During March, Women’s History Month, we are celebrating each week the contribution women have made to our worship either in our hymns, anthems, preludes or postludes, through musical compositions and/or texts rooted in this history and culture.

For this Sunday our list includes the Opening Voluntary, the text of the Gathering Hymn and the Communion hymn tune.

Hymn of the Day: “Lord Christ, When First You Came to Earth” ELW 727
Text: W. Russell Bowie, (1882- 1969)
Tune: MIT FREUDEN ZART, medieval European tune

Though Percy Dearmer does not mention this when he discusses this hymn, 159 other hymnal companions say that F. W. Dwelly, dean of Liverpool Cathedral, requested it as "an Advent hymn in the Dies Irae mood" when he was serving as a consultant for Songs of Praise (London, 1931), where it first appeared. Russell Bowie, its author, said "it is an effort to express both the solemnity and inspiration of the thought of Christ coming into our modern world in judgment." Erik Routley and Paul Richardson title it "Dies Irae" and call it a "masterpiece" that tries "to say to this age what the Dies Irae said to former generations." It is one of the few remains of judgment in our hymnody. Even Hymns Selected and Original in 1828 had a metrical version of the Dies irae, though by the 1852 edition the stanza that began "Horrors, past imagination" had disappeared. It is probably not all bad that the Dies irae only finds a place among us in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century settings of the Requiem or where the fire of its theme needs on occasion to be invoked, but the absence among us of a sense of Rex tremendae majestatis for God who for us tends to be a perpetual celestial plaything leaves us bereft not only of God but of ourselves. This "masterpiece" fills some of the need. The version in Evangelical Lutheran Worship is from Lutheran Book of Worship (1978). It retains all four of Bowie's stanzas and updates the language for inclusivity and the vernacular in place of Elizabethan English.

Walter Russell Bowie was born in Richmond, Virginia, actually the fourth of his family to have the same name, and with family relationships among the First Families of Virginia. Nonetheless, he studied at Harvard University and as an undergraduate was co-editor of The Harvard Crimson with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Bowie became known as a preacher as well as author and hymnist. Particularly in the 1920s, he advocated for what later become known as the Social Gospel: supporting the League of Nations, advocating US immigration reform, and opposing the Ku Klux Klan and Fundamentalism. From 1939 until 1950 he taught practical theology at Union Seminary in New York City and was dean of students there from 1946 until 1950. From 1950 until his retirement in 1955 he taught homiletics at Virginia Theological Seminary. He lectured widely, edited the Southern Churchman, was on the Commission of Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches, and was a member of the committee that prepared the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. He was considered by many the most important and influential preacher of the Episcopal Church in the twentieth century.

MIT FREUDEN ZART has some similarities to the French chanson "Une pastourelle gentille" (published by Pierre Attaingnant in 1529) and to GENEVAN 138. The tune was published in the Bohemian Brethren hymnal Kirchengesänge (1566) with Vetter's text "Mit Freuden zart su dieser Fahrt."

Splendid music for a great text, this tune is one of the great hymn tunes of the Reformation.

Offertory: “Order My Steps”, Glenn Burleigh (1949-2007) ( 1991, 2001, Burleigh Inspirations Music, Inc., permission to stream granted by Lavonne Burleigh)

Glenn Burleigh was born into a family of ministers. He was a renowned pianist, conductor, composer and clinician. Burleigh’s music has been performed in churches and on the classical concert stage, also making an appearance in the movie remake of “The Preacher’s Wife” starring Denzel Washington. Burleigh was best known for his ability to take disparate musical styles and weave them together.

“Order My Steps” is pure "black gospel.” One of the best-known titles in the genre, it is an ardent prayer for guidance filled with passion, energy, and rich sonorities.

Order my steps in Your Word, Dear Lord
Lead me, guide me every day
Send Your anointing, Father, I pray
Order my steps in Your Word.

Humbly I ask Thee, teach me Thy will
While You are working, help me be still
Satan is busy, God is real
Order my steps in Your Word.

I want to walk worthy
My calling to fulfill
Please order my steps Lord
And I'll do Your blessed will
The world is ever changing
But You are still the same
If You order my steps
I'll praise Your name.

Order my steps in Your word
Order my tongue in Your word
Guide my feet in Your word
Wash my heart in Your word
Show me how to walk in Your word
Show me how to talk in Your word
When I need a brand new song to sing
Show me how to let Your praises ring
In Your word.

Please order my steps in Your word.

Opening Voluntary: “Prelude and Canon on ‘O Gott du frommer Gott’” Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)

British composer Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was a composer, conductor, author, and Suffragette. Raised during the Victorian age, Smyth fought against societal restrictions that said a woman should not have a profession. She insisted on an education, she insisted on performances of her works, and she insisted on having her works published. Today Smyth should be heralded as a champion of women’s rights and a pioneer for women in the classical music world, but she is still relatively unknown.

Between 1880 and 1930, she published two sets of lieder, several songs for voice and piano or chamber ensemble, numerous chamber pieces, two symphonic works, six operas, a mass, and a choral symphony. Today we also know of her unpublished works for solo piano, organ, and various chamber ensembles. In addition to composing, Smyth was also a devoted letter-writer, and she turned to writing memoirs and essays later in her life, publishing ten volumes of prose between 1919 and 1940.

During her lengthy career in which she frequently traveled between England, Germany, and Italy, Smyth came to know Brahms, Clara Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bruno Walter, and more. She informally performed for Queen Victoria, and she was friends with the ex-Empress Eugenie of France and the Princesse de Polignac, Winnaretta Singer. In the last decades of her life she formed strong friendships with Edith Somerville and Virginia Woolf.

Although Smyth became known for her proclivity for relationships, she maintained an independent life. Recognizing that the 19th-century idea of marriage was not compatible with a career or her personal inclinations, she wrote in a letter to her mother that “even if I were to fall desperately in love with BRAHMS and he were to propose to me, I should say no!” At the time she claimed that it would end any chances of a career, and later she argued that she was too independent. Both reasons are probably true, but Smyth could never be with only one person. She was unabashedly attracted to women while also maintaining a long-term, long-distance relationship with Henry Bennet Brewster (1850-1908) that lasted from 1884 until his death.

Closing Voluntary: “Cwm Rhondda”, J. Bert Carlson (1937-2017)

CWM RHONDDA, taken from the Welsh name for the Rhondda Valley, is a popular hymn tune written by John Hughes. It is usually sung in English as a setting for William Williams' text Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer or, in some traditions, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. The tune and hymn are often called Bread of Heaven because of a line in the English translation.

Pastor J. Bert Carlson ministered to many congregations for over 50 years in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Indiana. He was also an accomplished musician and published composer.

During February, Black History Month, we are celebrating each week the contribution African Americans have made to our worship either in our hymns, anthems, preludes or postludes, through musical compositions and/or texts rooted in this history and culture.

For this final Sunday our music list includes the Hymn of the Day and Communion hymns.

Hymn of the Day: “We’ve Come This Far By Faith” (ELW 633)
Text: Albert A. Goodson, 1933-2003
Tune: THIS FAR BY FAITH, Albert A. Goodson

In the mid-twentieth century, Chicago was a major hub of African American gospel music with the presence of composer and publisher of African American gospel music Kenneth Morris and gospel performers Sallie Martin (1896-1988), Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993), Roberta Martin (1907-1969), Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland (1931-1991), and others. Albert A. Goodson was one of the gospel artists that established Los Angeles as a center of gospel music in the African American tradition.

The first publication of the song was as a choral octavo in 1956. The first album released by Voices of Hope in 1960 included Goodson’s “We’ve Come This Far by Faith” under the direction of Thurston G. Frazier. Though Frazier is listed as the arranger of the music as found in Songs of Zion, one will recognize his influence only on the choral parts.

African American gospel music scholar Horace Clarence Boyer indicates the significance of this hymn in African American worship by observing that many congregations in this era began worship with “We’ve Come This Far by Faith” as the processional and concluded worship with Thomas A. Dorsey’s “God Be with You”. The song was composed during the brief time after Goodson moved from Los Angeles to Chicago: “I was living in Chicago, alone. I was never married, and I didn’t have a relative or a close friend in that city. I became very discouraged. One day, during a depressed state, I sat down at the piano in a friend’s home and began to play a melody running through my mind. As I played the Lord seemed to speak to me saying, ‘We’ve come this far by faith. . .’”

A composer of other songs, Goodson was surprised at the song’s success: “I never thought my song would be a hit, because it sounded like a Sunday School song to me. But it just seemed to take immediately. People started singing it everywhere. I just couldn’t believe it. . . . And I’ve written other songs but they have never done what that song has done.

Finally, the song has had “crossover” appeal with white congregations in a gospel quartet version. Earlier, this hymn appeared only in African American hymnals. It now is included in recent mainline hymnals such as Chalice Hymnal (1995), Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), Glory to God (2013), and the bilingual hymnal Santo, Santo, Santo / Holy, Holy, Holy (2019).

Organ Voluntaries: “Aberystwyth”
Opening: Gerald Near (1942)
Closing: Healey Willan (1880–1968)

Aberystwyth" is a hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry, written in 1876 and first published in 1879 in Edward Stephen's Ail Lyfr Tonau ac Emynau. Parry was at the time the first professor and head of the new department of music at the recently founded University College Wales, Aberystwyth, now called Aberystwyth University. “ABERYSTWYTH”, most often set to “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” is used in over 300 hymnals world wide.

Gerald Near, one of the foremost composers of church music writing today, first studied theory and composition with Leslie Bassett, organ with Robert Glasgow, and conducting with Elizabeth Green at the University of Michigan. He later returned for graduate study in composition with Dominick Argento and conducting with Thomas Lancaster at the University of Minnesota. In 1982 Near was one of the first recipients of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. That year also saw the performance of two commissioned works for the AGO National Convention in Washington, DC. The following year he moved to Dallas, where he was appointed organist/choirmaster, and subsequently, Canon Precentor of St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

James Healey Willan was an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. Willan composed some 800 musical pieces, the majority sacred works for choir such as anthems, hymns and mass settings. He is best known for his church music.

Willan’ s works show evidence of his love for plainsong and Renaissance music. For example, many of his liturgical compositions employ western church modes from a thousand years ago and the modality and harmony of late nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox music. His lines are significantly more melismatic, more contrapuntal and rhythmically much freer than was the case in the liturgical music of his contemporaries. His is an individual and original voice within a basically traditional English style.

When the Order of Canada was established in 1967, it named Willan a Companion. In Britain, it was customary for the Archbishop of Canterbury to occasionally grant very distinguished English cathedral musicians the Lambeth Doctorate, Mus. D Cantuar; in 1956 Willan, "the Dean of Canadian composers" became the first non-English church musician to be so honored; subsequently, many Canadian universities followed suit. Willan was one of the first Canadian musicians to appear on a Canadian postage stamp. It was not lost on young Canadian musicians that Willan was able to make his livelihood as a composer, and that being a composer was something to which they might realistically aspire. Willan would describe his provenance "English by birth; Canadian by adoption; Irish by extraction; Scotch by absorption”.

There are 99 published chorale preludes by Healey Willan, however most of them are not Lutheran in origin.

Offertory: “Let Nothing Ever Grieve Thee” Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Brahms's “Sacred Song” (Geistliches Lied) Op. 30 was composed in 1856 and takes the form of a double canon setting a text by Paul Fleming (1609–1640), starting with the line 'Let nothing ever grieve thee'. The English translation is by Walter E. Buszin who notes that there is much similarity between this work and the composer's German Requiem.

Let nothing ever grieve thee, distress thee, nor fret thee; heed God's good will, my soul, be still, compose thee.
Why brood all day in sorrow? tomorrow will bring thee God's help benign and grace sublime in mercy.
Be true in all endeavor, and ever do bravely; what God decrees brings joy and peace, He'll stay thee.
Amen.

During February, Black History Month, we are celebrating each week the contribution African Americans have made to our worship either in our hymns, anthems, preludes or postludes, through musical compositions and/or texts rooted in this history and culture.

Today our music list includes the Opening Voluntary, Hymn of the Day and Communion hymns.

HYMN OF THE DAY: “I WANT JESUS TO WALK WITH ME”, ELW 325
TEXT: African American Spiritual
TUNE: SOJOURNER

The tune, called Sojourner, is named for Isabella Baumfree, a New York slave who escaped and then began to preach, sing, and advocate for women’s rights. She took the name Sojourner Truth. Also known as I Want Jesus to Walk with Me, the spiritual is a communal lament whose author and composer are unknown. Some think this may be one of the “white spirituals” which thrived for more than two hundred years in the rural Appalachian culture.

OFFERTORY: "According to Thy Gracious Word" Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mark Schweizer, arr. (1956-2019)

A wonderful motet/anthem arranged by Mark Schweizer from Mozart with a text by James Montgomery.

A native of Florida, Mark Schweizer received music degrees from Stetson University in Deland, Florida and the University of Arizona including a doctoral degree in vocal performance. He returned to teach at Stetson University from 1982 to 1985 followed by eight years on the music faculty of Louisiana College. Mark lived in North Carolina where he served as editor of St. James Music Press. He is the author of fifteen “Liturgical Mystery” novels, as well as other books, and several opera and musical librettos. His published musical compositions can be found in the catalogs of Concordia Publishing House, H.T. Fitzsimmons, Lorenz, Selah Publishing, Musik Fabrik, and St. James Music Press.

According to Thy gracious word, In deep humility
This will I do, my loving Lord, I will remember Thee.
Thy body broken for my sake, My bread from heaven shall be;
The cup, Thy precious blood I take, And thus remember Thee.

When to the cross I turn mine eyes, And rest on Calvary,
O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I must remember Thee;
And when these failing lips grow dumb, And mind and memory flee,
When Thou shalt in Thy kingdom come, Jesus, remember me.

OPENING VOLUNTARY "Liebster Jesu" from Three Pieces for Organ, George Walker (1922-2018)

George Walker, a Pulitzer Prize winning composer, began to study composition seriously after graduating from Oberlin College. After having been accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to study piano with Rudolf Serkin, he was accepted into the composition class of Sosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti. He completed his first string quartet before embarking on a career as a concert pianist. In 1956 he became the first black recipient of the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the Eastman School of Music. Although his degree was in piano (he never studied composition at the Eastman School), he composed his Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, Second Piano Sonata, and Sonata for Cello and Piano while residing in Rochester, New York. In 1957, as a Fulbright Fellow in piano, he continued to compose under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Returning to the United States in 1958, he began to amass a catalog of more than 70 published works that have been performed by renowned ensembles and conductors throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Three Pieces for Organ were composed in the early sixties for use in traditional church services - the slow, aspiring lines of the “Elevation” for communion, the chorale, “Liebster Jesu, wir Sind Hier” as an offertory and the “Invokation” as a prelude to the service. The Lutheran chorale, representing the Protestant tradition of the chorale prelude, is characterized by contrapuntal lines and a canonic treatment of one of the phrases of the chorale melody.

CLOSING VOLUNTARY Southwell, J. Bert Carlson (1937-2017)

The tune, SOUTHWELL is found in many hymnals and most often paired with the text “Lord Jesus, think on me,” by Synesius of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolemais. The tune was composed by William Daman (1540-1591), a foreign composer resident in England. There are a few conflicting reports on his origins, but contemporary London records describe him as an Italian from Lucca, Italy who arrived in England circa 1566 as a servant of Sir Thomas Sackville. In 1576 he became a recorder player at the Court of Elizabeth I.

Pastor Carlson ministered to many congregations for over 50 years in NJ, PA and IN. He was also an accomplished musician and published composer.

Our SERVICE MUSIC has changed, and for Lent we sing an assortment chosen from the ELW and ACS hymns in addition to music from Setting Five.

Holy, Holy, Holy (ELW 190)

The Deutsche Messe stems from a tradition of low masses, settings of religious texts in vernacular languages in Austria and southern Germany. Schubert’s Deutsche Messe (German Mass), D 872, is a hymn-cycle written in 1827. Schubert intended it for usage in Catholic church service. Initially, censorship prevented this from taking place; it was not approved for liturgical use. The work has since gained popularity, and has been translated into other languages. Richard Proulx arranged this version in English.

Lamb of God (ACS 960)

Petri Laaksonen's (1962) is a freelance singer and composer from Turku, Finland, who has had several albums published from the 1990s to the present. His career started as a composer writing for other artists and his first ever released song was Finland's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 1985. Among his compositions there is gospel music as well as pop and schlager albums. He has also continued to write songs for other artists.

You might also find this interesting about the Communion hymn:

“I’m Going on a Journey” ELW 446
TEXT: Kenneth D. Larkin (1929-2011)
TUNE: WET SAINTS, Edward Valentine Bonnemère, (1921-1996)

The text of this hymn, written by Kenneth D. Larkin, gives us a narrative sketch of the Christian life to which baptism leads—a journey begun with Christ's wet mark, on the individual, in community, forgiven, God going before, with the community's support and nurture. The hymn and its tune were written for the consecration of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan on the second Sunday of Advent, December 10, 1978. The author and composer wrote them "not [to] be a dedication of bricks and mortar, but rather a rededication of the people," which is why the baptismal theme is there and why the tune is called WET SAINTS. Larkin says that "as the hymn was being sung, a water pipe to the baptismal font broke and there were, indeed, some wet saints as the people tiptoed through the water."

Kenneth Larkin is a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Edward Valentine Bonnemère, known professionally as Eddie Bonnemère, was an African-American jazz pianist as well as a Catholic church musician and composer. His "Missa Hodierna" became in 1965 the first Jazz Mass ever used in a Catholic church in the United States.

During February, Black History Month, we are celebrating each week the contribution African Americans have made to our worship either in our hymns, anthems, preludes or postludes, through musical compositions and/or texts rooted in this history and culture.

Today we hear and sing the tune “McKee,” for the Opening Voluntary and Gathering Hymn: the first, a quiet and delicate meditation for piano solo by Justin McCarthy and the second a setting of the African American spiritual adapted as a hymn by Harry T. Burleigh. Let’s raise the roof!

Hymn of the Day: “How Good, Lord, to Be Here!” (ELW 315)
Text: Joseph Armitage Robinson (1858-1933)
Tune: POTSDAM, W. Mercer (1811-1873) The Church Psalter and Hymn Book

Dean of Westminster since 1902, graduate of Christ College, Cambridge, Fellow of his College, Norrisian Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, Rector of St. Margaret, Westminster, and Canon of Westminster, J. Armitage Robinson was an English scholar who wrote extensively about the New Testament, the early church and the cathedral at Wells. He is only slightly associated with hymnology. His hymn, "'Tis good, Lord, to be here” was written c. 1890. It was included in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, and supplies a long felt want with respect to hymns on the Transfiguration.

The tune, POTSDAM, first appeared in William Mercer's The Church Psalter and Hymn Book (Sheffield, 1854). It was derived in a novel way—by adapting the fugue subject of J. S. Bach's (#310) Fugue IX from Volume II of The Well-tempered Clavier (BWV870-893) and repeating it four times: beginning on the tonic for the first phrase, repeating it a fifth higher for the second, beginning on the third for the third phrase, and repeating it again on the tonic for the fourth. The only changes are in the third phrase where starting on the third modifies the intervals and where the meter requires two more syllables than the other phrases. There G sharp and A were added at the end of the phrase, emphasizing the dominant and making the singers long for the tonic's return as if the tune actually had gone somewhere. These two notes may also be attributable to Bach who did the very same thing in measures 26 to 27 of the fugue. The name POTSDAM comes from the city Bach visited in 1747 where, at the bidding of Frederick the Great, he improvised on a theme the king gave him and then went home and turned it into what became The Musical Offering. (Though the tune is ingenious and congregational, there is no little irony here. The theme and complexity of The Musical Offering, which stand behind the name of the tune, bear no relation to the tune itself.) Except for the two notes added to the third phrase, the tune in its overly simple and undeveloped character bears no relation to the musical interest Bach developed in the fugue from which it is derived in The Well-Tempered Clavier.

The usual assumption is that William Mercer adapted Bach's fugue subject and created the tune. He was born in northeastern England in Durham and went to Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1840 he became the incumbent at St. George's, Sheffield, and served the church faithfully for the next thirty-three years until his death. His church was full, and he led it to set up both day and Sunday schools. With John Goss's (#318) musical assistance he edited The Church Psalter and Hymn Book, where this tune appeared. This book was first published in 1854 and included the Psalms and Canticles, four hundred metrical psalms with chants and tunes, "for congregations and families." It went through multiple versions with additions in twenty-two different forms from 1854 until 1872. Of it John Julian says this: "For many years this collection was at the head of all the hymn-books in the Church of England, both in circulation and influence. Its large admixture of Wesleyan hymns, and of translations from the German gave it a distinct character of its own, and its grave and solemn music was at one time exceedingly popular." By 1864 it had sold one hundred thousand copies. Hymns Ancient and Modern took its place.

It could be asked if John Goss, the assisting musician of The Church Psalter and Hymn Book, was the one who constructed POTSDAM. He surely knew the Bach fugue, how to use repetition, and how to move to the dominant in a congregational tune. The melody nonetheless seems a bit too simple for a sensitive musician like Goss, who composed one of the Victorian gems, PRAISE, MY SOUL (#318). Furthermore, according to the preface of The Church Psalter and Hymn Book Goss's role was to harmonize the tunes that Mercer chose (and which, Mercer notes, Goss approved). Mercer knew what he was doing (as an editor, not necessarily as a hymn writer), and he appreciated Bach. He may well have constructed this tune, possibly with his "able Organist, Mr. Phillips, whose skill on his instrument is only equalled by his exact taste" and whom Mercer thanked "for his kindness in rendering me assistance, whenever required.”

Offertory: "Arise, Shine" Alan Lewis

A native both of the Episcopal Church and of Southern California, Alan holds degrees in organ performance and music history from Oberlin College & Conservatory of Music in Ohio. He returned to California for graduate work as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley; his doctoral research into the sacred vocal music of the Renaissance resulted in a dissertation on the motets of Nicolas Gombert, one of the prominent Flemish composers of the mid-sixteenth century. While completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Lewis joined the faculty of the (Episcopal) Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, lecturing in Church Music and directing the Chapel Music for six years. He also served as the Music Director for Episcopal congregations. He is a passionate advocate for excellence in the Church's musical offerings, old and new. He currently serves as Director of Music, Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, PA. In addition to his work at Calvary, Alan is the choral music reviewer for the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, and serves as Sub-dean of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.
For behold, darkness covers the land,
deep gloom shrouds the peoples.
But over you the Lord will rise,
and his glory will appear upon you.
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and your God will be your glory.
Arise, shine!

Opening Voluntary: “McKee” Justin McCarthy

MC KEE has an interesting history. According to a letter from Charles V. Stanford to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (who arranged the tune for piano in his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, 1905), MC KEE was originally an Irish tune taken to the United States and adapted by African American slaves. It became associated with the spiritual "I Know the Angels Done Changed My Name," which appeared in J. B. T. Marsh's The Story of the Jubilee Singers with their Songs (1876). Harry T. Burleigh arranged the tune to fit the text by John Oxenham (aka William Arthur Dunkerley) in 1939. As a setting for that text, the tune was published in The Hymnal 1940. Burleigh named the tune after Elmer M. Mc Kee, rector of St. George's Episcopal Church, New York, where Burleigh was the baritone soloist from 1894-1946.

Burleigh began his musical career as a choirboy in St. Paul's Cathedral, Erie, Pennsylvania. He also studied at the National Conservatory of Music, New York City, where he was befriended by Anton Dvorak and, according to tradition, provided Dvorak with some African American musical themes that became part of Dvorak's New World Symphony. Burleigh composed at least two hundred works but is most remembered for his vocal solo arrangements of African American spirituals. In 1944 Burleigh Was honored as a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.

Closing Voluntary: "Trumpet Tune in C” David N Johnson (1922-1987)

"Trumpet Tune in C” Is an energetic piece written in baroque style. this melody sounds centuries old, but is completely original.

David Nathaniel Johnson was a composer, organist, and college lecturer, who studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and held positions at Syracuse University, St. Olaf College, and Arizona State University. His most famous piece is “Trumpet Tune in D Major”, however, the majestic “Trumpet Tune in C” which is slightly lesser known is a wonderful composition also. Johnson is also known for his hymn tune Earth and All Stars.