EASTER SUNDAY
Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022 livestream for 10:30 a.m. worship at Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston. Enjoy the festive service with trumpet and guest tenor soloist Dr. Robert Taylor singing Five Mystical Songs (#1,2,5) by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Prelude: Trumpet Tune (Jeremy Bankson) and Trumpet Tune (Scott Hyslop), trumpet: Grant Cordé
Choral Introit: “Easter” (Ralph Vaughan Williams), soloist: Dr. Robert Taylor
Hymn: Jesus Christ Is Risen Today! #232
Offertory Anthem: “I Got Me Flowers” (R. Vaughan Williams), soloist: Dr. Robert Taylor
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Sermon: "Step Up, Sign On, Sign In," Rev. Cress Darwin
Closing Hymn: Christ Is Risen! Shout Hosanna! #248
Choral Response/Postlude: “Antiphon” (R. Vaughan Williams)
WE WELCOME OUR GUEST MUSICIANS:
Dr. Robert Taylor, tenor soloist, is Director of Choral Activities at the College of Charleston, Founding Artistic Director and President of the Taylor Festival Choir (TFC) and Taylor Music Group (TMG), and the Director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Singers.
Grant Cordé, trumpet, is a high school freshman and studies trumpet with Sue Messersmith.
Will Royall, tenor, graduated from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. He sings with the Charleston Men’s Chorus, Opera Charleston and Taylor Festival Choir. He is store manager for Royall Ace Hardware in Mt. Pleasant.
Notes on FIVE MYSTICAL SONGS (#1,2, & 5)
by Dr. Julia Harlow
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), one of the most important English composers of the 20th century, wrote symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music and film scores. He was also an avid collector of English folk music and composed or arranged many congregational hymn tunes (including 22 in our present hymnal, Glory to God). Vaughan Williams composed the Five Mystical Songs between 1906 and 1911 and conducted the première in September of 1911. They are settings of poems by George Herbert, from his 1633 collection The Temple: Sacred Poems. All five of the Mystical Songs will be presented by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on April 28th and 29th at the Gaillard Auditorium.
George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh-born English poet. He was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family; his father was Earl of Pembroke. George was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and later served in Parliament. Having become disillusioned with a career in politics, in his late thirties he became a priest in the Church of England, and was rector of a small church near Salisbury. However, this quiet existence was short-lived as he died of tuberculosis only four years later. In 1633 Herbert finished a collection of poems entitled The Temple, which imitates the architectural style of churches through both the meaning of the words and their visual layout. The themes of God and Love are treated by Herbert as much as psychological forces as metaphysical phenomena. On his deathbed Herbert reportedly gave the manuscript of The Temple to a friend, telling him to “publish the poems if he thought they might ‘turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul’, or otherwise, to burn them.” Fortunately, he did not burn them and they were published later that year.
There are many metaphors for Christ that have appeared throughout history, such as The Great Physician. In Easter, Herbert also presents the image of Christ as Master Musician. He draws a parallel of the lute’s strings (made of gut) and wood, to the “stretched sinews” of Christ’s body and the wood of the cross. The imperfect, struggling music of Herbert’s lute contrasts with the perfect resonance of Christ’s music in his sacrifice. In the last stanza, “all musick is but three parts vied and multiplied” refers to the triad as the foundational sonority for music (at least in Herbert’s time it was), and is also a Trinitarian reference. Herbert’s reference to “heart and lute” is also a personal one, as he was a fine lutenist and singer.
I Got Me Flowers is actually the second part of the poem Easter, above. The imagery of the first stanza makes reference to the strewing of flowers and palm branches before Christ on Palm Sunday, then the arrival of the women at the tomb with sweet ointments. In the second stanza the Sun and the East, the origin of those sweet perfumes, provide no contest with the miracle of the Resurrection. In the third stanza, though “we count three hundred” (365) days in a year, we miss the mark. There is only one day that matters, Easter Day, and that forever. In this lyrical song the choir only hums accompaniment to the soloist for the last part, then loudly joins in proclaiming the text of the final line.
Antiphon is often performed alone as a choral anthem and its exuberant joy is the climax of today’s Easter celebration. The accompaniment uses scales and parallel fourths in joyous cascade, evoking bells and change ringing. The text, “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing” was set to a new hymn composed in 1964 by American composer Erik Routley and is in our hymnal, Glory to God, #636. One example of Vaughan-Williams’ musical illustration of the text can be heard at the end of the second stanza, when the tempo slows and the notes prolong “But above all, the heart must bear the longest part.” An ‘antiphon’ is a recurring musical theme, a section of melody, which, by means of several reappearances, serves to bind the diverse sections of a piece into a cohesive whole. The “antiphon” in this piece is the music that accompanies “Let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King!” Please sit and enjoy this, today’s postlude.
