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The God of Abraham Praise

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For the Beauty of the Earth

For the Beauty of the Earth

Folliott S. Pierpoint (1835-1917)

Commonly sung to: Dix

by: Conrad Kocher, 1838

Here is a YouTube recording:  http://youtu.be/JdLh3u-Qt50

1 For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the Love which from our birth
Over and around us lies:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

2 For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon and stars of light:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

3 For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and brain’s delight,
For the mystic harmony
Sinking sense to sound and sight:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

4 For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above;
For all gentle thoughts and mild:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

5 For each perfect Gift of Thine
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and Divine,
Flowers of earth, and buds of Heaven:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise

6 This our Sacrifice of Praise.
For Thy Bride that evermore
Lifteth holy hands above,
Offering up on every shore
This Pure Sacrifice of Love:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

7 For Thy Martyrs’ crown of light,
For Thy Prophets’ eagle eye,
For Thy bold Confessors’ might,
For the lips of Infancy:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

8 For Thy Virgins’ robes of snow,
For Thy Maiden Mother mild,
For Thyself, with hearts aglow,
Jesu, Victim undefiled,
Offer we at Thine own Shrine
Thyself, sweet Sacrament Divine.

 

 

 

 Elliot Pierpoint was an ardent Tractarian, also known as the High Church movement within the Anglican Church of England. This movement has deep historical roots dating back to the Tudor’s in England. As one of the most distant countries geographically which was ostensibly Roman Catholic, there was a history of a difficult relationship between local political and religious leadership and the Papal powers in Rome. While the Reformation certainly took hold in England, especially the Presbyterian and Reformed traditions, the break from Rome was much more nuanced than found throughout the rest of Europe. There remained, through much of the Church of England, a strong “High Church” practice and ethos which eventually manifested itself in the Tractarian movement. This movement started as an attempt to establish the Anglican Church as an apostolic church on par with the Orthodox and Roman branches. Ultimately, manly of its practitioners joined and assumed leadership roles in the Roman Church.

For the Beauty of the Earth is used by many different denominations, each one selecting various verses to fit within their traditions. This hymn was originally meant as a Eucharistic hymn, many hymn books change the refrain from “sacrificial praise” to “grateful praise” which would make the text appropriate for use in other parts of the worship service.

Pierpoint used nature as a starting point of a lot of his poetic writing. The first three stanzas reflect our sensuous (relating to our senses) appreciation of the creation; from the earth and sky, day and night, and mystic harmony of all creation. The rest of the stanzas address mankind’s experience of the relational. Starting with our immediate relationships of brother, sister, parent, child to those of friends alive and dead, all of these are included within the sacrifice which is our life. The next two stanzas deal with the divine sacrifice of love, which is seen in creation and the sacrifice of grace. The final two stanzas move from the human response of this divine sacrifice to a summary of the Gospel story of Virgin birth to the Divine Sacrament (crucifixion and resurrection).




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Crown Him with Many Crowns

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The 10 Commandments, OK, my 10 Commandments #1

1) THOU SHALT NOT KID THY SELF.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius gives his son Laertes the advice to above all else to be true to himself. Honesty with one’s self is a lifelong process. In the world of music practice it can begin with the simple step of writing down how much you practice. Even if you never total the time or even give it a second look, you have established a measure from which to judge your efforts.

Goal setting is critical for any endeavor. If the requirement is to have a piece up to tempo by a certain date, you can break down the steps necessary for the accomplishment. If these intermediary steps are not met, you must be honest with yourself that the larger goal is in danger and likely not to be met unless additional effort is made. If a secure memory is the goal and little has been committed to memory a week before the deadline, don’t kid yourself, a secure memory is not likely to be the outcome.

We will bear the complete responsibility for our success or failure for the vast majority of our life. While as a student, it is easy to be dependent upon your teachers to order and plan your work and goals. However, you are a student for only a short time and will have to order and plan your work for decades after your student years.

Andrew Remillard
President
ANRPiano.com



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Journey Through Bach and Beethoven

I had always wanted to immerse myself into the study of large amounts of piano literature. A few years ago I quit waiting for an opportunity and committed to the opportunities I already had. I “subjected” my church to all of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues of book one and all of Beethoven’s sonatas.

One of the inspirations for doing this came from years ago watching Steve Vaught, aka Fat Man Walking, walk across the USA. Steve had a number of personal demons, the least of which was his diet. He set out to walk across the country from San Diego to New York as a means to regain a sense of purpose and direction for his life.

For myself, I had always been a poor sight reader and very slow learner (among countless other deficiencies). I had been nibbling around the edges of these problems for years, but had never really committed to solving them. (I don’t know if they can be solved, because you can always be a better reader and faster learner). After reading about Mr. Vaught’s journey I decided to set out on my own.

I had read through Book One of the Well Tempered Clavier while in college, and like everybody else, learned a handful. My teacher William Phemister had played the complete cycle of Book One the year before I had entered Wheaton College and people were still talking about it the next year. I had also listened to some complete recordings and had lost myself in the beauty and uniqueness of this work. What a great addition to one’s repertory than the complete Preludes and Fugues, so I decided to give it a try.

I interspersed the Preludes and Fugues with movements of Beethoven’s Sonatas and began to work my way through both collections. I finished the Bach first. I started the second book but lost interest and moved over to his piano toccatas. (I have since returned to both sets and am once more doing the complete cycle, this time doing both P&F’s in each key at the same time)

The sense of completing such a large project is enormously satisfying. It would have been easy to give up anywhere along the way and just do something different… no one would have known… except myself. I could live with everybody else, but living with myself is a completely different matter all together.

The setting of an immediate deadline; I had to have something new to play every Sunday, kept my mind very focused on being productive with every minute I practiced.

Learning from my failures along the way taught me more than my successes. There were some Sundays I would have preferred to crawl into a hole behind the piano with embarrassment over how I had just played. I learned more about what it would take to be successful the next time after these failures. I learned to better judge the amount of work I would need to do to get difficult technical passages under control quickly.

I also learned about staying within my abilities. The difference between a good clean performance and one filled with stubbles is often only a notch or two on the metronome. The audience is less aware of a slow tempo than they are a mistake filled performance. (I told that to my students all of time, I should listen to myself!)

My sight reading and absorption rates did improve significantly through all of this, and for that I am glad. However, more importantly, I have a much deeper understanding of these two giants of keyboard literature. Immersion study is the best method for mastering a language and immersing yourself in a composer’s total output, I have found, is the best way to come to understand the totality of their output. I now understand how superficial my knowledge of other is composers even if I know a dozen of their works.

There are still many journeys yet to come. Some I will chose, and some will chose me. I am rounding the corner on this one, coming into the home stretch, and I can see that I am returning to where I began and knowing it for the first time.

Andrew Remillard
President
ANRPiano.com



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