Sunday, July 10, 2016

Contemporary worship music for Peace Lutheran's "blended" service July 17 (Pentecost IX) -- with a self-indulgent little footnote on Chris Tomlin's Psalm 100 and memories of Anglican chant

Not exactly the Jubilate Deo I grew up with, but it's a nice song!

Official Lyric/Chord video for “Psalm 100” by Chris Tomlin

This service is one of three or four "blended" services that bring together parishioners and musicians from the contemporary and traditional services at Peace Lutheran Church (formerly Atonement, Faith and Luther Memorial), 2800 West Jefferson, Springfield, the Rev. Paul Schwartzkopf officiating. It will be at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, July 17.

Some notes to the contemporary praise team follow with links to our part(s) in the service:

Call to Worship: "Psalm 100" (we are doing it in a different key than Chris Tomlin does it on the video ...)

Hymn of Praise: (after the greeting) "Holy Holy Holy (God with Us)"

The Hymn of the Day for the 17th is "Seek Ye First" - we're not leading it, but many of you might be familiar with it

"Lord's Prayer"

Songs during Communion:

Closing/Sending Song: "My Life is in You" (ties right in to Paul's message for the day)

* * *

Psalm 100: What a long, strange trip, to quote Jerry Garcia, it's been

"Jubilate Deo" (Morning Prayer) @ St. John's Detroit

Jubilate Deo in the Anglican tradition Here, at right, are the settings for Psalm 100 (Jubilate Deo) in the Episcopal Hymnal of 1940. http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/HPEC1940/643. The title is the Latin for the first line, "O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands" in the translation of the 1928 prayer book that went with the 1940 hymnal, which is the one I knew (and still catch myself repeating when we recite the creed in a different denomination more than 50 years later)! It's traditionally part of Morning Prayer, and I think we chanted it every Sunday. Most Sundays, at any rate.

There are numerous settings of the canticles floating around, some dating back to Thomas Tallis and the English Reformation. The one recorded above at St. John's Episcopal Church in Detroit is close to the one I remember from St. Francis Episcopal Mission in Norris, Tenn.

St. John's, which is holding out against all odds in downtown Detroit, makes it part of its mission and ministry to maintain the Anglican liturgical tradition. (More on the St. John's website at http://stjohnsdetroit.org/liturgy-and-music/.) They have some gorgeous video clips on YouTube, if you like the "high-church" Episcopal or Anglo-Catholic musical tradition.

A canticle is simply a "little song" -- that's what the word means in English -- that was sung, or chanted during the service. We weren't particularly high church at St. Francis (or weren't until we went off to church camp down on Sewanee Mountain and came home from camp with high-falutin' notions), but we chanted a lot, at least in my memory, and I recall learning to sing different plainsong settings in four-part harmony after I joined the choir at the age or 14 or 15.

There are solo recordings of the Jubilate, including two settings from the 1940 hymnal, available on line at http://cradleofprayer.org/jubilate/.

Another canticle I remember was the Magnificat, Mary's song in the gospel of St. Luke that begins "My soul doth magnify the Lord." (Heaven only knows how it's translated today -- maybe "The Lord is, like, way cool?") It's associated with the Christmas story, but it also figures in Evening Prayer throughout the liturgical year, along with the Nunc dimittis (Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace). As with Jubilate Deo, we had more than one form of the Magnificat in the 1940 hymnal. Both are available today on the Hymnary.org website:

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)