Worship Music October 7

FirstLight worship will begin this week with two familiar praise choruses, Martin J. Nystrom’s “As the deer,” and Dave Doherty’s “Come let us worship and bow down.” We will also sing “Better is one day,” and Brian Doerksen’s “Come, now is the time to worship,” both of which have become FirstLight favorites. A time crunch caught us last week and the Prophets had to forego singing the Jack Noble White song “The First Song of Isaiah;” we’ll get to it this week. We are celebrating communion this week at both services, along with Christians around the world as part of World Communion participation. To affirm our global nature and our global mission we will close FirstLight worship with the powerful “Shout to the north.”

I remind the adult choir that there are very, very few “perfect pieces of choral music” in the world. This week the choir will be singing one of those few as their anthem. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “O taste and see” is 40 seconds of musical perfection. Using text found in Psalm 34, it uses that distinctive Vaughan Williams quasi-pentatonic tone palette that characterizes so much of his music. The anthem is in two very short sections, each of which begins with a short solo for a soprano singer; this week that soloist will be Susan Banzhoff. Service music will be representative of our global faith, with the Introit from Brazilian sources, a British celebration of forgiveness after the confession, and an Israeli folk song for the benediction response. The hymns this week are “God is here” (Abbot’s Leigh), “We walk by faith and not by sight” (Dunlap’s Creek), and “Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts” (Quebec).

Henry Alford (1810-1871) wrote the text for “We walk by faith” prior to 1884 when the hymn appeared in his collection Psalms and Hymns. The tune is named after a creek in Brownsville, PA, (south of Pittsburgh) renowned for a certain bridge which crosses it. The tune first appeared in a US hymnal in 1814. Organ music by John Behnke (a setting of “Gather us in”) and John Stanley (one of the 30 short voluntaries) will be heard at the prelude and offertory. Dan Locklair’s “Phoenix Processional” will be the organ postlude. Locklair is a composer living in Winston-Salem, NC. His “Phoenix Fanfare and Processional” were composed for organ with brass and percussion in two stages. The Fanfare came first in 1980 to celebrate the rededication of James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary in New York. The Processional followed in 1985. The composer created the solo organ version in 1996. The piece is a stately one, featuring the trumpet stop on the organ. Somewhat long (6 minutes) it is yet thrilling for the performer (double pedals!) and listener.