Two Advent
HymnTunes
Settings
for
Carillon
I.
Rounded Variations on St. Stephen
II.
Canon, Air and Coda
on
Psalm 42
|
|
Notes
A Triptych of Advent Hymns for Carillon was prepared at the
request of John Bordley, Carillonneur of The University of The South, to
celebrate A Festival of Lessons and Carols marking Advent 2010 in Sewannee's
All Saints‘ Chapel.
Two of the three settings are being offered by Fruhauf Music Publications,
as listed below.
Rounded
Variations on St. Stephen
opens (in G-major) with an expansive and broadly paced presentation of a
traditional Advent hymn tune in tenor bells, followed in a new and
contrasting key (B major) by an upbeat verse in treble registers, with its
melody displaced by half a measure and set over a syncopated tonic
pedalpoint. In the third variation
(in C major), a pedalled alto melody statement is ornamented
by hand-played treble passaggio counterpoint. The fourth variation returns
(in A-flat major) with the upbeat
treatment heard in the second verse, again over a syncopated but migrating
pedalpoint; St. Stephen's melody is tonally altered and extend into a
retransition, followed by a full restatement of the opening variation.
An eloquent codetta rings out the hymn tune's third and fourth
phrases with pealings of Advent tidings. Overall, Rounded Variations offers
a palindromic structure; with sections represented by letters, it can be
charted as ABCB'A, plus a codetta.
Canon,
Air and Coda on
Psalm 42
offers a motivic introduction and
half of a canon, then an intervening lilting hymn tune sounded in its
entirety, followed by resumption of canonic treatment, a dramatic cadence,
and finally an extended coda. The
setting opens (in F-major) with an introduction based on the first line of
the melody – an antecedent and consequent phrase that is repeated for the
second line of Psalm 42. The
first phrase is presented boldly in canon between pedal and manual at the
time interval of a half measure, then pauses as all four phrases of the hymn
emerge for the first time as a treble lilt (in C major), lightly accompanied
by pedal; the fourth phrase is extended eloquently. A canonic presentation
of the third and fourth lines of the hymn returns, then an extended coda
further develops the closing phrases, hints briefly at a bold pedal
reemergence, and ends with an echo of the introduction's first phrase.
[Reference
data is drawn from:
Hymnal
Companion
to The
Lutheran
Book of Worship,
Philadelphia, 1981.
◊