Music for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 27), October 8, 2023

OPENING VOLUNTARY Prelude and Chorale on "Jesu, meines lebens leben"

Friederich Wilhelm Zachau (1663-1712), chorale from Das grosse Cantional, pub. Darmstadt, 1687

Today's prelude uses a peculiarly Lutheran device, using an ornamented piece of freely composed music based on the hymntune that it introduces. Usually the chorale prelude introduces the actual singing of the hymn.

GATHERING HYMN Lord Christ, When First You Came to Earth (Mit Freuden zart) ELW 727

HYMN OF THE DAY There in God's Garden (Shades Mountain) ELW 342

This crepe myrtle grows outside our choir room door.

MUSICAL OFFERING A Vineyard Grows K. Lee Scott

In a happy coincidence, the composer of our Hymn of the Day is also the composer of today's musical offering. The music is based on an English folk song. (Unfortunately, I was unable to learn which one.)

Scott's music is paired with a text by the Jaroslav J. Vajda, a Lutheran pastor and hymn writer. Vajda has six texts in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, including Go, My Children, with My Blessing.

COMMUNION HYMN My Song Is Love Unknown (Love Unknown) ELW 343

SENDING HYMN Thine the Amen (Thine) ELW 826

CLOSING VOLUNTARY Westminster Abbey with Fanfares ed. David Drinkwater

It took awhile for John Mason Neale's translation of a Latin hymn and the music of Henry Purcell to find each other, but they are a "match made in heaven." A mainstay of English hymnody, it was used at the wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diane Spencer in 1981, and the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.

The organ's trumpet chorus from the swell manual ( top keyboard) plays the fanfares while the great manual (middle keyboard) plays the hymn.