Music notes: IV. Sunday of Easter

2020.05.03

On the IV. Sunday of Easter in all three years of the Eucharistic lectionary cycle, we read portions of John 10, in which Jesus likens himself to a ‘good shepherd’. The Collect and Psalm (23) refer to this image, and accordingly, several pieces of music this week do too.

‘Savior, like a shepherd lead us’ first appeared in an 1830 collection of Hymns for the Young – but if as children we may have prayed ‘early let us learn thy will’, this hymn can remind us that it is never too late to seek the love and guidance of the Lord. ‘My shepherd will supply my need’ is one of countless paraphrases of Psalm 23 (one of three in the Hymnal and one of three by the great hymnist Isaac Watts). It has long been paired with the American folk tune with which it is found in the Hymnal and is thus used in Sunday’s anthem setting.

The organ prelude by Heinrich Scheidemann is an arrangement of a motet by Orlando di Lasso, one of the best-known composers of the late Renaissance. It was common in the 16th and early 17th centuries for organists to play arrangements of vocal works when a choir was not available (because one choir served several parishes, or perhaps in times of war or of plague, such as the one that took Scheidemann’s life in 1663). The practice had largely died out by the time Scheidemann came to write a dozen such pieces, but his are among the finest examples of the genre. The text – ‘Arisen is the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his sheep, and for his flock deigned to die. Alleluia!’ – refers once again to John 10, framed in the context of the Resurrection.