Category: church music

Cheerful voices: As pants the hart

Byartsyhonker December 14, 2013 0 Comments
This anonymous piece is one of my favourite settings of Psalm 42. I know it from playing and singing with London Gallery Quire, though I've recorded one more verse than we usually sing in order to better portray the hopeful tone of the psalm near the end. The setting is edited by Dr Francis Roads. Psalm 42 is the sort of thing that many people think of as a bit miserable. It is a psalm of crying...

Early Music Experiences

Byartsyhonker October 13, 2013 1 Comment
Ruth of Moss and Jones asks: What are your earliest music experiences? What do you remember, perhaps vaguely, being played in your house when you were a toddler / pre-school aged child? This is interesting: I think for me, the first question and the second aren't necessarily the same. My instinctive answer to "What are your earliest music experiences", you see, isn't to do with listening to music...

Those Naughty Organists

Byartsyhonker May 3, 2013 0 Comments
I read with some bemusement an article in the Telegraph. Beware the wrath of the church organist, it warns, and goes on to list various musical infelicities. Slipping unexpected tunes into music is practically obligatory, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I will play "We're walking in the air" as a recessional voluntary when it is actually snowing (or at least for the first Sunday snowfall of the...

Two tunes for “Christ, whose glory fills the skies”

Byartsyhonker January 11, 2013 0 Comments
Every time we sing "Christ, whose glory fills the skies" I despair a bit. The tune "Ratisbon" is... well, it's okay, but it's not anything to really write home about. The other tune suggested in New English Hymnal is just boring. So I thought I'd write a couple of my own tunes for the same text. It is really a wonderful text, after all! I think that on reflection my tunes aren't much to write...

Transfiguration: updated

Byartsyhonker January 11, 2013 0 Comments
I've corrected Transfiguration, which I wrote in 2012. The new edition corrects some slightly dodgy Italian and also one of those pesky errors where Sibelius thinks it's okay to put two quaver rests instead of one crotchet rest. I have also added the file to the Choral Public Domain Library. This will be one of around five pieces performed at the Small Choirs Festival on 2nd February. We also...

Evensong at St Paul’s — from the inside

Byartsyhonker January 1, 2013 1 Comment
This week I am singing with the Ontario Cathedral Singers as they are doing a "cathedral week", singing services in cathedrals while the regular choristers are away. I met their director, and had an organ lesson with him, this past summer while visiting my parents in Canada. We've sung two services in St Paul's so far. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we'll be at Southwark Cathedral for Evensong at 5.30pm,...

Post AcWriMo analysis

Byartsyhonker December 6, 2012 0 Comments
At the beginning of November I set out to write and harmonise thirty hymn tunes in thirty days. The idea was that I would, at the end of November, have a body of work to point to, and also that I would brush up my rusty harmonisation skills. I was behind on this almost from the beginning. Other considerations, like getting the music ready for Carols by Candlelight at St Andrew's, and sorting out...

Good problems

Byartsyhonker November 24, 2012 0 Comments
It's getting near the time for the annual Carol Service at St Andrew's Leytonstone, and rehearsals started last night. For the Carol Service we have a "Community Choir" -- people from the community, and people from church who don't usually sing in the choir, join us for four rehearsals (plus a run-through on the day) so that we can do some repertoire that just won't work with lower numbers. The...

AcWriMo 10: Colworth CM

Byartsyhonker November 12, 2012 0 Comments
Since I stumbled across them in the "confirmation" section of the New English Hymnal -- in fact the one hymn makes up the entire section -- I've liked these words by Matthew Bridges (1800-94): 1 My God, accept my heart this day, And make it always Thine, That I from Thee no more may stray, No more from Thee decline. 2 Before the Cross of Him Who died, Behold, I prostrate fall; Let every sin be...

AcWriMo 9: Poppleton 887 887

Byartsyhonker November 12, 2012 0 Comments
This text by Ben Jonson is often sung to Melita: 1 I sing the birth was born tonight, The Author both of life and light: The angels so did sound it; And like the ravished shepherds said, Who saw the light and were afraid, Yet searched, and true they found it. 2 The Son of God, th'eternal King, That did us all salvation bring, And freed the world from danger, He whom the whole world could not...