Hymn of the Day: With High Delight Let Us Unite, ELW 368
Text: Georg Vetter (1536-1599)
Tune: MIT FREUDEN ZART, medieval European tune

This hymn text by Georg Vetter was included in the Bohemian Brethren's Kirchengeseng (Ivancice, 1566). Martin H. Franzmann (1907-1976) translated it, and his translation was included in the Worship Supplement (1969). It has passed through Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) to Evangelical Lutheran Worship with little alteration.

This is a jubilant Easter hymn. It gives expression to the explosive song spawned by the freedom from and death of death obtained by Christ's death and resurrection. This expression is achieved by a complex but deliciously audible inner and outer rhyme scheme allied to the meter. Franzmann skillfully maintained it in the English translation.

Georg Vetter was a Bohemian Brethren pastor, born in Moravia, who studied at the University of Könisberg and the University of Tübingen. He was ordained in 1567 and served as a pastor at several churches, not without resistance to his authoritarianism. A leader among the Brethren, in 1587 he made a Czech version of the Genevan Psalms with Claude Goudimel's settings, and he played a leading part in the Kralice translation of the Bible, which, for the Czech world, was comparable to Martin Luther's translation for the German one.

Martin Franzmann was an eloquent Lutheran pastor, teacher, and hymn writer. Born into a pastor's family in Minnesota, he studied at Northwestern College in Watertown, Wisconsin (BA, 1928), Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Thiensille (graduated, 1936), and at the University of Chicago in classics for over twenty years (from 1929 to 1951). He was professor of New Testament at Northwestern College from 1936 to 1946, held the same post at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis from 1946,345 and moved to England in 1969 as tutor at Westfield House, Cambridge-the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England. After having served the church as a beloved teacher and only sometimes a preacher (albeit a remarkable one), he was ordained in England there and then. Well before he went to England. in 1934 and 1935 he served as a pastoral assistant and teacher in the parish school with Pastor Arthur Klatt at St. Peter's Church, Shaker Heights, Ohio. At Klat's encouragement he began translating and writing hymns. His hymns, with four sermons, are collected in Leaver's Come to the Feast (1994). He was not a prolific hymn writer (Leaver's book gives twenty original hymns and nine translations) but a potent one.

Splendid music for a great text, this tune is one of the great hymn tunes of the Reformation. MIT FREUDEN ZART is a tune with breadth. It spans an octave and gives congregations a wonderful ride over its arch. It works very well with this text because its melodic pieces within its overall bar form match the text's metric structure and rhyme scheme.

Offertory: A Rose Touched by the Sun’s Warm Rays, Jean Berger (1909-2002)

Jean Berger, the German-Jewish composer born as Arthur Schlossberg, fled from Nazi Germany in 1933 and changed his name to Jean Berger. In 1962, while teaching at University of Colorado at Boulder, he was inspired to translate and compose a musical setting of this poem written by Maria Brubacher in 1825 into a bookplate which he discovered in a book about Pennsylvania German bookplates. This piece is a beautiful reflection of God's love and mercy.

A rose touched by the sun’s warm rays
All its petals gently does unfold.
So you when touched by God’s great mercy
Let joy and gladness win your soul.

Opening Voluntary: The Strife is O’er (Gelobt Sei Gott) Andrew Gant (1963)

Although the tune GELOBT SEI GOTT is most often associated with the text “Good Christians, All, Rejoice and Sing”, the title of this organ voluntary by Andrew Gant references the occasional pairing of this tune with an anonymous text which first appeared in the Jesuit collection, Symphonia Sirenum Selectarum in 1695. The text was translated by Francis Pott in 1859, and published in five stanzas. These stanzas appear in most modern hymnals. Each verse follows a similar pattern. We first proclaim some aspect of Christ’s victory over death, and then add our emotional response to this victory.

There is also something very profound and triumphant about the text. There is a sense of finality and the finality is the finality of newness. It is the realization that we are continually being made new, that Creation is continually being restored, and that every day we are called to life anew with Christ. Alleluia.

Andrew Gant is Director of Music in Chapel at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He also directs the Light Blues vocal ensemble and is Musical Director of the Thursford Christmas concerts. He has worked extensively as an arranger for both radio and television.

Closing Voluntary: All the Vault of Heaven Resounds (Lasst Uns Erfreuen), Mark Sedio (1954)

LASST UNS ERFREUEN derives its opening line and several other melodic ideas from GENEVAN 68. The tune was first published with the Easter text "Lasst uns erfreuen herzlich sehr" in the Jesuit hymnal Ausserlesene Catlwlische Geistliche Kirchengesänge (Cologne, 1623). LASST UNS ERFREUEN appeared in later hymnals with variations in the "alleluia" phrases.

Mark Sedio serves as Cantor at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. In addition he has held teaching positions both at Augsburg University and Luther Seminary. Sedio is an active recitalist, clinician, conductor and composer, having presented hymn festivals and workshops throughout North America and Europe. Over 125 of his compositions for organ, piano, choral and instrumental ensembles are available from a number of publishers. A number of his hymn tunes, texts and harmonization appear in various denominational hymnals and supplements. A love of foreign language acquisition and linguistics combined with interest in folk music and styles has led to a keen interest in global church music. In 2008, the faculty of Luther Seminary (St. Paul) granted him the title of Musician Emeritus for his service in various musical capacities from 1982 through 2008. He holds a B.A. in music from Augsburg University and an M.A. in choral music from the University of Iowa. He has studied in the M.Div. program at Luther Seminary and the liturgical studies program at St. John’s University. A charter member of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, Sedio served on the organization’s founding board and as its first Director of Ecclesiastical Concerns. He chaired the worship committee for the 2008 national convention of the American Guild of Organists.