“Jesus, Passing through their Midst” Sacred Music for Eastertide from the Eton Choirbook

Apr, 23, 2023 - Pastor Brian Hamer​
The pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them.
​ – 1 Samuel 2:8
Most of our readers have probably heard of Eton College near London, but the Eton Choirbook may be less familiar. Harry Christophers and his choir, The Sixteen (the ensemble began as sixteen singers singing sixteenth-century music, in case you were curious), have recorded five remarkable CDs of music from the Eton Choirbook. It seems fitting, then, to give Mr. Christophers the first word in this column: ​
​The Eton Choirbook was compiled around 1500 for use in the chapel at Eton. There would have been chapels that had books like it all over the country, but because of the [English] Reformation most of them were destroyed [by Henry VIII]. It was only because a miracle that the Eton Choirbook survived. (A New Heaven: Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, p. 46)
And what was this providential miracle? ​
​It’s thought that [the book] was sent away to the bookbinders, because the leather was wearing away, and that’s how it escaped. It wasn’t found until 1895, and was discovered by the writer M. R. James, who was later to become Provost at Eton. He was cataloguing the library, and there it was, gathering dust on the bottom shelf.  (A New Heaven, p. 46)

​Singing the Praise of Him Who Died:
“Make Clean, My Heart” by J. S. Bach for Good Friday

Apr, 3, 2023 - Pastor Brian Hamer
There is one thing to preach, the wisdom of the cross.
– Martin Luther
​Robin Leaver describes the St. Matthew Passion of J. S. Bach (1685–1750):
​[It is] A setting of the Passion story from St. Matthew’s Gospel, BWV244, probably performed on Good Friday 1727. The St. Matthew Passion is by any standard a remarkable composition—one of the most complex of all Bach’s vocal works and for many the most profound. Mendelssohn considered it to be ‘the greatest of Christian works’, and many other superlatives have continued to be accorded this emotionally powerful music, which almost every choral group aspires to perform. (Oxford Composers Companion: J. S. Bach, p. 430).
​Likewise, Michael Maul writes that the Passion introduced the congregation and musicians to “perhaps the greatest test of the Bach era, but which also strained the attention span of the congregation with it three-hour length” (Bach’s Famous Choir, p. 190). Attention spans have arguably shortened significantly since the Enlightenment, so I will treat our journey through Bach’s Passions as a long-term project. Please join me this Holy Week to explore a magnificent aria from this high point of the liturgical year in Leipzig, “Make Clean, My Heart” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.  

Anniversaries in Sacred Music: Bach Behind the Iron Curtain A Musical Post Card from Russia, 1962

Dec, 26, 2022 - Pastor Brian Hamer
The music sings of life. 
– Robert Shaw on the Music of J. S. Bach  ​
One Bach scholar claims that “[J. S.] Bach is known as the Fifth Evangelist [because] his music and his message go where the preacher cannot go, namely, to the concert hall” (Logia XXX:2, p. 13). This writer drew his conclusion in part based on the 1962 tour of the Robert Shaw Chorale behind the Iron Curtain. The ensemble was dubbed “a sleeper act” by the Department of State, but it caused a sensation, especially with its ten performances of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Please join me on the sixtieth anniversary of this “mission trip” to explore how Bach’s music sings of life.
   
Robert Shaw (1916–1999) conducted the Robert Shaw Chorale from 1948 until 1967 and toured thirty countries at various times, all sponsored by the U. S. State Department. During this time the Chorale became a household name, with a popularity akin to today’s best known classical musical performers. Keith C. Burris did not overstate the situation when he wrote, “The Robert Shaw Chorale became the nation’s, and then the world’s, best-known and most-respected professional touring vocal ensemble” (Deep River: The Life and Music of Robert Shaw, p. 118). For Shaw, the highlight of the Chorale was the choir’s tour of Russia in 1962. “Shaw said so many times” (Burris, Deep River, p. 121).  ​

Anniversaries in Sacred Music​: A ‘Triduum’ of Eucharistic Anthems with The Dale Warland Singers

Nov, 15, 2022 - Pastor Brian Hamer
Of thy mystical supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a partaker.
 – Liturgy of Holy Thursday
It is probably sui generis (“without generation,” i.e., without precedent) to use the words “triduum,” “eucharistic,” and “Dale Warland” (b. 1932) in one title, but I am confident in my logic here. Although this professional chamber choir from Minneapolis–St. Paul was not a church choir, the treasury of sacred music from the Dale Warland Singers (hereinafter DWS) is significant for maintaining the highest possible quality of choral music through attention to detail. The hours that went into programming, rehearsing, and even editing programs for the DWS is immediately evident to anyone who has ever heard their music, live or via recording. Their “Christmas with the Dale Warland Singers” series was especially beloved in the choral community, so I will devote a column to their Christmas music this December. For this month, please join me on the fiftieth anniversary of their ‘birthday’ and the year of Warland’s ninetieth birthday to explore three anthems for the Lord’s Supper: sacred music for Great and Holy Thursday (“Of Thy Mystical Supper”), for any given Friday (“Salvation is Created”), and for the Feast of Corpus Christi (“O Sacred Feast”), thus creating a triduum or “three-day” cycle of music for the Lord’s Supper.

Use and action test for virtual communion

Nov. 14, 2022 - Pastor Brian Flamme
A recent dispute among the churches of the Missouri Synod made me dive back into the wisdom of our Lutheran Fathers as articulated in the Formula of Concord, one of the confessional documents to which we have promised to adhere in this congregation and throughout the Synod. The dispute was over whether the Sacrament of the Altar can be administered virtually or remotely. You may have heard of churches that do “online communion.” The practice became popular during the heart of the COVID lockdowns when pastors were frustrated with not being able to commune their congregations.
 
Presumably, they were under tighter restrictions than what we had here in New Mexico. Here in Roswell we gathered as small groups to receive the Sacrament. Of course, this was not ideal since the whole congregation should weekly gather around Word and Sacrament as the Scriptures teach (Exodus 20:8; Acts 2:42; Heb. 10:25), but I don’t think anyone went without the Sacrament who desired it. Once the restrictions ended, we gladly resumed the practice of communing at the same time on Sunday. On the other hand, other pastors thought it best to try something different and new.

Anniversaries in Sacred Music: Singing the Agnus Dei with Frank Martin and Ralph Vaughan Williams

Grant peace, we pray, in mercy Lord;
Peace in our time, O send us
—Martin Luther (after a Latin hymn)
​
​Peter Bender describes the text of the Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God”:
[The Agnus Dei] is the fifth and final great hymn of the Divine Service. The words, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” were first spoken by John the Baptist in the public announcement of Jesus’ ministry. These words are the sum and substance of what our Lord came to do. (Lutheran Catechesis, p. 119)
​In Christ, the Lamb of God, the two-part plan of the Passover is fulfilled: kill the lamb and eat the lamb. The death the of Lamb of God is a once-for-all, calendar-day event. But the eucharistic eating of the Lamb continues around the world until Christ returns. We are accustomed to singing the three-fold Agnus Dei one time, but Art Just notes the Medieval precedent for singing it ”as long as there was bread to break” (Christ’s Gifts in the Liturgy: The Theology and Music of the Divine Service, p. 41). How fitting that Jesus is described as the Lamb of God thirty times in the eschatology of the book of Revelation, where Jesus is enthroned as the Lamb who is worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev. 5:12).
Read more

Anniversaries in Sacred Music: Singing the Sanctus with Frank Martin and Ralph Vaughan Williams

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: Which was and is and is to come.
—Antiphon for Trinitytide
​
​Peter Bender describes the role of the Sanctus (please see the Latin and English text below) as the fourth of the five pillars (along with the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Agnus Dei) of the Divine Service:
[The Sanctus] was sung by the angels when Isaiah the prophet was called by the Lord to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to sinners (Isaiah 6). In Isaiah’s vision we are taught that heaven, which had been closed to us because of sin, is now open for the sinner through the good news of Christ’s forgiveness. This forgiveness is given to us in the Word of Christ which comes to us in His gifts of preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. (Lutheran Catechesis, p. 107)
Isaiah’s encounter with the holy set the precedent for the Lord’s Supper as “the holy things for the holy ones,” i.e., the holy body and blood of Christ are only for those who have been made holy through Baptism and have heard the cleansing word of Absolution. The Lord’s words to Isaiah in his temple vision also apply to us in the means of grace: “Your sin is taken away and your guilt is atoned for.”
​
Read more

Anniversaries in Sacred Music: One Hundred Years of Singing the Gloria with Frank Martin and Ralph Vaughan Williams

We beheld the glory, as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
—St. John 1:14​
​Recall from the first installment of this special series on settings of the Mass for double choir by Frank Martin (1890–1974) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) that these two choral masterworks overlap historically and stylistically. Martin began writing his Mass in 1922, finished it in 1926, but curiously concealed it until the early 1960s. Vaughan Williams (hereinafter RVW) wrote his Mass in G minor in 1922, but with no idea that Martin was writing a similar work, much less any notion that the two works would become unofficial ‘choral companions’ a century later. Stylistically, both works draw upon older compositional methods, perhaps most notably the motet, a compositional process in which the musical themes change with each word or phrase of the text. But both composers also employed newer compositional methods, earning both works a permanent place in the choral repertoire. Please join me during this, the latter portion of the Easter season, to explore how these composers treat the Gloria.
Read more

Cantatas Over Coffee: J. S. Bach Cantata 104 for Good Shepherd Sunday

When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory
— I Peter 5:4
​
​The liturgical context for Cantata 104, “Thou Shepherd of Israel, Hear Us” is Misericordias Domini Sunday, informally called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Most modern readers probably associated the Good Shepherd theme with the Fourth Sunday of Easter, placing the theme of Christ the Good Shepherd at the very center of the seven Sundays of the Easter season. But the flock in Bach’s day, and almost universally from Medieval days to the 1960s, expected the portrait Jesus as the Good Shepherd on the second Sunday after Easter. The Introit declares that the “earth is full of the goodness of the Lord; by the word of the Lord were the heavens made,” declaring from the start of the service that every good gift in this world is under the auspices of the risen Shepherd. The Epistle (I Peter 2:21–25) reminds the faithful of their true calling and their identity as Christ’s sheep: “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (v. 25). The Verse (St. Luke 24:35b; St. John 10:14) and the Gospel (St. John 10:11–16) draw from John 10, declaring the good news that the Shepherd knows, loves, and even dies for His sheep. His sheep (i.e., the elect), in turn, know their Shepherd, hear His voice, and follow Him. Psalm 23 is curiously absent from the historic propers for this Sunday, but church musicians can easily incorporate it as a choral response or attendant music, as J. S. Bach (1685–1750) did with the Good Shepherd theme in Cantata 104.
Read more

Singing the Praise of Him Who Died: “It is Finished” by J. S. Bach for Good Friday

Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered,
so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.
—Revelation 5:5
​
22222“There is one thing to preach, the wisdom of the cross.” These oft-quoted words of Luther come from a sermon fragment from 1515, wherein Luther was answering the question, “What shall I preach?” Hermann Sasse (1895–1976) summarizes what this means for the church, especially as she prepares yet again to ponder on Jesus’ Holy Passion: “The wisdom of the cross, the word of the cross, a great stumbling block to the world, is the proper content of Christian preaching, is the Gospel itself. So thinks Luther and the Lutheran Church with him.” To be sure, the centrality of the cross does “does not mean that for the theologian the whole church year shrinks to Good Friday.” Rather, Sasse says, it means that “one cannot understand Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost without Good Friday” (Letters to Lutheran Pastors, 1:387).
​
Read more

Anniversaries in Sacred Music: One Hundred Years of Singing the Kyrie with Frank Martin and Ralph Vaughan Williams

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
—St. Luke 17:13
​
​Among the significant anniversaries in sacred music in the year 2022 are two musical settings of the Mass, both with origins in the year 1922. Frank Martin (1890–1974) began writing his Mass in 1922. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1974) wrote his Mass in G minor in 1922. Both are scored for double choir, are similar in scope and sequence, and have risen to the top of choral gems of the twentieth century. Please join me this year to explore each movement of both settings, beginning with the Kyrie, with four more issues to follow, arranged according to the seasons and readings of the church year.
Read more

​On Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs:
Psalm 130, “From Depths of Woe”
A Musical Post Card from Dresden

O God, condemn us not according to the multitude of our iniquities,
but quicken with Thy plenteous compassion those who confess and return unto Thee.
—From a Collect after Psalm 130
​
As the church approaches Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, it is fitting to explore one of the penitential psalms, Psalm 130, with special focus on Luther’s hymn after this Psalm, “From depths of woe I cry to Thee.” Composers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries have worked wonders with Luther’s hymn. This issue will focus on three composers—Johann Walter, Matthäus Le Maistre, and Heinrich Schütz—who worked in Dresden and who set Luther’s hymn to music.
Read More

Cantatas Over Coffee: J. S. Bach, ‘It is Enough’ Cantata 82 for Candlemas

In His temple now behold Him, See the long-expected Lord!
— Hymn by Henry J. Pye
​
Nota Bene: During my ministry in Queens, NY, my wife and I developed a close friendship with Rev. John Stoudt (Emmaus Lutheran, Ridgewood) and his wife, Faith, who taught at my church’s elementary school. During this time (2002–2015), we attended the annual Candlemas service and banquet at Emmaus. Faith was diagnosed with cancer about two years ago and fell asleep in Jesus after suffering a stroke last month. This column on Candlemas and departing this world in peace is dedicated to her memory, 1958–2022.

According to the Gospel Lesson for this day, St. Luke 2:22–40, forty days after his birth, the infant Lord was presented in the Temple to fulfill the promise of Malachi, “The Lord whom ye seek will suddenly come to His temple” (3:1), as well as the Mosaic Law for purifying mothers after child birth (Lev. 12:2–5). Jesus’ parents offered the alternative sacrifice of two turtledoves or two pigeons, the offering of the poor who could not afford a lamb, showing the poverty and humility of Joseph and Mary. And yet, no lamb was necessary because the infant Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Simeon prayed the Nunc Dimittis, a prayer of great comfort and consolation for all who hold Christ in the arms of faith and in the Holy Eucharist.
Read more

​“The Word Made Flesh, the Flesh Made Word”: Three Choral Settings on John 1

By the mystery of Your holy incarnation . . . Help us, good Lord
— The Litany
​
Hymns for Christmastide are generally based on St. Luke’s Christmas narrative (Luke 2:1–21) or St. John’s Prologue on the Word made flesh (John 1:1–14). Hymns expounding on Luke 2 (“Once in Royal David’s City,” “What Child Is This,” et al.) generally focus on the history of the Christmas story and the response of penitent faith. Hymns based on John 1, however, usually proclaim the theology of the incarnation and how the Christ is enfleshed among us: “Not by human flesh and blood, By the Spirit of our God, Was the Word of God made flesh” and “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity.” Sacred choral music for the season also follows these two complementary theological paths, which the church year traces from Christmas Eve (usually focused on Luke 2) to the Christ-Mass, with its appointed Gospel Lesson from John 1. Christmas Eve having passed this year, please join me during the Twelve Days of Christmas to explore three settings of selected verses of John 1 in Latin, German, and English, all coincidentally written by composers whose last name starts with the letter “H.”
Read more

Cantatas Over Coffee: “Wake, Awake” by Dieterich Buxtehude

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end
—Revelation 22:13
​
Dieterich Buxtehude (1636/37–1707) was a Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period, whose works for the organ represent a central part of the standard organ repertoire. As a composer who worked in various vocal and instrumental idioms, Buxtehude's style greatly influenced other composers, such as his student, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who once walked 260 miles to learn from an elderly Buxtehude, just two years before Buxtehude died. Bach had permission from his employer to be gone for three weeks. He was so impressed with his teacher and the Evening Music series (Abendmusiken), however, that he stayed for three months. Bach’s admiration of Buxtehude, even to the point of being absent without leave and risking his employment in Arnstadt, is just one indication of why Buxtehude, who served St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck from 1668 until his death in 1707, “ranks as the leading composer in Germany between Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach” (Karela J. Snyder, as quoted in German Studies Review 12:2, p. 358).
Read more

Cantatas Over Coffee: “The Lord God is Sun and Shield,” Cantata 79 for Reformation Day

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory;
no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
— Psalm 84:11
​
​Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata 79 is one of three sacred cantatas he wrote for the celebration of Reformation Day in Leipzig. In the general scheme of things, it probably lives in the shadow of his Cantata 80, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” with its textual substance drawn from Luther’s famous hymn and a splendid opening chorus that seems to reverberate in heaven itself. But Cantata 79, with a superb chorus, two chorale texts, and fine solos is not to be missed.
Read More

Welcome to Around the Word

Around the Word paints a Biblical and joyful picture of teaching and life. We have our Bibles open, and we believe with simplicity what the Lord speaks there. We endeavor to have a thoughtful and generous, historical and current approach to the Lord’s word, understanding that theological integrity is the best way that we can serve the church at large.

We are Lutheran, that is, we let the Law and the Gospel echo in the full voice with which God speaks it, and we are on the lookout for error because we love to hear the truth, the life-giving voice of Jesus. So we care about their families and their neighbors and the world, both in this life and in the life to come.

We are working to recover the joy and delight of doctrine, of the Gospel.