This Sunday will be the first Sunday of the Lenten season and we are bringing back our Kyrie that we sang in 2024. It was arranged by Ruth Elaine Schram and is set to the familiar tune, Going Home, based on the second movement of Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, his “New World Symphony”. You will have the opportunity to sing the words, “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy” in the original Greek text: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison pronounced “Kee-ree-eh Eh-lay-ee-zone, Krees-teh Eh-lay-ee-zone”. (1998 Alfred Publishing Co.) During Communion, we will sing the same Agnus Dei as 2024 for our fraction anthem during Lent. This year we will again sing one written by Susan Calvin Fletcher from the supplement, Enriching Our Music 1, Canticles and Settings for the Eucharist. Fletcher is retired from her job as Music Director and Organist for St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Huntsville Alabama. (2003 Church Publishing, Inc.)
This Sunday we will also celebrate Women Composers Sunday and our prelude, offertory and hymns are composed by women musicians. Here is a list of the women whose music we will be experiencing:
Cecile Chaminade
Chaminade was born in 1857 in Paris and fell in love with the piano at a young age. At the age of 8 she played some of her compositions to Georges Bizet, a friend of her family, and he recommended that she enroll in a good music school. Her musical parents were not in agreement as it was rare for a woman to study music at that time. Regardless, she did develop a career in music, performing in music salons and writing over 200 compositions. She died in 1944 with a legacy as the first woman composer to be selected for the Legion d’Honneur and as an independent music composer. (musicbywomen.org)
Frances Ridley Havergal
Miss Havergal was born in 1836 to the Rev. W.H. Havergal in Worcestershire, England. She studied Greek and Hebrew and began writing stanzas at an early age, writing and composing as much as she could during her brief life of ill health. More than 50 of her hymns were published after her death in 1879 at Caswell Bay, Swansea. (hymnary.org)
Carol Muehlig
Muehlig was born in 1947 and is the former organist of First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She served for 30 years as associate organist/choirmaster and director of handbell choirs at Zion Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor. She also has taught organ and piano and directed bell choirs at Concordia College and served as the university organist. Her choral music is published by St. James Music Press and MorningStar music. (sjmp.com)
Annemarie Kidder
The Rev. Annemarie S. Kidder, Ph.D. has served churches in Michigan and Ohio. Ordained in the Presbyterian church, she has graduate degrees from the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany; the School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri; and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Originally from Germany, she came to the United States on a Rotary scholarship. Currently she is the pastor for Pennfield Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI. (pennfieldpresbyterian.org)
Sherri Hansen
Hansen is a pianist, vocalist, and church music composer who writes accessible hymn arrangements for piano. Her collections weave together liturgical worship settings with hymns for a fresh voice. The Communion voluntary will be her arrangement of the hymn tune Francke. (Piano Weavings, Vol. 3: Improvisations on Liturgical Songs, Copyright 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved)
Anne Quigley
Quigley is a respected composer and liturgist and has her music featured in the Decani Choral Music Series in England. She was also a member of the St. Thomas More Group of composers, an outgrowth of a center for the study of pastoral liturgy in the parish of St. Thomas More, North London, from 1969 to 1995, that attracted several well-known composers of church music. She is best known for the hymn we will sing this Sunday, There is a longing in our hearts. (Voices Found Leader’s Guide, 2004 by Church Publishing Inc.)
Claudia Frances Hernaman
Hernaman was born in 1838 in Surrey, England and was both a vicar’s daughter and a pastor’s wife. She composed more than 150 hymns, many that were written for children, and also some translations from Latin. She wrote our final hymn with 19 century words that still ring true today: Abide with us, that so, this life of suffering overpast, an Easter of unending joy we may attain at last! (Hymnary.org)
The Offertory that St. Martin’s Choir will sing is a new one Share with the hungry your bread. It’s an original and fresh text by the Rev. Annemarie Kidder set to a haunting tune by Carol Muehlig. (2023 St James Music Press License #11394)
Share with the hungry your bread, take to the lonely your heart, strengthen the weak as in weakness you give, daily allow for fresh starts. Live in the moment as moments do come, Live out the calling begun.
Tenderly touch your mistakes, softly embrace where you failed, treasure the measures of longing and love, open to change from above. Live with the question as questions do come, live out the answer begun.
Gently admit to your pain, frequently visit the strain, look to what tension, what terror you yield, kneel on the earth of their field. Sit in discomfort for patience to come, live out the healing begun.
Lovingly honor your grief, patiently pray for relief; dig up your weakness and pain and mistake, hold it to see it abate. Human and tender we willingly come, living what Christ has begun.