Music Notes from Denise, November 16, 2025

This Sunday we will read in Malachi 4: See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble…But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. Our Psalm 98 brings the familiar words: Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. With his right hand and his holy arm has he won for himself the victory. As we near the end of the church year, we prepare for the coronation of Christ as King.

Our Processional hymn will be At the name of Jesus, written by Caroline M. Noel, who was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and hymn writer. She followed in her father’s footsteps and began writing poetry. Over the years she suffered frequent illnesses and eventually became an invalid. To encourage others in similar circumstance, she began writing devotional verse. Her poems were collected in The Name of Jesus and Other Verses for the Sick and Lonely (1870). Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the tune King’s Weston for this poem. The tune’s title refers to a manor house on the Avon River near Bristol, England. (Hymnary.org)

St. Martin’s Hand Bell Choir has been busy preparing music for this Sunday. They will be joined by the Chapel Chimes Choir on the Offertory arranged by Michael Burkhardt, O God our help in ages past. The Chapel Chimes are children who attend Children’s Chapel during the 10:30 worship service. They learn to play the hand chimes and the melody bells by following the music notes by color. The chimes have color bands that correspond to a particular note and the bells themselves are of a matching color. They will play the melody of the familiar hymn while the adult bell choir rings chords to harmonize. (From Ringing Throughout the Year by MorningStar Music Publishers)

During Communion, St. Martin’s Hand Bell Choir will play an arrangement of How firm a foundation by Sandra Eithun. It utilizes bell ringing, malleting, table damping, and martellato lifts to add color to this energetic piece. Eithun is currently on the faculty at Holy Family Conservatory of Music in Manitowoc, WI. She has over 600 pieces for handbells in publication and works as a handbell clinician and conductor at numerous festivals. (Copyright 2003 Choristers Guild)

Our Communion hymn will be a reprise of the hymn we sang a month ago, O Jesus, I have promised, sung to the tune Hatherop Castle by Geoffrey Beaumont. This time we’ve added two additional stanzas that aren’t in our blue hymnal. Beaumont (1903-1970) was an Anglican priest and monk of the Community of the Resurrection. With Patrick Appleford he founded the 20th Century Church Light Music Group and edited several new collections of hymns. His best known hymn tune is Hatherop Castle set for the words of this hymn. (wikipedia.org)

This year’s Stewardship campaign is titled: Tell Out My Soul, and focuses on the stories we tell and the ways we are called to share our words, our actions, our love, and our joy with the world. This Sunday,  we will sing the hymn Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord! as we consider our pledges for 2026.   Tell out, my soul was written by Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith in 1961. It’s a metrical paraphrase of the Magnificat, or Song of Mary. Dudley-Smith (1926-2024) was a leading hymn writer in British hymnody for over 50 years. He has written more than 400 texts, and wrote this hymn while he was at Cambridge. He stated, “I did not think of myself…as having in any way the gifts of a hymn-writer when in May 1961 I jotted down a set of verses, beginning ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord.’ I was reading a review copy of the New English Bible New Testament, in which that line appears exactly as I have put it above; I saw in it the first line of a poem, and speedily wrote the rest.” (umcdiscipleship.org/history of hymns) In his later years, Dudley-Smith spoke about this text: “It had no single beginning. It was spontaneous, diffuse, and unorganized, and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it was somehow the gift of the creative spirit.” [Timothy Dudley-Smith, A Functional Art: Reflections of a Hymn Writer Oxford: University Press, 2017) hymnologyarchive.com