Music Notes 7-19-26

Michael Cox is an ASCAP award winning composer, conductor, pianist, and educator. He is

currently Composer-in-Residence at Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas. In 2009

he retired as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Southwestern Baptist

Theological Seminary's (SWBTS) School of Church Music. Prior to joining the faculty at

Southwestern in the fall of 1990, Dr. Cox taught conducting, composition, and music theory

at Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) in Shawnee, Oklahoma. As a composer, he has hundreds

of published works in musical genres including choral music, piano music, orchestral

music, instrumental, etc. He has received the Standard Award from the American Society of

Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) every year since 1987. He continues to travel

across the country conducting choral clinics, and in his spare time works as a music copyist and

engraver. This week’s anthem, Open Thou Mine Eyes, is a 1990 setting of the words by Lancelot

Andrewes, who lived 1555-1626 and was a scholar in the church of England. He served

successively as Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, and of Winchester, and oversaw the translation of

the King James Version of the Bible. I discovered this anthem in the library of a previous church

and fell in love with it. The tune is a beautifully melodic tune that you find yourself walking out

of the room humming to yourself.

Jan Sanborn is a pianist whose musicianship, style, and flexibility combine with her knowledge

of the classical piano repertoire to provide for her audiences concerts of memorable music-

making. Jan’s piano studies began in Ames, Iowa, at Iowa State University, Drake University,

then to California where she studied at Westmont College, and then California State University

Northridge as a student of Dr. Charles Fierro. She is the choral staff accompanist at California

State Northridge University and has served as the accompanist for the Roger Wagner Chorale on

their tours of Japan and the Far East, and as accompanist for the Los Angeles Chamber Singers.

In addition, she has served as organist and coordinator of music at Bel Air Presbyterian Church,

as organist at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, and a number of southland churches. Jan is a

member of ASCAP and the composer of many published choral works with Alfred Publishing,

The Fred Bock Music Company, Hinshaw, Pavane, and Shawnee. Her piano books are published

by Alfred Publishing and the Fred Bock Music Company, and she has recorded five solo piano

CD’s. She is the Past President of the National Association of Church Musicians, formerly CCG,

a member of ACDA, and a member of the Dominant Club of Los Angeles. She lives with her

husband, veteran stuntman Loren Janes, in Canyon Country, California. Jan has been a friend for

many years and is one of the best accompanists I’ve ever worked with. Her anthem, No Longer

A Baby, was written in 1975 to the lyrics of Bryan Jeffery Leech and was recorded by the Roger

Wagner Chorale for Delos.

A Mighty Fortress is our God (in the original German Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott) is one of the

best known hymns written by reformer Martin Luther (who wrote many hymns). One of the best

loved hymns of the Lutheran tradition, and among Protestants in general, it’s been called “The

Battle Hymn of the Reformation”. Luther composed the lyrics and melody sometime between

1527 and 1529. There are several theories regarding the reason for its composition, and the

original version of the melody (we have the manuscript with Luther’s autograph on it) is heavily

syncopated and is very different from the tune we all know and love. Over the years, it has been

used extensively, from Bach’s cantata #80 and Christmas Oratorio, organ settings by Buxtehude

and Pachelbel, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony #5 to Wagner’s Kaisermarsch (Emperor's March)

and the grand opera Les Huguenots by French composer Meyerbeer. More recently, it’s been

used by Ralph Vaughn Williams for the soundtrack to the movie 49 th Parallel, in an episode of

The Simpsons (Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes), as the theme song for the children’s

television series Davey and Goliath and in an episode of The Gilmore Girls. The translation in

our hymnal was translated in 1853 by Fredrick H. Hedge and is less literal, but is the most

familiar version in this part of the world.