Sunday night and the footsteps of Advent

(2 am) This day has been long; youth choir sang at the 8:45 service, with the adults at the 11:00 Choral Eucharist. Then, choral evensong at 5 pm.

The problem was that with evensong done, we must begin work on Advent music this Wednesday, and I had not selected much of it. The Lessons and Carols service is planned (though it needs a bit of adjustment; one of our anthems has proven to be too difficult for us), but not the Sunday morning music, nor the First Sunday Evensong.

So, I started next Sunday's bulletins, part of my normal Sunday evening work. That took me to about 10 pm. After that, the anthems for the morning Eucharists came easily enough, and there are, after tonight, some nice things on the schedule, some that will likely surprise everyone (such as a Jeremiah Ingalls fuging tune for Advent I).

The Advent Evensong on December 1? Not so much. With at least two of our key singers gone (it is Thanksgiving weekend), whatever we sing must be easy. There will be just one tenor. I pencilled in the Vaughan Williams Mag and Nunc, which works well as an SAB piece, or even unison in a pinch -- bless you, RVW, for your kindness to practical musicians! The Ayleward Responses will be a stretch, but about as suitable as anything in our repertoire other than the basic plainsong version in the hymnal. Psalms for the first evening are 6, 7, and 8. But what about an anthem? I puzzled over this for quite a while. The lessons are dark, as befits Advent I: the first chapter of Amos, where the poor are sold for a pair of shoes, and I Thessalonians 5 - "when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."

I had decided to simply do a hymn, and was looking through some of my books... and (by this time, about 12:30 am) happened on a text by Shirley Erena Murray, one of the great hymn authors of our time: "There is no child so small," found in her book "Touch the earth lightly." But the tune will not do. It is a nice tune by Amanda Husberg, whom I have met at Hymn Society conferences and greatly respect -- but it is sweet and Christmasy. There is nothing sweet about this text:

There is no child so lost,
no refugee so nameless
that God will leave us blameless,
who share no care or cost.
(copyright 2008, Hope Publishing Company)

A tune came to me, just like that. I had it written down within about two minutes. I am tired, barely able to stay awake. But I know better than to walk away from something like this. And it seemed to want more than just a hymn setting, so I sketched out an anthem setting (two-part, remembering our lone tenor), in the process entirely discarding the first harmonization I had done, but finding nothing that I wanted to modify about the tune itself. To my delight and surprise, it even works as a canon, which will be one of the stanzas.

That took me to about 1:45. And it was clear what needed to happen for the other music: as prelude, the strange Bach setting of Nun komm der Heiden Heiland "a due bassi" (for two basses), and as closing hymn, "Creator of the stars of night."
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I have fallen into the trap of writing about politics and not about music. That is because I have been thinking too much about these things. It is pointless, and I repent.