Charles Wesley's hymns provide soundtrack for Rome ecumenical event

CNS ^ | December 4, 2007 | Cindy Wooden

[Gamecock]

Cherokee County AL

You know Cedar Bluff?

[AnAmericanMother]

My gggg grandfather is buried in the cemetery there.

[Unam Sanctam]

Charles Wesley wrote some wonderful hymns. Better than Marty Haugen, to be sure!

[Unam Sanctam]

I’m jealous that you get to sing Renaissance polyphony in your choir. We sing some pretty decent hymns for a Catholic church (red Worship hymnal) and the anthems are OK, but I would love a Byrd, Tallis or Palestrina, even if just once a month!

[AnAmericanMother]

Can you ask your choirmaster, VERY nicely, for something VERY short and sweet, just as an additional anthem?

A couple of standards that anybody ought to be able to sing are the Byrd Ave Verum Corpus or the Tallis If Ye Love Me or Verily, Verily I Say Unto You. The Verily has a funny cross relation between the tenor and alto lines somewhere towards the end of the first section, but if the altos just shut their ears and bull ahead it will all be over in two beats!

[AnAmericanMother]

"O For A Thousand Tongues" is in the Sacred Harp (Denson Revision 1971) - twice. Once at p. 88 "Mt. Zion", with chorus, and once at 395, "New Bethel".

I just got a copy of the 1991 edition a couple of months ago, and they have re-set the words at 350 to "Nativity" which does not appear elsewhere in the 1991 edition (OR in the 1971 or 1911) but is a VERY old hymn tune, 1812, and I know it from somewhere else.

[ELS]

Palestrina's Jesu Salvator Mundi or O Bone Jesu are fairly easy to learn in parts. They sound great a capella if you can pull that off and it works well during Advent or Lent.

[ELS]

We sang Faure’s Requiem a few years ago on All Souls’ Day. The soprano we had who did the Pie Jesu solo sang it beautifully - no vibrato. We still talk about it occasionally. At the time we also had an amazing priest musician as our choir director.