Sunday Worship for October 4, 2020
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the arrow in the middle of the image.
Join us later today in the Outdoor Sanctuary at 4pm for Blessing of the Animals!
About the Music:
Much of our music this Sunday focuses on St. Francis of Assisi whose Feast Day is October 4 which this year falls on a Sunday.
Beginning today's service is "Andante Religioso", the second movement from Sonata 4 for organ by German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). He was a skilled organist and was famous for his improvisations during his frequent public recitals in Britain.. During 1844, on his eighth trip to England, Felix was commissioned to write a set of "voluntaries" by an English publisher. These individual pieces were then grouped into a collection of six suites that he labeled sonatas and published in 1845.
Hymn 400, “All Creatures of our God and King” is an English paraphrase by William Draper of St. Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun and of All Creatures”. Written in the final year of St. Francis’s life, it is said to be the first genuine religious poem in Italian. These beautiful words about the natural world are sung to the magnificent tune, Lasst uns erfreuen, by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The anthem, “Make Us Instruments of thy Peace” is a setting of the famous “Prayer of St. Francis”. It is arranged by current American composer Jean Anne Shafferman using musical themes from “Gymnopedie” by Erik Satie and “Holy, Holy, Holy” by Franz Schubert.
"Alleluya" (Festal Postlude on 'Lasst uns erfreuen'), by the Victorian English composer William Faulkes (1863-1933), concludes the service today as a complement to Hymn #400, "All Creatures of Our God and King". Published in 1927, "Alleluya" is one of the Liverpool born Faulkes' most well-known pieces and not an easy one to play, presenting quite a few technical challenges to master.