formed by the union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches.

Musical Offering (sung by the Festival Choir) Creation Will Be at Peace

Anna Laura Page
In 1985 Terry Anderson, an American journalist, was taken hostage while working in Lebanon. He was released in 1991. This choral anthem, with its text freely drawn from today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures, is dedicated to Anderson’s sister, Peggy Say.

Communion Hymns

Blessed be the God of Israel (Forest Green) ELW 250

Few hymntunes are as satisfying to sing as Forest Green. Here it is paired with a metrical setting of the canticle of Zechariah, also known as the Benedictus. These are the words recorded by the gospel writer Luke. The story goes that after Zechariah wrote the famous line “His name is John,” he regained his voice and delivered this powerful song of praise. All these things tie it not just to Advent, but to the leading figure in today’s gospel reading – John the Baptist.

Try singing this tune with the text of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and you’ll never want to sing St. Louis again. (Okay, that’s a stretch. I know that for many St. Louis is a beloved tune and they have a hard time separating the text and tune. In truth, St. Louis was written specifically for O Little Town at the author’s request.)

On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry (Puer nobis) ELW 249

St. Mark's Moravian star

Sending Hymn Hail to the Lord’s Anointed 
(King’s Lynn)
You’ll find this hymn in ELW with the tune Freut euch, ihr lieben, but I wanted to use a more familiar tune suitable for a procession and settled on this English tune.

James Montgomery’s text is a paraphrase of Psalm 72 which he wrote for Christmas services celebrated by the Moravian Church in Yorkshire, England.

A Moravian star has long been used as part of the Advent trappings at St. Mark’s. It goes up for the first Sunday of Advent and remains through the Feast of the Epiphany. It is said that the first Moravian star was probably the result of a geometry project in a Moravian school. Whether or not this is true, Moravian stars have been around since about the 1830s.

Closing Voluntary Trumpet Tune on Hyfrydol

Michael Helman

The closing voluntary brings back one of the themes from the opening voluntary and echoes the church’s cry of, “Come, thou long-expected Jesus!”


Sources:
Wikipedia
Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Paul Westermeyer)
Portrait of Frans Mikael Franzén: By Johan Gustaf Sandberg - Johan Gustaf Sandberg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=790341