NOVEMBER 8TH

HYMN

Bernadette Farrell (composer of #314 Christ Be Our Light) has a gift for composing richly meaningful, often challenging lyrics and comforting, prayerful melodies. Her songs have been included in many Christian hymnals. Bernadette has always had a passion for social justice and that comes to the fore in many of her songs. Born in West Yorkshire in the north of England, she has lived in London for many years. Currently she is a community organizer for UK Citizens, which advocates for fair housing, a living wage, proper community policing and health care access.


HYMN

Katherine Kennicott Davis (b. St. Joseph, MO, 1892; d. Concord, MA, 1980) studied at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she was also a teaching assistant in music.  One of her most popular songs is "The Little Drummer Boy," originally called "Carol of the Drum" (1941).   She wrote the text of “Let All Things Now Living” (#37 in our hymnal) to go with a well known Welsh melody (The Ash Grove).  1921 to 1929 she taught singing and piano in private schools in Concord, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After 1929 she devoted herself largely to music composition. She wrote some eight hundred pieces, most of which were choral (often writing under several pseudonyms).







WORSHIP THROUGH MUSIC

Alyssa Morris is a professor of oboe and music theory at Kansas State University, and a celebrated solo oboe player who has performed with orchestras throughout the United States. She also composes solo and chamber music for woodwinds, and her work has been presented at numerous woodwind and composition festivals. She has studied at Brigham Young University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.


The composition performed as today’s Worship Through Music selection, “Blue,” is part of a four-movement work written by Ms. Morris. It is inspired by the Hartman Personality Test, which classifies personalities as yellow, white, blue or red.


WPC member and oboist Beth Wilkinson, who performed “Blue,” is an active member of P.E.O., an international philanthropic organization that raises funds to support the education of women. While a doctoral student, Ms. Morris was selected as a P.E.O. scholar in 2016.



POSTLUDE

Henriette Renié (1875-1956) was a French harpist. Both her grandmother and father played the harp, and she began to study the instrument at the age of eight. She enrolled at the Paris Conservatory when she was 10, and was teaching students more than twice her age within several years.

Faculty members at the Conservatory urged Ms. Renié to compose. Over her lifetime, she wrote several works for harp that are considered part of the standard solo harp repertoire. She also transcribed music written for other instruments for harp, and wrote a harp instruction method that remains in use today.

Today’s postlude was originally published in 1919 for harp, and was transcribed for organ by Charles Callahan.