His Voice - Volume 3, Number 1

HIS

Volume 3 - Number 1

April 2008

VOICE From the Co-Directors

Arthur A. Just Jr. and Richard C. Resch

e are pleased to announce the theme and program for the 2008 conference of The Good Shepherd Institute of Pastoral Theology and Sacred Music (Sunday, November 2 through Tuesday, November 4): Lutheran Liturgy and Hymnody: Theology and Practice with Confidence and Grace.

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With the successful introduction of Lutheran Service Book into our congregations, pastors, musicians, and the people of God are now seeking ways to do the liturgy well.

Christ is present with His gifts whether the liturgy, preaching, and hymn singing is done well or done poorly. Yet our liturgical worship is an invitation by Christ himself to enter into communion with Him— the Creator and Redeemer of the cosmos. In the presence of the Holy One of God we are to receive these gifts and respond to them with the passionate confidence of saints who know who they are and where they are going, and with the welcoming hospitality of pilgrims summoned home in Christ. This conference will focus on how to do Lutheran liturgy and hymnody well, accenting practical ways in which pastors and musicians may assist the people of God to embody the faith in their worship.

This year’s conference will be different from past conferences in three ways. First, it will have two tracks: one for pastors, deacons, elders, and other church leaders; and one for organists, choir members, and directors of children’s, adult, and

bell choirs. Second, throughout the conference, clergy and musicians will model the planning process for the culminating service of the conference, All Saints’ Holy Communion offered for the whole campus on Tuesday morning. Third, this year’s sessions will not appear in a published journal, but will be videotaped for distribution as teaching DVDs for the church.

The 2008 Conference will begin on Sunday, November 2 at 4:30 PM with an organ recital by Faythe Freese, associate professor of music at the University of Alabama School of Music, and formerly a music faculty member at Concordia University Texas. It will be followed at 7:30 PM by All Saints’ Choral Vespers, including Bach’s Cantata BWV 80, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, presented by the Seminary Schola Cantorum. On Monday evening Kantor Kevin Hildebrand will present a hymn festival that will allow us to sing the liturgical year in a glorious way.

It is our hope that this conference will help pastors and musicians to lead Lutheran liturgy and hymnody in ways that are as confident and graceful as they are theologically grounded.

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THE GOOD SHEPHERD I

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Pastoral Theology and Sacred Music for the Church

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Announcing the Release!

Singing the Faith: Living the Lutheran Musical Heritage

This Good Shepherd Institute product may now be ordered from Concordia Publishing House www.cph.org with the product number: 99-2260.

It is an 80-minute DVD for pastors, church musicians, and all interested in the story of Lutheran hymn singing. The package includes a 32- page booklet for the teacher and reproducible handouts for four sessions.

The cost is $24.95.

Since we produced it, we cannot objectively review it. We welcome your responses and hope to publish them in a future edition of His Voice.

Please send your thoughts to Yohko Masaki at: yohko.masaki@ctsfw.edu

HIS Voice • April 2008

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Recommended

PASTORAL RESOURCES

by JOHN PLESS

Matthew C. Harrison, Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith in Action

(Concordia Publishing House, 2008), 270 pp. [$14.99]

Writing out of several years experience as a pastor in rural Iowa and urban Indiana, and seven years as Executive Director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care, Matthew Harrison has provided the church with a wonderfully textured theology of mercy that is both dogmatic and doxological.

Drawing on the Kyrie, Harrison focuses on the gift of Christ’s mercy for sinners, demonstrating that justification by faith is the foundation for the church’s corporate life of mercy extended to those who ache under the burdens of disease, poverty, and death in this fallen world. Written in a lively and conversational tone, this book brings solid confessional Lutheran theology to clarify how Christian vocation, both individually and corporately, is the extension of the Divine Service into the world. The book is supplemented with study/discussion questions that would make it an ideal text for an adult Bible class. _______________________________________

Daniel Gard, Ruth Geisler, Kevin Hildebrand, John T. Pless, Carl Roth, and Harold Senkbeil, Lamb of God, Pure and Holy: Resources for LentEaster Preaching and Worship Based on “O Lamm Gottes”

(Concordia Publishing House, 2008), 190 pp. [$28.98]

Utilizing exegetical, homiletical, and liturgical material first presented at a Lenten Preaching Seminar sponsored by The Good Shepherd Institute in 2005, this book provides pastors and parish musicians with textual studies (Gard), sermons (Senkbeil), liturgical theology/worship resources from LSB (Pless), choral suggestions (Hildebrand), children’s messages (Geisler), and Bible studies (Roth) for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. _______________________________________ HIS Voice • April 2008

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Recommended

PASTORAL RESOURCES Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way, ed. and trans. Jeffrey C. Silcock and Mark C. Mattes.

(Eerdmans, 2007), 302 pp. [$32.00]

Until his recent retirement, Oswald Bayer served as professor of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen. Bayer has the well-deserved reputation as a theologian who utilizes both Luther and the German philosopher Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) in developing an approach to systematic theology that is both faithful and fresh. Theology the Lutheran Way is a multifaceted exposition that testifies to the vitality of Bayer’s approach.

Theology the Lutheran Way engages the question “what is theology?” Bayer refuses to settle for a dichotomy between theology as a theoretical science and a practical discipline. In fact, theology is not something we do. Theology is God’s work as He both kills and vivifies the theologian. It is a passive, or, better put, receptive enterprise. Here Bayer uses Luther’s famous triad oratio, meditatio, tentatio to speak of how theologians are made by prayer, meditation, and spiritual attack. Contrasting Luther’s method to medieval forms of speculative and contemplative theology, as well as Enlightenment models influenced by Kant and Hegel and the existential approaches of Schleiermacher, Bultmann, and Jonas, Bayer argues for a return to Luther’s “catechetical systematic,” marked by reliance on God’s own promissio, a bodily word that accomplishes God’s purpose. This is one of the magnificent strengths of Bayer’s work.

A second significant strength is Bayer’s treatment of the “Divine Service and Theology.” Bayer correctly notes that “The distinction between faith and theology is an invention of modernity” (p. 83).

Luther’s theology guards us against this deforming distinction while providing place for necessary academic disciplines—but disciplines set within a liturgical spirituality. Thus, for Bayer, theology has its genesis in the Divine Service and leads back to the Divine Service. For Bayer, liturgical theology is not anthropological analysis or ritual commentary, HIS Voice • April 2008

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but rather the Divine Service has to do with promise and faith—God giving and our receiving. His discussion of the church as an “order of creation,” the externality of the word, the distinction between gift and sacrifice, and “the day of rest” as receptivity are essential for anyone attempting to articulate a Lutheran theology of worship. But this is more than a theology of worship or a theology about worship.

Bayer writes: “If the divine service has this universal dimension that we have demonstrated, then theology, understood in the narrower sense as a disciplined way of thinking, cannot go beyond it. It can never outstrip it, nor even catch up with it. Theology begins and ends with the divine service. As a disciplined way of thinking, it is closely connected to faith, which comes from hearing (Rom.10:17).

Faith loves God not only with all one’s heart, but also with every power and vitality, including the mind (Mark 12:30). Broadly speaking, theology is identical with faith” (p. 93).

Bayer is at home in the world of philosophy, and he is apt at handling the conceptualities of this world.

Yet he does not build a system in conformity with any of these metaphysical paradigms of knowing and doing, but, following Hamann (and Luther before him), Bayer asserts that theology’s grammar is the language of the Holy Scripture. Hence for Schleiermacher, faith creates the word, but for Luther, the word creates faith.

Theology the Lutheran Way is one of the most promising contributions of our day to the study of theology; it is liturgical theology at its best. By and large, the new curriculum at Concordia Theological Seminary is reflective of the thesis of Bayer’s book, even though our faculty did not have access to it when the curriculum was being designed. All of our first-year students are working with Bayer’s exposition of oratio, meditatio, tentatio as part of the field education plenary lectures. Pastors would do well to work through this book individually or in circuit pastoral conferences. To that end, Mark Mattes has provided a very helpful introduction to Bayer’s work in “Theology the Lutheran Way: A Synopsis and Glossary,” Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 16, no. 4 (Reformation 2007): 37–46. _______________________________________

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Recommended

PASTORAL RESOURCES Oliver K. Olson, Reclaiming the Lutheran Liturgical Heritage (Reclaim Resources, 2007), 89 pp.

Oliver Olson, the preeminent scholar of Matthias Illyricus Flacius (1520–1575) and an authority on the history and theology of Lutheran liturgy, has long argued that worship practices ought to be congruent with Lutheran doctrine. Given the tendency for American Lutherans to borrow uncritically from other traditions, Olson’s thoughtful research is condensed in a form that will be accessible not only to seminarians and pastors but to a lay audience as well. Throughout the volume, the gift character of the Lord’s Supper is accented as Olson engages liturgical theologies often of Roman or Eastern orientation that shaped the Lutheran Book of Worship and, more recently, Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Olson quotes Flacius: “Liturgical changes will be the window through which the wolf will enter the evangelical fold” (p.

62). This book is highly recommended as an introduction to current challenges to a genuinely Lutheran understanding of liturgical theology and practice. _______________________________________

William Cwirla, Promise: God Is For Us; Detlev Schulz, Witness: We Share Our Faith (Concordia Publishing House, 2008). [$8.99 each]

These two studies round out the Lutheran Spirituality series. Cwirla, a parish pastor in Hacienda Heights, California, develops the character of the Gospel as promise given us in the preaching of Christ crucified, Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. Schulz, formerly a missionary in South Africa and now a professor of missions at Fort Wayne, provides readers with help in speaking God’s Law and Gospel in Christian witness. Like the previous six entries in the Lutheran Spirituality series, these two booklets are designed for either personal or group study. _______________________________________

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James Arne Nestingen, “Justification by Faith in Luther’s Small Catechism,”

Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 16, no. 4 (Reformation 2007): 15–21.

This is must reading for those who teach the Small Catechism. Observing that the language of justification by faith alone is noticeably absent in the Catechism, Nestingen argues that the doctrine is there dynamically and functionally as it informs Luther’s proclamation without being the subject of it, shaping the progression from the “ought” of the First Article to the gifts of the Second and Third Articles. _______________________________________

Steven D. Paulson, “Categorical Preaching,” Lutheran Quarterly 21, no. 3 (Autumn 2007): 268–93.

Paulson argues for preaching that operates out of the center of the Gospel, justification by faith alone.

Contrasting contemporary notions of preaching with Luther’s apocalyptic understanding that the sermon puts to death all that is not Christ (Law) so that Christ alone is proclaimed as Savior (Gospel), Paulson contends that preaching enacts election. It takes salvation out of the hands of our “free will” and declares that it is done by Christ for you: “The problem the world has with preachers is that they not only give strange and culturally local ideas like any after-dinner speaker might, but that they proceed to elect sinners, which is to say that they remove the free will. They do this categorically, that means not hypothetically and completely without any condition. Giving Christ sucks the air out for anything else, especially the free will” (p. 273). _______________________________________ Concordia Publishing House www.cph.org Eerdmans www.eerdmans.com

Reclaim Resources www.reclaimLutheranworship.org (800-590-6001)

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Resources for

PENTECOST AND TRINITY 2008

by KEVIN HILDEBRAND

ith a very early Easter in 2008, the festivals of Pentecost and Holy Trinity also occur earlier—before most schools are out, and while most choirs are still rehearsing regularly. That circumstance makes this year’s observances of these festivals an ideal opportunity to explore some practical choral and hymn resources in your congregation; several ideas are included below.

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Two items to bear in mind: First, be sensitive about how many of these options you use on any given Sunday. (Trying all of these at one service would be highly unusual!) Also remember that the suggestions below for “choir” can take many forms: your regularlyrehearsing adult choir, a group of men or a group of women, a children’s choir, an ad-hoc ensemble, a choir of a few people who can sight read well and rehearse quickly, a group of parents, college students home for the summer, etc.

Pentecost: May 11, 2008 Hymn of the Day: “Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord” (LSB 497)

This strong hymn, which confesses the person and work of the Holy Spirit, is strongly encouraged for use on Pentecost. Participation by a choir can be very helpful, especially on such a longer chorale.

Try having the choir sing stanza 1 or 2 of the hymn, in one of the following methods: ✠ Simply sing the melody right from the hymnal

✠ Alternate singing melody and parts from the hymnal (sing the first phrase in unison, the next phrase in parts, etc.)

✠ An SAB setting by Johann Hermann Schein in A Third Morning Star Choir Book (CPH 974972) gives the sopranos and altos lots of enjoyable dotted rhythms, with the men singing the melody in long notes (try having a trombone play along with the men). Some text adaptation will be necessary to use this with the LSB translation. And since this is a longer-than-usual setting, having the congregation seated will make this easier to listen to. _______________________________________ HIS Voice • April 2008

Something new: “Holy Spirit, the Dove Sent from Heaven” (LSB 502)

This hymn, which is new to Lutheran Service Book, will require careful planning if it is being introduced to a parish. It may be helpful to introduce this hymn by having the choir sing this hymn in its entirety—at the distribution of Holy Communion or during the gathering of the offering, perhaps. An adventurous concertato setting by Robert Hobby (CPH 97-7160), complete with percussion, could be used. No matter how this hymn is sung, take care that the tempo is gentle (dotted quarter = 40), not rushed and overpowering. _______________________________________

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CHORAL AND ORGAN MUSIC

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Making plainsong not so plain: “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest”

Getting more mileage from a hymn: “Hail Thee, Festival Day”

A very easy way of presenting this hymn with variety is to have the choir (of one or more singers, remember) sing the even-numbered stanzas to the plainsong chant (LSB 499) in alternation with the congregation singing the odd-numbered stanzas to the chorale (LSB 498). Handbells could ring a simple fifth (B-flat 4, F5) before each phrase of the plainsong to accompany the chorale.Or investigate these settings by Carl Schalk:

If your congregation knows or is learning this hymn, it makes sense to use it in the Easter season (even more than once), on Ascension, and on Pentecost, as the text options indicate.

LSB already gives the wise suggestion of having a choir sing stanzas 2, 4, and 6. It could also be beneficial for some congregations to sing only the refrain and have a cantor or choir sing all of the stanzas. If that is the case, Lutheran Service Builder could conveniently generate the refrain to be printed in the service folder. Other versions of this hymn include:

(LSB 498/499)

✠ “Come, Holy Ghost, Our Souls Inspire” in A Third Morning Star Choir Book (CPH 975969) for unison and SAB and handbells.

✠ “Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove” (CPH 97-6892), a concertato for choir, congregation, brass, timpani, and organ.

(Note: The text of these publications will need to be altered in order to make them work with the LSB translation.) _______________________________________

(LSB 489)

✠ A setting by Hal Hopson [MorningStar, 60-4004 (full score); 60-4004A (choral score)] is scored for organ and voices, with optional parts for brass, timpani, and handbells.

✠ Robert Powell’s organ setting (in the collection by the same name, MorningStar 10-585) is a straightforward and festive setting, calling for a strong solo reed. _______________________________________

A simple choral resource: “Let Songs of Praises Fill the Sky”

(GIA G-3003) contains a simple unison setting of the chorale tune Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ,

by Bartholomaeus Gesius, set to a Pentecost text.

This would be ideal for young children— or any age group. _______________________________________

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CHORAL AND ORGAN MUSIC

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Holy Trinity: May 18, 2008

Sanctus: The observance of the Holy Trinity is

again: This is the hymn of the day for Holy Trinity; particularly if you didn’t sing this hymn on Pentecost, do so for Holy Trinity, trying one of the suggestions listed above. _______________________________________

✠ “Isaiah Mighty Seer in Days of Old” LSB 960

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest . . .

Gloria in excelsis: The observance of the

Holy Trinity is an ideal time to explore settings of the Gloria in excelsis. Settings from the hymnal are by no means the only musical options, but they do provide a practical way of exploring this rich text.

Two hymns are metrical paraphrases of the Gloria and can be substituted within the liturgical setting of the day:

✠ “All Glory Be to God on High” LSB 947

✠ “All Glory Be to God Alone” LSB 948 (Note: Substituting one of these chorales for the Gloria is how Divine Service, Setting Five is organized, but this option could also be used in any Divine Service setting.) ✠ Festival Gloria—All Glory Be to God on High, by John Behnke (CPH 98-3915) is an exuberant setting of LSB 947 for SATB choir, congregation, organ, optional brass quartet, timpani, percussion, and handbells. Brief choral interludes introduce each stanza of the hymn. A lilting setting of stanza 3 is written for unison and SATB choir. _______________________________________

HIS Voice • April 2008

also an ideal time to explore the Sanctus, with its three-fold “holy” in the text. Like the suggestions for the Gloria, a hymn version of the Sanctus could be substituted in the Divine Service setting for the day. These include: ✠ A setting of the Sanctus by Mark Bender LSB 961 If your congregation does not use “Isaiah, Mighty Seer in Days of Old” regularly (or at all!), this suggestion may be helpful:

Choir only: Isaiah, mighty seer in days of old . . .

One to the other called and praised the Lord, Cong: “Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!

Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!

Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!

His glory fills the heavens and the earth!”

Choir only: The beams and lintels trembled at the cry, and clouds of smoke enwrapped the throne on high.”

Once again, Lutheran Service Builder could be useful here in assembling a worship folder, including the musical notation along with the text for the congregation. Appropriate organ registration can also give a cue to the congregation. Use a quiet accompaniment for the choir to begin and end the hymn, and a full registration for the congregation.

Instruments doubling the melody with the congregation may also make your building’s beams and lintels tremble! _______________________________________

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CHORAL AND ORGAN MUSIC

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Te Deum: Mark Bender’s setting (CPH 98-3921)

of “We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God” (LSB 941) is recommended for use on this festival . . . and any other time as well. A variety of choral textures (unison, two-part, SATB, descant) and optional parts for instruments make this setting very versatile. Use whatever instruments you have from the “optional orchestra” parts—strings, winds, brass, and percussion—along with the organ and voices. _______________________________________ Concordia Publishing House www.cph.org GIA Publications www.giamusic.com

MorningStar Music www.morningstarmusic.com

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Recommended

READING AND LISTENING

by DANIEL ZAGER

Reading Tanya Kevorkian, Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650–1750 (Ashgate, 2007) [$99.95]

Tanya Kevorkian, Associate Professor of History at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, has written a study that enlarges considerably our knowledge of worship and the functional use of sacred music in Leipzig, including the period when Johann Sebastian Bach worked there as cantor and music director. While much has, of course, been written on Bach’s years in Leipzig and the music he composed and performed there, Kevorkian focuses on areas that have not previously been thoroughly investigated, among them the question of how congregants experienced the Sunday worship services in Leipzig’s two principal churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. She tells us much about how congregants experienced the liturgy, the music, and the sermon. In so doing she updates and complements the earlier work (1970) of Günther Stiller, whose Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig appeared in English translation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House) in 1984. Kevorkian also explores “the Pietist alternative” during this period. This book is a most welcome study that adds considerably to our knowledge of church music and worship in Leipzig before and during Bach’s time there. _______________________________________

HIS Voice • April 2008

Scott M. Hyslop, The Journey Was Chosen: The Life and Work of Paul Manz (MorningStar Music, 2007) [$24.00]

Scott Hyslop, Director of Parish Music for St. Lorenz Lutheran Church in Frankenmuth, Michigan, gives us a biography of Paul Manz (in six chapters); a study of his organ, choral, and liturgical music (in two chapters); reflections on his life and work by seven Lutheran church musicians or pastors; and a closing reflection by Manz himself. Martin Marty and John Ferguson each provide forewords to the volume. The biographical portion of the volume in particular draws one in, since so much of it is based on the author’s personal interviews with Paul and Ruth Manz. All who have enjoyed playing Paul Manz’s organ music and singing at his hymn festivals will take pleasure in reading this book. Let Paul Manz have the final word: It is a high and holy honor to stand in the rich tradition of Lutheran organists— Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Bach and countless other Old Masters. These, along with so many bright names of the present, have made the story of salvation singable. Isn’t it a marvel? (P. 216) _______________________________________

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Recommended

READING AND LISTENING Listening (Himlische Cantorey) [2007, cpo 777 275-2]

Music of the Reformation

The five singers and two instrumentalists (lute and organ) of Himlische Cantorey sing chorales of Martin Luther (in choral unison) as well as contrapuntal settings by his contemporaries Johann Walter (1496–1570) and Caspar Othmayr (1515–1553). Thus, for example, the CD begins with the first stanza of “Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist” (“To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray” LSB 768) sung in choral unison; three polyphonic stanzas by Walter follow, thus giving us an idea of the kind of musical resources that began to emerge in the early years of the Lutheran Reformation.

Other chorales treated in this way on the CD include: “Mitten wir im Leben sind” (“In the Very Midst of Life” LSB 755), “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt,” and “Mit Fried und Freud” (“In Peace and Joy I Now Depart” LSB 938). The singing and playing by the musicians of Himlische Cantorey is very well done. _______________________________________

Samuel Scheidt, Great Sacred Concertos

(La Capella Ducale, Musica Fiata, Roland Wilson) [2007, cpo 777 145-2]

Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654) spent most of his life in the German city of Halle, serving first as court organist and subsequently as Hofkapellmeister. At the time of Scheidt, the word “concerto” implied a composition that combined voices and instruments, often in contrasting sections featuring varying combinations of voices and instruments. One of the sacred concertos on this recording is based on the familiar chorale “Nun lob mein Seel den Herren” (“My Soul, Now Praise Your Maker” LSB 820). _______________________________________

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Dieterich Buxtehude, Complete Organ Works, vol. 2, “The Bach Perspective” (Hans Davidsson, organist) [2007, Loft Recordings LRCD 1092/1093, 2 CDs]

Volume 1 of this series was noted in the August 2007 issue of His Voice. Hans Davidsson (Eastman School of Music) states that volume two “consists of pieces by Buxtehude that Johann Sebastian Bach and the musicians who belonged to the Bach circle studied, shared, and admired.” Among the chorale preludes included on these two discs are Buxtehude’s settings of “Es ist das Heil uns kommen her” (“Salvation unto Us Has Come” LSB 555), “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” LSB 656), and “Komm Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott” (“Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord” LSB 497). Davidsson’s playing, characterized by imaginative registrations, is exemplary. _______________________________________

Johann Sebastian Bach, Third Part of the Clavier Übung (1739) (Ulrich Böhme, Thomanerchor Leipzig, Georg Christoph Biller) [2005, Rondeau ROP 4017/18, 2 CDs]

The third part of the Clavierübung, one of Bach’s few published collections of organ music, contains his settings of the chorales associated with Luther’s Small Catechism, for example “Dies sind die heilgen Zehn Gebot” (“These Are the Holy Ten Commands” LSB 581), or “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” (“We All Believe in One True God” LSB 954). In addition to Böhme’s fine performances on the organ built by Gerald Woehl and installed in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 2000, this recording includes choral versions of the chorales, sung by the St. Thomas choir of men and boys, conducted by the Thomaskantor, Georg Christoph Biller. This is a very special recording, not only because of the high quality of the music making, but also because the musicians are, in a very real sense, Bach’s successors, playing and singing in the same space where he made music for the Divine Service. _______________________________________

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READING AND LISTENING Bach, Improvisations, and the Liturgical Year

(Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, organist) [2008, Rezound RZCD-5016]

Playing the two-manual and pedal organ of Martin Pasi (Opus 4, 1995) at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, Washington, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra (Eastern Michigan University) organizes her recording project around the church year, with chorales from Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. She mixes her own skillful improvisations with chorale preludes of Bach, thus for Advent her own improvisation on “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (“Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying” LSB 516) is followed by Bach’s Orgelbüchlein setting of “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” (“Savior of the Nations, Come” LSB 332). This recording presents a wonderful combination of instrument, music, and musician— the performer allowing the musical vocabulary of Bach’s chorale preludes to infuse her own creative thinking as an improviser. _______________________________________

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How Brightly Shines the Morning Star: Music for Epiphany

(Saint Mark’s Cathedral Choir, Seattle, Washington; J. Melvin Butler, organist and choirmaster) [2007, Gothic G-49258]

This recording is a fine collection of music for the Epiphany season, including hymns, choral music, and organ music. Highlights of this anthology include organ settings of “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright” LSB 395) by Dieterich Buxtehude, Helmut Walcha, and Ludwig Lenel. Lenel’s setting (published by Concordia Publishing House in 1951 as one of his Four Organ Chorales) is particularly impressive, and is played with a virtuosic flair by Butler. _______________________________________ Ashgate www.ashgate.com

MorningStar Music www.morningstarmusic.com

Loft Recordings, Gothic, Rezound www.gothic-catalog.com

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