Sunday, February 18, 2024
Music for Meditation: Prelude on the Hymn Tune “Land of Rest”………Charles Callahan
One of the loveliest hymn melodies to come from the American folk tradition, “Land of Rest” is paired in FBG’s hymnal with a text about the season of Lent (Hymn #103). Its stanzas reference Jesus’s fasting and temptation in the wilderness for forty days, concluding with a prayer that we may attain “an Easter of unending joy” at the end of our lives.
Offertory: Adagio (Concerto in B minor after Vivaldi)…..Johann Gottfried Walther
Johann Gottfried Walther, a cousin of J.S. Bach, arranged a number of orchestral concertos by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian composers for the organ. The most famous of these is the B minor Concerto, which is a transcription of a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi. The second movement of this work is very contemplative in style, and features a right hand part which plays the quick, violin-like figurations found in Vivaldi’s concerto against a left hand part consisting of repeating eighth notes throughout.
Postlude – Chorale Prelude, “Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten” (“If You but Trust in God to Guide Thee” (based on Hymn 251)…..J.S. Bach
This is a brief, energetic setting of a lovely German chorale whose text speaks of trust in God and of God’s goodness to us. The chorale melody is heard in the top (soprano) voice; underneath it, the two middle voices play a lively rhythmic motive continuously, while the pedal contributes a sturdy eighth-note line.