During Lent, our Eucharistic service does not include the singing of the Gloria. This means that it has been a long time (February 23rd) since we have been able to sing one of the most ancient and joyous portions of our liturgy. So our choir has made a recording (each recording in our discrete spaces) of the Scottish Chant setting of the Gloria (p. 739 in the Hymnal) to aid in your singing together at home. We have also made a new recording of one of the favorite hymns in our parish, “The King of Love my Shepherd is.” The sixth stanza features a stirring descant that our sopranos can’t…
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A hymn for Good Shepherd Sunday
The gospel reading for the second Sunday after Easter is from St. John 10:11-16, in which Jesus proclaims himself the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. This text invites us to reflect on Psalm 23, in which the attributes and gifts of a divine Shepherd are also expressed. In past years, we have often on this day sung “The King of love my shepherd is,” the text of which contains one of the many English-language paraphrases of Psalm 23. Here is an enthusiastic rendition of this hymn by the Cardiff Festival Choir, conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes.
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A canticle for a quarantined people
We haven’t sung the Te Deum laudamus together since before Ash Wednesday. So to provide some encouragement for the parish to sing this canticle at home, the choir (with Wallace’s help) has made a recording of it. Be assured that social distancing was observed; the average distance between singers was probably about 60 miles, with James in Northern Virginia, Braxton in Fluvanna, and myself sequestered in the County of Greene. This permanent page also includes our humble recording, and will soon include information about many other ways this text has been and is still being sung throughout the Church’s history.
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Te Deum laudamus, “We praise thee, O God”
If one excludes hymns with texts taken from the Bible, the Te Deum laudamus is the best known hymn in the history of the Western Church. It was long claimed to have been spontaneously improvised by St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, but other venerable saints have also been named as its author. In his book Te Deum: The Church and Music, music historian Paul Westermeyer summarizes the theology in this venerable text: Long associated with morning prayer, it is cast in three parts. First, praise to God everlasting includes a ‘Holy, holy, holy’ Sanctus-like section in which apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the whole church praise the Father, Son, and Holy…
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Hymns for Easter
Enjoy singing along with these hymns at home this Easter. If you don’t have one of our Hymnals at home, here is a pdf of the hymns included on this page. (The words sung on these recordings may differ slight from what is in our Hymnal, and all of the stanzas may not be sung.) Jesus Christ is ris’n today (#85) This week, each member of the All Saints choir recorded themselves in their own homes, singing the hymn with which we usually open our Easter service. The recordings were then mixed together, along with an organ track recorded by Wallace Hornady (safely in Alabama). Here is the result, in…
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Music for Passiontide, X — “Ah, holy Jesus”
One of the hymns that we often sing at Good Friday services is “Ah, holy Jesus.” The hymn powerfully combines an expression of grief at the horrible suffering of the innocent Jesus with the sorrowful recognition of the guilt of each individual believer, whose sin was the occasion for Christ’s death. Our hymn is an English translation of a German hymn inspired by a passage of devotional prose written in Latin by an an Italian-Norman Benedictine monk. Leaving most of the genealogical details aside for now, the German hymn — known as Herzliebster Jesu — was written in 1630 by Johann Heermann (1585-1647), a Lutheran pastor and poet. Our Hymnal’s…
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Music for Passiontide VIII — “Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle”
Every year on Good Friday, we sing this ancient hymn to a traditional plainchant tune (you can read more about the hymn here). Father Glenn often quotes this hymn in his Good Friday sermons, citing what is in our Hymnal the 4th stanza, which begins: “Faithful cross! above all other, one and only noble tree.” Since we’re not together to sing it this year, I thought it would be edifying to find a recording of a choir and/or congregation singing it to encourage our homebound worship. The recording below includes some of the stanzas from the original hymn that our Hymnal doesn’t have (and omits one of them). But the…
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Kind Maker of the world
Hymn #56Text: St. Gregory the Great (ca. 540-604)Music: Traditional French carolTune name: JESU DULCIS MEMORIA THE TEXT Although the familiar form of liturgical singing bears his name, Pope Gregory I (in office from 590 to 604 A.D.) cannot really be credited with having devised or even consolidated what we know as Gregorian Chant. That development in the Church’s musical life happened in the 9th and 10th centuries. Gregory’s reputation was such that a number of hymn texts have also been attributed to Gregory the Great, most of which were almost certainly not his work. But “Kind Maker of the world” has a greater likelihood of having been written by him…
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Jesus, the very thought of thee
Hymn #462Text: St. Bernard of Clarivaux (?) (c. 1091-1153)Music: William Damon’s Booke of Musicke (1591)Tune name: WINDSOR THE TEXT While this hymn has long been attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, there has long been some doubt about his authorship. The Hymnal 1940 Companion notes: “Whatever its source, it remains one of the most moving expressions of medieval piety. Its basic theme is the love of the soul for God, beginning with an introduction which defines a sense of the mystic presence of God as the supreme joy of mankind.” The original poem dates to about 1150, and had 42 stanzas. In the 15th century, nine additional stanzas were added…
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While shepherds watched their flocks by night
Hymn #13Text: Nahum Tate (1652-1715)Music: Christopher Tye (c. 1505-c. 1573)Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900)Tune names: WINCHESTER OLDCAROL THE TEXT The text first appeared in the supplement to the New Version of the Psalms by Dr. Brady and Mr. Tate (1708 edition). Nicholas Brady was an Anglican priest and poet, Nahum Tate an Irish poet from a family of Puritan clerics who became England’s poet laureate in 1692. Their collaboration on metrical paraphrases of the psalms had a huge influence on English-language hymnody. Like their Psalm paraphrases, “While shepherds watched,” is a straightforward metrical paraphrase of the Gospel account of the angels appearance to the shepherds (St. Luke 2:8-20). THE TUNE According…