Music Box
April 2, 2023
Jubal Joslyn, tenor
Cathryn Wilkinson, organ
Prelude
Fantasia on St. Theodulph……J.S. Bach
All Glory, Laud and Honor……arr. Emma Lou Diemer
The Holy City……Stephen Adams
Jubal Joslyn, tenor
Offertory
Lord, Jesus Think on Me……arr. J. Bert Carlson
Communion
In Remembrance……Buryl Red and Ragan Courtney
The Lord’s Prayer……Albert Hay Mallote
Jubal Joslyn, Tenor
Postlude
In the Cross of Christ I Glory……arr. David Cherwien
Today’s music picks up themes of both celebration and despair, moving into Holy Week. The opening hymn comes from a German melody written in the course of great tragedy. The poet Valerius Herberger was a clergyman in Silesia, Poland, where there had been an outbreak of the plague in 1613. A large portion of the population fell victim, but Herberger remained, however, and in the end he was often the only person, along with the gravedigger, who interred the corpses. This hymn, reflecting both grief and hope, was published a year later, to the melody we know today, written by the local cantor Melchior Teschner. The extensive subtitle reads:
“A reverent prayer with which in the autumn of the year 1613 the reformed citizens of Fraustadt softened the heart of the Lord God, so that he mercifully laid down his whip…It is also a hymn of comfort, in which a devout heart bids this world farewell.”
Excerpts from www.bachvereniging.nl
