Even More than Hymns – Preparing for Choral Classics

Gerard Sekoto, Choir Singers

It was a great joy to lead Choral Classics at St Stephen Walbrook on 23rd September, which you can watch at this link. Our theme then was ‘More than Hymns’ – Choral settings of some of our favourite hymns. Preparing for Choral Classics involves finding out about the music being performed and selecting two poems or readings that fit the theme, ensuring the choral works and the script to link them together lasts between fifteen and twenty minutes. This post contains some of the information I didn’t have enough time to include in the script for the service and shows some of the alternative options I considered for the two readings.

‘Morning Glory, Starlit Sky’ by Barry Rose

The first hymn the choir sang wasn’t actually one I remember ever hearing before, so I felt a bit of a fraud describing it as a favourite! I thought I should have perhaps confessed as much in the script, but decided against it!

I didn’t have time during Choral Classics to talk much about the text by Canon William Vanstone. The brief details I did mention were taken from this blog post by Jim Gordon, which explains that it concluded Vanstone’s book ‘Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense’. This blog post by Christopher Idle – a copy of an article he wrote for ‘News of Hymnody' - provides further historical context to the text and explains that the translation used by Jim Gordon is in fact a later revision to remove what was considered to be archaic language. After his death, Vanstone’s executors would not allow the text to be published in any form other than the original; perhaps one reason it is less well known today?

This obituary of Bill Vanstone from 1999 written by Alan Webster describes him as “the most intellectually brilliant” of those able men ordained after the Second World War; a twentieth century John Keble. High praise indeed, which has inspired me to seek out the books published by this intelligent and interesting character.

Martin Percy cites Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense as “a remarkable book of pastoral and constructive theology” which served as the template for his own “Humble Church : Becoming the Body of Christ” published earlier this year. In Vanstone’s book he describes his ministry on a housing estate in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In the introduction to his book, Martin Percy compares Vanstone’s hymn to the one Paul cites in Philippians 2, explaining that Vanstone’s text (both his book and the hymn which provides its conclusion) reveals his “discovery that the God who chose to be humble and vulnerable could teach the church to live and love better.” 


‘It is a thing most wonderful’ by Bob Chilcott

In the introduction to the CD recording of the St John Passion, the composer Bob Chilcott explains that the piece was written to be performed during an act of worship in Wells Cathedral on Palm Sunday 2013. As part of the composition, he set five well-known Passiontide hymn texts to new melodies to be sung by the choir and congregation together. The first of these texts was ‘It is a thing most wonderful’. Andrew Stewart, writing the accompanying programme note, says of the melody:

“Chilcott’s subtle dissonances and their sonorous resolution supply a harmonic edge to his mellifluous triple-time melody, as does the hymn’s crowning descant”.

The text of the hymn is by the ‘Children’s Bishop’ William Walsham How. This website provides a detailed biography of his career and glimpses into his life and loves.

Patrick Comerford’s ever fascinating blog gives more background to the text of the hymn, explaining that it was extended from its original five verses to seven and how in the original draft of 1872, he had prefaced the text by quoting 1 John 4.10 : “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.


Hymn Books written for St Stephen Walbrook

I thought it would be interesting to mention the two hymn books I found online that were written specifically for the congregation of St Stephen Walbrook.

The St Stephen’s Penny Hymn Book was edited by William Windle who was Rector of the church from 1861–1899, about whom his great grandson published this biography (I have so far been unable to find an affordable copy). The Penny Hymnbook contains 126 hymns. I am not able to work out which, if any, are original compositions, although at least one source suggests that Windle did compose his own texts. I came across this transcript of the diary of Henry Croswell, who recorded the details of his visits to a number of City Churches in the late 1800’s using a special code. In the entry describing his visit to St Stephen Walbrook on 13th October 1878 at 6.45pm he states “The Rector [was] a hymn writer, but the hymns used that night were singularly inappropriate.” He also remarks that the church was very ‘low’ and that “there was no Altar that could be seen”. He would have a shock if he walked into the church today and saw our Henry Moore Altar!

Windle’s predecessor George Croly published his seemingly more scholarly tome in 1854 ‘Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship’ which contains an informative introduction dedicated to the congregation of St Stephen Walbrook and includes a number of his own poems (identified, I think, with a capital C after the last line of the final verse).

I decided to read Croly’s text ‘Self Examination’ at Choral Classics, which he had published as a poem and also included as the text of a hymn in his 1854 hymnal. On second thoughts, perhaps I should have chosen the following hymn, written by Croly and included as Hymn 86 in Windle’s Penny Hymnbook:

Thou Lord of mercy and of might,
My trembling heart behold,
And give Thy Spirit’s living light
To search its inmost fold.
 

Against this heart’s presumptuous sins
I fly to faith and prayer;
But where the Tempter’s art begins,
Oh! Save me, save me, there.
 

Teach me to shun the first dark thought,
The wandering of the will;
Oh, keep the soul Thy blood has bought,
And let me serve Thee still.

When dreams of folly cloud my mind,
And prompt to sins unknown.
The dream dissolve, the chain unbind,
And make me all Thine own.


Lord of all hopefulness by Nils Greenhow

In the script for Choral Classics I focussed on the background to the musical composition of this piece rather than the text, because of its personal meaning and relevance to the choir.

Had it not been for this post on the United Methodist Church website by a Dr Hawn, I would never have noticed that each verse of the hymn by Jan Struther is written in the form of a Collect; although I had noticed that each verse ends by calling for God’s help throughout the day (ending with the words at the “break of the day,” “noon of the day,” “eve of the day” and “end of the day.”). 


Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson

It took some time to find a suitable second reading. I considered using ‘Songs of Praise’ by the Irish poet Derek Mahon. Like George Croly, whose hymn I had selected for the first reading, Mahon was born in Ireland but lived most of his life in the UK. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry explains that ‘Songs of Praise’ is characteristic of the poets contrast between humans and the natural world. In the poem he wryly contrasts a church congregation proudly singing hymns for the camera as part of a broadcast of Songs of Praise, with the whale song of the endangered species in the ocean. 

I rather liked the pointed commentary on our engagement with hymns (and desire for the limelight) and the fact that whereas George Croly’s hymn was focussed on the self, Songs of Praise focussed on a group of people. I felt on balance however that including two hymns by Irish men might be a bit much, so I looked for an alternative. 

I was drawn to ‘Singing Hymns’ by the contemporary New Zealand poet Elizabeth Smither in which the collective act of singing a hymn is (unlike in Mahon’s text) felt across the natural world - becoming intertwined with the voices from other churches in an outpouring of praise.  

But I decided to use the first verse of the hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing, written by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother J Rosamond Johnson. James Weldon Johnson was the Principal of a segregated school whose pupils sang the hymn in public to mark the anniversary of president Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. The hopeful text speaks of triumph over struggle and became so widely sung that it is still known as the Black National Anthem of the United States. 

I felt the collective history and outward-looking tenor of this hymn made it a suitable second reading, complementing the more introspective ‘Self Examination’ by George Croly. I decided at the last minute to read the first verse of the hymn only, since it’s final lines seemed to link naturally to the text of the final hymn ‘Fight the Good Fight.’

“Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.”


Fight the Good Fight by John Gardner

John Gardner’s setting of Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day is a tricky sing but with a fantastic syncopated rhythm (often accentuated by a tambourine) that has become a great favourite of services of Nine Lessons and Carols across the land. 

This website contains a fantastic biography of Gardner whose varied career took him from the band of the RAF to the Royal Opera House and spells as a teacher, pianist and conductor and compositions for orchestra, choirs and the theatre. There is more useful information in this edition of the Choir Journal published in 2018 on the centenary of his birth. 

Gardner’s “Five Hymns in Popular Style” were published in 1962 and set popular hymn-texts to music in a range of styles from calypso to blues.

Fight the Good Fight is the final hymn in the series and, like the better known ‘Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day’ has a jaunty calypso beat. 

I was indebted to ‘Preaching on Favourite Hymns: Sermon Outlines on Thirty-four Selected Hymns’ by Frank Colquhoun for pointing out how prolific John Monsell, the author of the text was; completing over three hundred hymns in the nineteenth century but only this and one other (O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness) live on in the hymnals of today.

Gardner’s toe tapping arrangement was a great way to end this edition of Choral Classics.  

It is very interesting to research and write the script for Choral Classics and a great privilege to lead the service and introduce our talented choral scholars - and to hear them perform so beautifully. I am sorry we didn’t have time to include more music, poems and readings!

 

You can listen to previous editions of Choral Classics on the church website.