This Sunday’s Holy Eucharist will be one of our a cappella services. In lieu of an organ prelude, the choir will sing a chorale by J. S. Bach, taken from Cantata BWV 38, Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu Dir. This cantata is based on Martin Luther’s early (1524) paraphrase of Psalm 130, and we’re singing this chorale since that text is the focus of some attention in the last few weeks of the Church year; the Offertory and Communion propers feature a verse from Psalm 130: “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.” The story of the tune and text for this cantata is told in this article. It is the same tune and text on which the piece we sang last week by Felix Mendelssohn was based.
Our processional hymn, “Now that the daylight fills the skies,” is sometimes attributed to St. Ambrose. Our Hymnal (probably more accurately) regards it as an anonymous hymn from the sixth century. Around that time, the text began to be chanted during the Office of Prime, the first daylight hour of the Divine Office. The translation in our Hymnal is by the Anglican priest John Mason Neale (1818-1866). There are two tunes available for this hymn in our Hymnal, and the tune we usually sing is HERR JESU CHRIST, first published in a Lutheran hymnal in 1648. J. S. Bach used this tune in several chorales preludes.
Our sermon hymn, “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” is a paraphrase of Psalm 42 by Nahum Tate (1652-1715) and Nicholas Brady (1659-1726), prolific adapters of the Psalms in metrical English poetry. It was first published in the late 16th century, with nine verses which our Hymnal does not include. The tune, MARTYRDOM, was adapted by Hugh Wilson (1766-1824) from a Scottish folk melody.
The Offertory anthem is another paraphrase of Psalm 130, this time by Dewey Westra (1899-1979), with music by Claude Goudimel (c.1514-1572), a French composer, music editor, and publisher. Goudmel is best known for his involvement with the compilation of the Genevan Psalter, a project supervised by John Calvin.
The Communion motet is a setting of John 6:56-57, Caro mea vere est cibus, “My flesh is meat indeed . . .”. Those two verses have been sung during the Eucharist for centuries. The setting our choir is singing is by Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), a Roman Catholic priest and one of the more notable composers of the Spanish Renaissance.
Our first communion hymn, “Humbly I adore thee,” was not originally intended for congregational singing but for private devotion. And it was probably not written by Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) as indicated in our Hymnal, but it does date to the 13th century.
The text for our second communion hymn, “My God, thy table now is spread,” is by Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), the author of this and four other hymns in our Hymnal (including the Advent hymn which we’ll be singing in a few weeks, “Hark! the glad sound! the Saviour comes”). The tune to the present hymn, ROCKINGHAM (which is best known in Great Britain as the tune for “When I survey the wondrous cross”) was adapted from an earlier psalm-tune by Edward Miller (1735-1807), and published in his very popular volume, Psalms of David (1709). King George III rewarded Miller with a handsome £35 for his own copy.
The hymn with which we close our Church year is “The God of Abraham praise.” This is a paraphrase from the Jewish Creed, the Yigdal (late 14th century), traditionally sung at the close of Sabbath services. The tune we sing, LEONI, is named in honor of its transcriber, Meyer Lyon, who in the late 18th century was the chief singer at the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, London.