Music at All Saints Parish Sunday, January 20, 2008
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
From All Saints Music Director Donald Teeters
There are no choirs today. Both the Schola and the Adult Choir have the Sunday off.
Hymns for Epiphany II
Hymn 135 - Songs of thankfulness and praise
This is one of the great and enduring seasonal hymns, which reinforces in its text the title and theme which the Prayer Books of 1928, and earlier, gave to the Feast of the Epiphany itself: The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.”
Hymn 671 - Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
On this weekend in which we give thanks for the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., we join with other congregations throughout the land in singing the hymn which has become a virtual national anthem of the Black Liberation movement.
Hymn 533 - How wondrous and great thy works, God of praise!
The composer of this popular hymn tune was Johann Michael Haydn, the brother of the rather more famous Franz Joseph.
Perhaps you would like to know a little more about this Haydn. Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Michael Haydn was born in 1737 in the Austrian village of Rohrau near the Hungarian border. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Matthias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp, and he also made sure that his children learned to sing. Michael's early professional career path was paved by his older brother Joseph, whose skillful singing had landed him a position as a boy soprano in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, under the direction of Carl Georg Reutter. The early 19th century author Albert Christoph Dies, reporting from Joseph's late-life reminiscences, says the following:
"Reutter was so captivated by [Joseph]'s talents that he declared to the father that even if he had twelve sons, he would take care of them all. The father saw himself freed of a great burden by this offer, consented to it, and some five years after dedicated Joseph's brother Michael and still later Johann to the musical muse. Both were taken on as choirboys, and, to Joseph's unending joy, both brothers were turned over to him to be trained."
The same source indicates the Michael was a brighter student than Joseph, and that (particularly when Joseph had grown enough to have trouble keeping his soprano voice), it was Michael's singing that was the more admired.
Shortly after he left the choir-school, Michael was appointed Kapellmeister atGroßwardein and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and much instrumental music. He was acquainted with Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and the teacher of both Carl Maria von Weber and Anton Diabelli.
He remained close to Joseph all of his life, and was highly regarded by his brother, who felt that Michael's religious works were superior to his own. Michael Haydn died in Salzburg at the age of 68.
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