Music at All Saints Sunday service - October 22, 2006
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
Three great hymns support our liturgy this Sunday plus an extraordinarily interesting choir anthem, a collaborative effort of two of the most distinguished British artists of the twentieth century: W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten.
The centerpiece hymn, at the offertory, "From God Christ's deity came forth," #443 in our Hymnal, has a nice local connection. The tune "Salem Harbor" was composed by Dr. Ronald Arnatt, who has served as organist/music director of several leading parishes in this diocese. His home at the time he wrote this music overlooked the harbor for which the tune is named. The text, a compact and straight-forward catalogue of Christ's activist ministry, is derived from ancient Syrian sources and is a perfect complement to Dr. Arnatt's attractive and strong-boned tune. Other hymns this Sunday, both familiar and well-loved are: #598 - Lord Christ, when first thou cam'st to earth and #632 - O Christ, the Word Incarnate.
A word about the Britten/Auden work called simply "Chorale" that the choir will sing at the offertory. It is a profoundly moving, dark tinged, but very beautiful work, reflective of the prevailing mood in Britain during the World War II years. I will include the full text here in case you might want to spend some time with its complex imagery before hearing it on Sunday.
Also printed below is a commentary on the text by our own David Evett, English scholar and All Saints Senior Warden, which I am sure you will find helpful. Many thanks to him for this insightful tutorial.
Anthem: Chorale poem: W.H. Auden Music: Benjamin Britten
Our Father, whose creative will
Asked Being for us all,
Confirm it that Thy Primal Love
May weave in us the freedom of
The actually deficient on
The justly actual.
Though written by Thy children with
A smudged and crooked line,
Thy Word is ever legible,
Thy Meaning unequivocal,
And for Thy Goodness even sin
Is valid as a sign.
Inflict thy promises with each
Occasion of distress,
That from our incoherence we
May learn to put our trust in Thee
And brutal fact persuade us to
Adventure, art, and peace.
"This chorale comes from For the Time Being: a Christmas Oratorio, the final work in W. H. Auden's Collected Poetry (1945). It falls between a long chorus celebrating Caesar, who represents all the materialistic values that govern modern life, and a dialogue among three shepherds, who stand for the millions of ordinary people kept more or less under control by Caesar and his underlings, but who nevertheless know that "one day or the next we shall hear the Good News."
"The core meaning of Auden's verses is pretty clear: botched and inadequate as our efforts to express divine truth and live according to divine law may be, God's power and goodness will show forth through them; therefore we ask that God will so infuse even our worst blunders with the truth of his saving grace, that we will be moved by our contemplation of them to trust him, and hence to trade mind-numbing security for risk, creativity, and peace.
"The most difficult language occurs at the end of the first stanza. There, the sense seems to be that our deficiencies are, paradoxically, our strength. To fail is the nature we brought on our self by our initial sin - 'the justly actual.' The fact that we know we cannot on our own do better than we have done so far, rather than discouraging us, should free us to keep trying - as the poet himself is trying, and failing, and trying again."