CE Clare College, Cambridge 19th November 2014

[DracoM]

CE Clare College, Cambridge




Order of Service:



Introit: Let all the world in every corner sing / Nico Muhly (first broadcast)
Responses: Joshua Pacey (first broadcast)
Psalms 98, 99, 100, 101 (Stanford, Lloyd, Attwood, Hopkins)
First Lesson: Isaiah 2:1-11
Office Hymn: As we remember, Lord, thy faithful handmaid (Iste Confessor)
Canticles: William Denis Browne in A
Second Lesson: John 6: 22-34
Anthem: The fear of the Lord (Howells)
Final Hymn: How shall I sing that majesty (Coe Fen)
Blessing: A Clare Benediction (John Rutter)


Organ Voluntary: Prélude et Danse Fuguée (Gaston Litaize)


Cello: Benjamin Michaels
Senior Organ Scholar: Matthew Jorysz
Director of Music: Graham Ross

[Petrushka]

Coe Fen again? Along with Regent Square it's one of those hymn tunes that comes round with some frequency on CE while there are a great many that never get a look in.

[mopsus]

It is at least local in this case. The composer, Ken Naylor, wrote it while a teacher at the Leys School, Cambridge and named it after a fen near the school. I agree that the tune gets overused. I think it's partly a feeling of relief that someone has written a decent hymn tune in the last 60 years or so, creating a need to point this out at frequent intervals.

[ardcarp]

...not a bad tune tho'. Maurice Bevan's There's a Wideness in God's Mercy seems (quite rightly) popular too. I don't know if Hymns for Church and School [formerly the non-PC Public School Hymn Book] is still around, but it seemed full of those very English unison tunes, some of which could do with an airing.

How about a list of tunes punters might like to hear more often?

I'll put forward the Armstrong Gibbs tune [can't remember its name] to Thee Will I Love my God and King, and Percy Buck's tune to The Royal Banners [Gonfalon Royal].

[Petrushka]

...not a bad tune tho'. Maurice Bevan's There's a Wideness in God's Mercy seems (quite rightly) popular too. I don't know if Hymns for Church and School [formerly the non-PC Public School Hymn Book] is still around, but it seemed full of those very English unison tunes, some of which could do with an airing.

How about a list of tunes punters might like to hear more often?

I'll put forward the Armstrong Gibbs tune [can't remember its name] to Thee Will I Love my God and King, and Percy Buck's tune to The Royal Banners [Gonfalon Royal].

Gonfalon Royal is indeed a splendid tune (I had it going round my head as an ear worm only earlier this week) and one I remember singing at a choir festival in Lichfield Cathedral many years ago. I was largely brought up on the English Hymnal and most of my favourites reside in those pages.

[Contre Bombarde]

How about a list of tunes punters might like to hear more often?

Helmsley - sadly always just once a year.

No chance of playing it in my current location, except maybe as a sortie improvisation if invited, but very fond memories of mucky reharmonisations and the Cymbelstern during the final verse when at university.

[Petrushka]

Abbots Leigh is another favourite, as is Woodlands (Tell out my Soul). O Strength and Stay is another memorable hymn tune that brings to mind those Parish Church Sunday Evensongs of times long gone.

I'll add Benson (God is Working His Purpose Out) to my list too. All favourites of my choir days and not forgotten.

[ardcarp]

God is Working His Purpose Out

If I recall, it was Working Out how to fit the words into the verses.

[Vox Humana]

... Hymns for Church and School ...

That was a thunderingly worthwhile collection and included two or three pieces that were perfectly usable by a decent parish church choir as simple anthems or introits.

Abbots Leigh is another favourite

Tell me about it. At my last (and never-to-be-repeated) church, His Nibs abandoned our regular hymn books for weekly compilations of his own, culled from disparate sources and printed in a service booklet. An awful lot of the hymns he found were in 8.7.8.7.D metre and they generally came with a recommendation to use either Abbots Leigh or Blaenwern. I generally tried to find alternatives as a matter of principle, but there aren't all that many really singable alternatives and one began to get fed up with all of them.

... God is Working His Purpose Out ...

Or, as one of my last choir would have it, "God is walking his porpoise out". The said lady also seemed to have some conceptual difficulty with waters covering the sea. The congregation were used to singing this hymn from that generally abysmal book "New Hymns and Worship Songs" which bowdlerises the text to iron out the metrical irregularities (not a bad idea in this case). His Nibs, however, compiling his weekly service booklet from sundry sources, always used the traditional A&M text, invariably causing complete mayhem. Ah happy days! Nope, I can't lie: they were dismal days.

[Vox Humana]

Returning to the original post, that Howells anthem looks set to become staple fare for our cathedral choirs - and that's no bad thing. Staple fare the rest is not, except for the chants, which prima facie look somewhat lacklustre - but one shouldn't prejudge: the proof of the pudding...

Looking forward very much to the voluntary, which is one of the few pieces I wish I wasn't too decrepit and out-of-practice to learn.

[ardcarp]

That [Hymns for Church and School] was a thunderingly worthwhile collection and included two or three pieces that were perfectly usable by a decent parish church choir as simple anthems or introits.

...ah, the lovely Christ Who Knows All His Sheep by Charles Wood. Why that never fell into the standard repertory for hymns or simple anthems I shall never know. IMO it's a gem.

[W.Kearns]

Hymn tune -wise, I'd love to hear 'Surrey' more often, (composer, Henry Carey c.1690 -1743) which achieves a splendid eighteenth century marriage of elegance and robustness.

[underthecountertenor]

CE Clare College, Cambridge

Introit: Let all the world in every corner sing / Nico Muhly (first broadcast)

It sometimes seems as if all the world in every corner is indeed singing Nico Muhly these days (and certainly my iTunes shuffle brings him up with extraordinary regularity - he's on now, in fact), but I didn't realise that someone had gone so far as to compose an introit to those words. Who is the composer?

[Roger Judd]

re. 'Surrey' - how I agree. A fine tune, allied in my mind always with John Addison's equally fine paraphrase of Psalm 23. The text includes the immortal line, in verse 4, 'Thy friendly crook shall give me aid ...' Unsurprisingly, in more recent hymn books, this has been rewritten - oh dear.
RJ

[W.Kearns]

Thanks for the word of endorsement, RJ, and I share your sentiments both as they touch upon Addison's graceful verse and the editors who have had the temerity to rewrite it.