Our prelude music features two settings of the tune LLANFAIR by Thomas Keesecker, one of the Lutheran church’s most published contemporary composers. Mr. Keesecker gave a special Advent concert here at St. Armands Key Lutheran Church in 2022 featuring his own compositions.
Keesecker served Lutheran and Roman Catholic parishes for over 40 years before retiring in 2019. His music is published by several major publishing houses. His studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Catholic University School of Music in Washington, D.C. prepared him for a career in which he has mixed classical technique and jazz improvisation.
LLANFAIR is usually attributed to Welsh singer Robert Williams (1781 – 1821), whose manuscript, dated July 14, 1817, included the tune. Williams lived on the island of Anglesey. A basket weaver with great innate musical ability, Williams, who was blind, could write out a tune after hearing it just once. He sang hymns at public occasions and was a composer of hymn tunes.
Keesecker’s first setting of the tune, “Abstract”, features an ethereal, flowing setting of the hymn tune. The second setting, “Minuet”, is based on the well-known dance form.
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Today’s Hymn of the Day, “Touch That Soothes and Heals” is a new hymn from All Creation Sings. Mary Louise Bringle explains that this hymn “was inspired by a sermon from my former pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Blair. Tom was preaching on the resurrection appearance in Luke 24, in which Jesus reassures the disciples by saying something like, ‘See by my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.’ In part , of course, Jesus is referring to the marks of the crucifixion that remain on his body. But Tom used the words to muse about his own father’s work-worn hands and feet, about distinctive marks – calluses, scratches, etc. – left by the work we do. This led me to create my own list of things done by hands and feet that might leave a mark: if not literally on the actor, then perhaps symbolically on the acted upon. Hence, the hands that break bread, beckon children, bind wounds … and the feet that walk beside the weary, or rush to share good tidings.”
In Bringle’s collection Joy and Wonder, Love and Longing, this text is paired with C. Hubert H. Parry’s tune RUSTINGTON. In All Creation Sings, the tune CIVILITY is utilized. CIVILITY, in the composer’s words, “is an original Celtic tune inspired by the composer’s connection between the north coast of Ireland and the wild shores of Lake Michigan.” Gregg DeMey (b. 1972) is a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church of North America and has served its congregation in Elmhurst, Illinois since 2008. His degrees are from two schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan: Calvin College and Calvin Seminary. He has been a professional bassoonist, a minor league ballpark organist, and a choir director in the ELCA.
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Our postlude this morning, “Celebration” is a free composition by the prominent American composer, Charles Callahan, a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Callahan was well-known as an award-winning composer, organist, choral conductor, pianist, and teacher. He was a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pa., and The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Additional study had been in England, France, Germany and Belgium. He held the Associate and Choirmaster certificates of the American Guild of Organists.
Callahan compositions were performed frequently in church and concert; his writing style was described by The Washington Post as “gentle, confident lyricism.” Among his notable compositions were two commissions from Harvard University and commissions from the Archdioceses of St. Louis and New York for Papal visits, scored for full orchestra, choir and congregation and broadcast internationally. His MOSAICS, a symphonic work in four movements for organ and orchestra, was premiered in the St. Louis Cathedral-Basilica.
An active church musician and concert organist, Callahan conducted many of the major choral works with orchestra and performed on many of the great organs of the world. He had a dozen solo organ recordings to his credit. Callahan was an award-winning member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He was most recently honored by the American Guild of Organists with its 2014 Distinguished Artist award, “for his illustrious career as composer, performer, teacher and consultant, and his lifelong service to the sacred music profession.”
Michael Bodnyk, our Minister of Music, was fortunate to meet Dr. Callahan on several occasions and had a few organ lessons with him during his undergraduate years. One of Michael’s favorite [early] musical memories was singing John Ireland’s solo song, “The Holy Boy”, with Dr. Callahan at the organ for a Christmas Eve service in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (featuring the beautiful Aeolian Skinner organ at Trinity Episcopal Church).
