God of the sparrow

First Sundays are a lot of work, mostly because of Choral Evensong. This time, I scrambled to learn my evensong prelude, the Bach Trio on Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend from the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales. Learning it was one of my key projects for the year, but other work intervened and I found myself a week away from the evensong without having done a first workout. It was fingered, at least, a task that took many hours back in the summer.

I did not play it very well. It got all of the time I could give it this week, but that was not enough. I did not fall apart, which for a trio movement is a victory, but there were lots of missed notes. After the service, I pencilled it into the planning book for Easter VII in the spring to give myself another chance with it. All told, the Evensong mostly left me cold. We sang well enough; perhaps it was simply my disappointment in the prelude. The best work was with the psalmody (the Fifth Evening: Psalms 27, 28, 29). And one person commented afterwards that the service as a whole was “transcendent.” For that I am grateful.

The music that meant the most to me this day was one of the hymns at the 11:00 service: “God of the sparrow.” The layout of the hymn in the bulletin was difficult, so I decided to play a full stanza at the piano as introduction, rather than the simple two measures indicated by Mr. Schalk (the composer of the hymn tune). That seemed to help the congregation find the spiritual place from which to sing, and it was thoughtful and fine.

God of the sparrow
God of the whale
God of the swirling stars
How does the creature say Awe
How does the creature say Praise

I was an emotional wreck by the end; part of this was because of the little boy in the front row who watched carefully as I played, peering into the piano (as he could, from where he was standing). He is, I gather, very interested in Music. Part of it also was contemplation of the text in its context of the Lessons for the day, including the very dark passage from Hosea 13 that we had read at Matins, and would hear again at Evensong. We have failed so many times; we have given the Lord of the Vineyard no more than sour grapes for all his love, and on top of that, we took him outside of the city and killed him.

God of the rainbow
God of the cross
God of the empty grave
How does the creature say Grace
How does the creature say Thanks

For my introduction, I drew on ideas from my prelude at the earlier 9:00 service, which is here (complete with doggy sounds at the end: this was “blessing of the animals” day). It is typical of what I do for the 9:00 preludes. I was careful to Know the Tune, as I have described elsewhere, but did not put a lot of work into it beyond that; I determined to play a set of variations, with some movement between keys in the middle and a recapitulation to bring it back to the tonic, and played around with these materials some on Saturday and again on Sunday morning.

For those who may still be awake at this hour on Sunday evening, I hope that the music can be a gentle close to the day for you, as it is for me. The last thing I want to do after Evensong is work, and I have managed to stay with it for the three hours that were needed to do my part with next Sunday's bulletins and other tasks that must be completed tonight. And now it is all done.

God of the ages
God of the hand
God of the loving heart
How do your children say Joy
How do your children say Home

(text by Jaroslav J. Vajda, 1983, copyright by the author, administered by Concordia Publishing House)