Music at All Saints Parish Sunday, May 6, 2007
Fifth Sunday after Easter
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
The main choral work on the Fifth Sunday of Easter will be a moving contemplation on the themes of love and sacrifice, an expansion on Jesus' words to his disciples in the John Gospel for the day: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." The anthem, "Greater no love hath no man," is by John Ireland (1879-1962), an Englishman of Scottish descent, whose compositions spanned the period from late romantic to modern. For this anthem, composed in 1912, Ireland chose texts from the Song of Solomon and the Gospel of John, combining them in a most effective way to create a sensitive and beautiful work, foreshadowing perhaps the sacrifices made by so many of his countrymen in the First World War. This is probably his best known choral work. Here is the text:
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it. Love is strong as death.
Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree,
That we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.
Ye are washed, ye are sanctified,
ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation;
That ye should show forth the praises of him
who hath call'd you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God,
that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto to God, which is your reasonable service.
The hymns today:
#432 - O praise ye the Lord! The text, by Sir Henry Williams Baker, is a paraphrase of Psalms 148 and 150. C. Hubert H. Parry wrote the tune. It's first few notes echo the chimes of countless parish and town clocks throughout England.
#213 - Come away to the skies. This jubilant Easter text by Charles Wesley is combined with a lively American tune by Ananias Davisson, a Shennandoah Valley farmer, printer, and singing-school teacher. It has gained great popularity quickly since being introduced into Episcopal hymnody for the first time in The Hymnal 1982
#529 - In Christ there is no east or west. This justifiably familiar hymn needs no introduction. The tune was adapted from the African-American spritual "I know the angel's done changed my name," a song popularized in the late 19th century that has gone through several adaptations and arrangements along its path to our hymnal. The fine missionary text is by John Oxenham