If you are unable to worship in person this Sunday, please visit our Facebook page www.facebook.com/stmarksasheville for a live stream at 11:00 am. You do not need to have an account in order to watch our videos. Click here for the bulletin: Ordinary2 1100 2021
Please note that we have moved back to seasonal bulletins for our worship services. The liturgy is on pages 2-13, and the readings and psalms for each Sunday are at the back, on pages 14-19. We also heartily encourage you to join us in singing the hymns! If you don’t have a hymnal at home, please click here: Hymns for 8.15.21
Service Music Notes:
Prelude: By Your Hand You Feed Your People, arr. Nancy Raabe
When writing this hymn, Susan Briehl and Marty Haugen were inspired by the words of St. Augustine: “The mystery that you are lies there on the table; it is your own mystery that you receive… Be what you see, and receive what you are.” It was written for the liturgy setting “Beneath the Tree of Life.”
Offertory: Soul, Adorn Thyself with Gladness, arr. Anne Krentz Organ
This hymn by Johann Franck (1618-1677) is one of the best German hymns for Holy Communion, and exhibits “the kind of devotional warmth engendered by the ruin of the Thirty Years’ War” (ELW Hymnal Commentary, 314). The tune is a quietly happy melody by Johann Crueger (1598-1662), a composer, hymnal editor, and cantor of the St. Nicholas Church in Berlin. Crueger played a large role in introducing organ-accompanied congregational singing — previously (and well into the 19th century), congregations always sang unaccompanied, in unison.
Postlude: Fugue in C minor, J.S. Bach (BWV 549)
A fugue is a musical form built around a theme (called the subject) which is repeated throughout the piece. To the subject is added an answer (an imitation of the subject in a new key), and a number of counter-subjects. These are then repeated, stacked on top of each other, transposed, etc. The ending is usually a final statement of the subject, in the original key. The name comes from Latin “fuga,” flight, suggestive of how the themes chase each other throughout the piece. Fugues display the Baroque love for complicated, intricate ideas and forms — a good fugue will have all the “correct” parts, and also be musically pleasing. This fugue, after the final statement of the subject, wanders off into an exciting pedal solo, followed by a virtuosic ending. While the fugues of J.S. Bach are considered to be the height of the form, subsequent generations took inspiration from them, and they continue to be composed today.
