Sunday, June 23, 2024

Music for Meditation: Prelude on the Hymn Tune “Morecambe”….Charles Callahan

These two brief settings by the American composer Charles Callahan are based on the familiar hymn “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.”

Offertory: Prelude on the Hymn Tune “Down Ampney”…..Henry Ley

This lovely, meditative piece by the English composer Henry Ley is based on a tune sung to the hymn “Come Down, O Love Divine,” an English translation of a medieval Latin text by Bianco da Siena. It is similar in style to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ famous organ setting of the Welsh hymn tune Rhosymedre.

Postlude: Chorale Prelude, “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott” (“We All Believe in One True God”), BWV 680….J.S. Bach

One of Bach’s most famous organ chorale settings, “Wir glauben” is a fugue in the manuals (hands), whose subject (main melody) utilizes the first seven notes of the chorale melody. Against this, the pedal repeats a number of times a sturdy figure; this figure ascends to a high point, then descends back to where it began. The nature of the figure, and the fact that it is repeated multiple times, has often been described as musical text painting of this most basic statement of Christian belief (“We All Believe in One True God”).

– Charles Tompkins

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