Music Notes

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.

Musical Meditation: “A Mighty Fortress”, Anne Krenz Organ

Anne Krenz Organ serves as the Director of Music at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Park Ridge, IL. She is also composer of many works of church music, particularly choral and piano.

Choir Anthem: “A Lentten Walk”, Hal H. Hobson

This is a haunting setting of the familiar American spiritual, Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley. The ostinato continually accompanies us on our walk.
Hal H. Hobson is a full-time composer and church musician residing in Cedar Park, Texas. He has over 3000 published works, which comprise almost every musical form in church music. With a special interest in congregational song, he continues to make a significant contribution to the new repertoire of hymn tunes and responsorial psalm settings as evidenced by the proliferation of his settings that are included in newly published hymnals and psalm collections.

Jesus walked this lonesome valley,
he had to walk it by himself;
Oh, nobody else could walk it for him,
he had to walk it by himself.

We must walk this lonesome valley,
we have to walk it by our- selves;
Oh, nobody else can walk it for us,
we have to walk it by ourselves.