Music for Harvest Thanksgiving

Since my youth, Harvest Thanksgiving service has been one of my favourites of the year to accompany. Besides comprising some of my favourite hymns of the liturgical year, I connect with music that entreats an outpouring of gratitude for what we have been given – often, looking forward to a warm visit and tasty food with family and friends in the hours or days that follow.

Celebrations of thanksgiving often contain settings of Nun danket alle Gott or “Now Thank we All Our God” written by Martin Rinkart in Eilenburg, a city besieged and sequestered during the Thirty Years’ War. During this time, Rinkart and his coalition of Lutheran pastors served a community that suffered mass casualties at the hands of war, famine, and plague; yet this hymn’s outpouring of joyous praise mentions no strife or hardship, only that which has been given. The original publication denotes this hymna as a Tisch-Gebetlein, or little grace said before meals. In 1647, Johann Crüger composed the melody with which the text has since been associated.

Today’s setting is a Missa brevis by American composer Kevin Allen, written in rough imitation of renaissance polyphonic Masses. He directs the music sung by the Schola Laudis at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross, where he notes that the majority of the Mass is sung rather than read. One senses in Missa Rex Genitor a deep understanding of the texts and their profession of faith, sung by the lower voices of the High Mass Choir in three parts.

– Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.