Service Book and Hymnal (SBH): 41 Years later
he did his Setting Two-LBW version. The Agnus Dei was offered in two versions that touched the souls of communicants at the altar. The Swedish version is the one that tugs at the heartstrings with its haunting melody. The setting is finally capped off with the celebration "Song of Simeon" (Nunc Dimittis) and the reprise of the heartwarming Gloria Patri melody that one sang in the first part of the liturgy journey. The end of the service is grand with the familiar Danish three-fold "Amen," which Regina adapted. In the LP that was used for educating congregations on the service, Regina is featured as the organist.
Regina Fryxell's setting had a big influence on liturgy to come in the future, as beforehand, the settings were all chanted or plainsong. Currently, this setting was re-created from the 1963 organist edition of the liturgy, and will be featured in the forthcoming The Service Hymnal- A Lutheran Homecoming, due out in 2000 for ELCA, AALC, and other Lutheran churches.
THIRD SETTING
A third setting to the SBH? Yes, there was a third setting composed and produced. However, space limitations in the final cut prevented it from being published in the book. What was published was called the "Plainsong Setting," and was sold in separate books that were small versions of the red volumes of the SBH. Germanic ALC churches used this setting mostly in the Eastern United States, and kept the volumes in the pews next to the SBH.
This setting was completed with the help of Ernest White, an Episcopal musician versed in polyphonic plainsong of the Middle Ages. Research had found that Lutherans in German churches did indeed use old plainsong melodies when the church first started. Many of these melodies came directly from what they knew already in the Roman Catholic circles.
White went to work in the early 1950's crafting his melodies, adapted from the masses of the Catholic church and Lutheran hymnbooks from Germany. Masses from Latin sources such as the Orbis Factor were updated and translated into old English. Included were the creeds, sung to plainsong melodies from the middle ages. In the LP recording of the Service Book and Hymnal when it was introduced in 1958, this setting is featured. The complexity of the unison melodies and the constant sound of the plainsong make it interesting for the first five minutes, but makes one realize why the chorale was invented. Plainsong
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