Issue 5 - Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday
We will arrive at Holy Week on Sunday... and so ends our five-week journey through the organ works of Johannes Brahms. This Sunday, Palm Sunday, don't expect an organ prelude! Hopefully you will be outside participating in the palm processional. The postlude is Emma Lou Diemer's Festival Flourish on "All Glory, Laud and Honor". Also, looking ahead to Holy Week, we will explore Maundy Thursday's prelude music: J. S. Bach's Lamb of God, Most Holy.
Emma Lou Diemer was born in 1927 in Kansas City, MO. At the young age of 13, Diemer began playing organ and soon after decided to be a composer. She received both her Bachelor and Master of Music from Yale University and studied composition in Brussels on Fulbright Scholarship. In 1960, she received her Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music (my alma mater!). Currently, she is serving as a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her compositional output is vast and her music puts a fresh harmonic spin on traditional forms (such as the chorale prelude). The Festival Flourish on "All Glory, Laud and Honor" is a bold interpretation of the famous Palm Sunday hymn. You will hear the opening section repeated as a ritornello (literally meaning "to return") throughout the piece after three compositional sections serve as "verses". First, a dancing procession of crunchy chords portrays the hymn text "The company of angels are praising you on high". Second, a more sedate and lyrical meditation on the hymn text, "The multitude of pilgrims with palms before you went". Third and finally, a bold and obvious harmonization of the hymn's last verse, "Their praises you accepted: Accept the prayers we bring, great author of all goodness, O good and gracious king."
The prelude for Maundy Thursday is from J. S. Bach's Leipzig Chorales (so named because he was at Thomaskirche in Leipzig when he composed them). The Leipzig Chorales are the most advanced and profound of all of Bach's chorale preludes. Lamb of God, Most Holy is number 111 in your LBW so you can follow the hymn tune. The text goes beautifully with St. John's Lutheran Church's theme for Holy Week: "Behold the Lamb of God". Mirroring the hymn, the chorale prelude is in 3 verses. In the first verse, you will hear the cantus firmus (meaning fixed song or melody) stated very simply in the soprano voice. During the second verse, it may be harder to hear the cantus firmus because it is woven into the music and hiding in the alto voice. For the final verse, you will hear the cantus firmus plainly stated in the pedal – you won’t miss it because the pedal does not play on the first two verses. Surprisingly, the composition does not end with the sadness of a Holy Week hymn; instead, the effortless runs create an uplifting air of peacefulness, painting the final text, "Your peace be with us, Jesus!".
(Image: Emma Lou Diemer)