Favourite Hymns
OK, in an attempt to get us all to chill out (and to see how many people actually read this), a non controversial topic.
What’s your favourite hymn or worship song? Simply give us the name of the hymn and, if possible, stick in your comment the URL to a version on Youtube. The commenting system will then magically put the video in your comment and we can share your joy.
Carping and criticising other people’s choice is strictly forbidden. Let’s share the love!
My choice? Alleluia, Sing to Jesus – a combination of superb Christology and precise Sacramentology. Go Dix!
Firm favourite in our family is “Be Thou my vision”:
(an excellent version by Eden’s Bridge BTW).
There is a much better tune than Slane for BTMV.
Very favourite hymn? No. But an old classic that deserves a fresh airing. “O Jesus My Hope”.
And
I couldn’t pick a favourite (there are so many), but I do love ‘How Firm a Foundation’. Every line hits its mark for me, and finishing with ‘That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake’ is perfect :)
This isn’t the tune I’m used to but words are the same I think:
Great idea! My choices are Jingle Bells, The Sash, and U2’s Yahweh
And
And
Which bit of “hymn or worship song” did you not understand Ryan?
:-)
The first two are more popular and Christianity-associated than many of the other items on the list! Everyone knows and loves the Christmas (so Christ)-celebrating Jingle Bells! And come on, if (Christian Band!) U2’s I Still Having Found What I’m Looking For, or 40 (admittedly this is based on a Psalm) count as worship songs, then why not the equally theological Yahweh? Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” is good too.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence (Picardy)
and
Let all the world in every corner sing (Luckington)
Ooh, some lovely choices here (except Ryan’s, which are naff). How about Come Down, O Love Divine to Vaughan Williams’ lovely tune Down Ampney – in fact nearly every hymn by the Wesleys is a goodie.
Come down, O love divine,
seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
O let it freely burn,
till earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light
shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
Let holy charity
mine outward vesture be,
and lowliness become mine inner clothing;
true lowliness of heart,
which takes the humbler part,
and o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.
And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till he become the place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
Wasn’t this sung at your ordination, Peter?
naff?! Naff?! Naff?! I’ll have you know that U2 are posterboys in evangelical churches for a reason! Certainly, their output compares favourably to the “anything as long as it rhymes, is soppy, and mentions Jesus a lot” unintentionally homoerotic guff that gets served up in said churches as ”official” worship songs.
I did nearly put in Lead Kindly Light (for the lyrics)
I did not think you choices were as naff as “Shine Jesus Shine”, Ryan :-)
thanks Tom! Having spent more than a decade (admittedly on-and-off) in one of Glasgow’s biggest evangelical churches, I would say my choices are superior to the worship song norm. Which admittedly isn’t perhaps the most shining of aesthetic credentials, but still ;-)
I agree wholeheartedly, Jill, Vaughan Williams is the best setter of English hymns and edited along with Percy Dearmer of the splendid English Hymnal. Though a lifelong atheist Vaughan Williams said “if you are going to church then you might as well listen to some good music”. My parents had a copy of the English Hymnal, I remember its dark green cloth covering. In the back in an appendix it even had some plainsong adapted to English words. I think it was higher church than Hymns Ancient & Modern. My favourite from there is For All the Saints.
VW was not an atheist. An agnostic certainly, but not an atheist.
My favourite hymn, sung at my ordination, Christ Triumphant. Great Christology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwFwgCkyNWU
Good choice, Andrew – the tune Guiting Power was written by John Barnard, who lives locally to me and under whose baton I have taken part in many, many choral performances in various venues including St Paul’s Cathedral, several times. Wonderful words too.
Hail, gladdening light – to the tune by Sir John Stainer:
Also, Soul of my Saviour:
Soul of My Saviour is, I suppose, a modern Eucharistic hymn, Guglielmo. Here is another favourite, a more ancient one sung traditionally at Eucharistic processions such as on Corpus Christi. The words by Thomas Aquinas who composed the whole of the Divine Office for Corpus Christi.
Another hymn I sang once on an all-night vigil run by the Blue Army of Fatima at Tyburn Convent was Cardinal Wiseman’s Full in the Panting Heart of Rome. It is a trifle ultra-montane for modern tastes and perhaps not many Catholics have the stomach to sing “God Bless Our Pope, the Great the Good” in the present pontificate, unless your name is Joanna Bogle or Ann Widdecombe. At the time we went out at midnight onto the traffic island, site of the Tyburn gallows at Marble Arch and with traffic whizzing past sang this followed by Father Faber’s Faith of Our Fathers. Father Faber who founded the London Oratory, convert from Anglicanism during the Oxford Movement that also claimed Newman wrote a lot of hymns. He used to call the Virgin Mary “Our Dear Mama in Heaven” and every morning raised his biretta to the statue in the oratory saying “Good Morning, Mama”. Pope John XXII used to read Italian translations of Faber’s hymns as a mediation. I imagine they work well in Italian, Guglielmo? His most famous hymn is Faith of Our Fathers, though it probably wouldn’t go down too well at an ecumenical service!
Faith of our fathers, living still,
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword;
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whenever we hear that glorious Word!
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.
Faith of our fathers, we will strive
To win all nations unto Thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
We all shall then be truly free.
Faith of our fathers, we will love
Both friend and foe in all our strife;
And preach Thee, too, as love knows how
By kindly words and virtuous life.
Faith of our fathers, Mary’s prayers
Shall win our country back to Thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
England shall then indeed be free.
But my absolute favourite has to be Urbs ierusalem Beata, here sung solo by an Italian cantor from Milan where they use the Ambrosian rite.
PS here is a link for Full in the Panting Heart of Rome if anyone wants to hear it.
And here is my favourite Italian hymn, Resta con noi, Signore, la sera (Stay with us, Lord, in the evening). It is very frequently sung at Communion in Italy.
My favourites
English: My Song is love unknown
Welsh: Calon Lan
Is that the popular tune?
Yes just so, great isn’t it!
Here is something to stir Martin Reynolds’ soul
Actually it stirs mine too, and I’m not Welsh. But the Welsh are responsible for some glorious hymn tunes – Cwm Rhondda, Blaenwern, Hyfrydol, Aberystwyth (I hope I have spelled these right!). I went to a service at St David’s Cathedral on a visit last year, and was nearly knocked off my pew when the congregation started singing the first hymn. Can those Welsh sing! It was wonderful.
My hubby is not an Anglican but a very low-church Prot, and he has fond memories of some glorious hymns of praise (to be sung lustily, not prettily). One he mentioned was O for a Thousand Tongues, which I rather like to the tune Lyngham, which is rather cool.
It rather reminds me of the Sheffield Carols, which are often unwritten but handed through the generations, usually in the pub. I found a little item on these here, for anyone interested:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/sheffield-folk-carols-from-church-to-pub/6609.html
bah, a TRUE “low-church Prot” would agree with my choice of The Sash! ;-)
How about this one, which I would like sung at my funeral, especially the first and last verses, as sung in this video (tune Finlandia):
Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
leave to thy God to order and provide;
in every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
3. Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
when we shall be forever with the Lord,
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
sorrow for forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
love the Sibelius tune
Just spent a very happy hour listening to some of these choices – some I hadn’t heard for ages (and one or two not at all – anything with a guitar doesn’t come my way in the normal run of things!). I love Hail Gladdening Light, which was sometimes sung as an anthem back in the dim and distant past when I was in a church choir.
Talking of anthems, are we allowed to include these? Here is an absolutely beautiful one which I sung at St Paul’s a few years back, either as part of a Deanery Festival or at one of the scratch choir services, Evensong I think, which they run when the regular choir is on holiday. It is by Stanford, Beati Quorum Via – one of Tom’s choices put me in mind of it – it is taken from Psalm 119 – Beati quorum via integra est, qui ambulant in lege Domini (Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord). Heavenly!
This has really got you going (in a nice way) hasn’t it Jill? You are clearly very moved by music and I take your point about including things like anthems which are not strictly hymns – at least in the liturgy of the Divine Office they are not. Also there are motets, how would you classify those? But I have always been terrifically moved by the Exultet sung by a deacon at the Easter Vigil when the Paschal Candle has been light from the newly kindled fire to symbolise the resurrection. I believe Mozart is supposed to have said he would have given up all his other works if he had been able to compose the Exultet. Not a hymn in the congregational sense at all, I suppose, but it is a sublime paean or hymn of praise. The last time I heard it at a service was in St George’s chapel Windsor where it was sung in English and we sat in the choir stalls belonging to the Garter Knights and next to me holding his candle out was a Sri Lankan Buddhist friend….
I think Peter has done something rather inspired by introducing this topic…a kind of pouring of oil on troubled waters and making us reflect on what binds us rather than all the things that separate….
So acknowledging this may infringe the strict regulation I would like to post a link to a deacon singing the Exultet. He is a monk from Mount St Bernard Abbey in the Charnwood Forest but studying for the priesthood in Rome at the Bernardicum, singing it here in St Peter’s.
“I think Peter has done something rather inspired by introducing this topic…a kind of pouring of oil on troubled waters and making us reflect on what binds us rather than all the things that separate….”
Well I’m gald someone noticed…
I noticed, but I didn’t want to make overmuch of it, because presumably you’re not changing this blog into An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Hymn-Appreciation? Orwell famously said that it’s impossible to mention Jews in print, favourably or unfavourably, without getting into trouble. Isn’t something similar true of your usual topics? I’d imagine that this blog takes a great deal of time to run/moderate (which is certainly appreciated by me and I imagine most of the other regulars/lurkers!) and had assumed you regard that as the price to be paid for blogging on topics of sexuality and religion, which tend to be eternal hot-button ones.
To be honest, Jill’s rationality when talking of subjects other than homosexuality is somewhat depressing in its indication of prejudices that remain unchallenged by logic. She appears to be quite the aesthete. Are our high-culture great and goods, whether in music, painting and literature, all heterosexual? Of course not. Any conservative canon of English Literature, say, would have Forster and Auden (and of course, the at-least-homoerotic Shakespeare). Does Jill think that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in-between eating shit, fisting strangers, and all the other “horrors of the gay lifestyle”? Sad.
Ryan, I don’t know how quite intelligent people can sometimes be so stupid. You seem to be quite blinkered sometimes. With my arty-farty background I have probably known (and loved) many more gay people than average. It is the THT which promotes all that kind of stuff, not me.
But I don’t want to spoil this thread.
No offence Jill, but I don’t take kindly to being called stupid by someone as dementedly solipsistic and curtain-twitchingly naive as yourself. Stupid? Here’s a couple of your stupid beliefs, expressed on this blog:
male/male/female double anal is one of the horrors of the gay lifestyle
“numbers aren’t your thing” so it doesn’t matter if Gagnon’s “gays die at 40” statistic is true or not (!)
And the fact that you know gay people makes your homophobia worse, not better. Someone who has Jewish friends has less, not more, reasons to believe in stereotypes of money-grabbing child-killing. Someone with black friends has more, not less, reason to denounce stereotypes of low IQ and gang violence. Do you regard your gay pals producing music to be part of the ‘gay lifestyle’? Or is it only fisting et al?
And of course we’ve established that your claim that the THT were promoting shit-eating to Our Children was just another one of your anti-gay lies. Let’s add it the pile. And, as regards the THT generally, here’s a question to call on your powers of empathy and imagination (assuming you have some): would you rather have been HIV positive in the mid 80s, or, now, in 2013? Everyone who desires life would take the latter option. This is because HIV is no longer a death sentence, due to research conducted by money raised by Evil Gay Lobbyists like the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Well, Peter, don’t blame me. I didn’t start this.
Oh that’s all right then! I’m sure all the LGBT people in this thread are mightily touched that you deigned to dial down the blood-libel-analogous stereotyping for one whole thread. Weesa sooo,sooo, grateful.
;-)
Oh good grief. Sin-bin card is close to being waved here.
Sorry! I don’t mind ensuring that this remains a controversy-free thread (although you’re technically breaking your own stated rules for this thread in having a go at my, fine musical selections ;-))
That was a very nice post, Tom, thank you – and a lovely video. What a lovely voice. (I’m sure it wouldn’t be so moving if he were croaky and off-key.) I did a day course on plainchant once, which was great fun.
I read an earlier comment (it may not have been on this blog) from someone who thought people were put off church by bells and smells, candles and suchlike. I totally disagree. I think even the most determined unbeliever can be moved by the sense of mystery, awe and wonder, recognising that there is something larger and more powerful than ourselves, even if we cannot quite understand it. I have known many people brought to faith through the music, such as this chant, which links the past to the future and instils a sense of the eternal. This is something you just don’t encounter in everyday life (well, not in mine, anyhow, which is largely taken up with practical matters). I think we are all spiritual beings, and it is a question of finding the right milieu.
Was it St Augustine who said ‘he who sings prays twice’? This is what we do when we sing hymns, surely – raising our voices to God as we sing wonderful God-inspired words.
Music is my thing – I come from a long line of musicians and artists – my sister is a professional artist, both my parents were musical, and it goes back through several generations. I am perhaps the least talented of all of them, but that doesn’t stop my enjoyment and my gratitude that someone of such ordinariness has me has had all these wonderful opportunities to take part in worship in some of the most glorious places in the world.
Peter likes us to play nicely!
Good point about bells and smells, Jill. I quite agree. It’s quite sad when evangelical churches seek to have services that are just like Christanisied rock concerts. If one wants to go to a rock concert, one can go see someone good, like U2, not a rubbish evangelical impersonation of one!
Anyway, let’s keep this on-topic.
Right about the voice, Jill. I understand in the Russian Orthodox Church a man MUST have a good voice to be ordained deacon. In the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom the deacon plays a much bigger role than in the Latin rite. I had the privilege of attending services at Ennismore Gargens, S. Kensington when Metropolitan Anthony used to conduct Great Vespers and the Vigil Service on Saturday evenings. What a voice! If he had not been a doctor before becoming a monk he could have become an opera singer.
I don’t know if this is allowed at all, this being an Anglican blog and all, but when David Ould posted the evening hymn it put me in mind of one of the most moving experiences of my life spent on the sacred mountain of Sabrimala in Kerala. At nightfall this magnificent hymn to Ayyappa was intoned as the priest closed the temple doors and bid the deity good night.
Ayyappa is an entirely celibate god, sone of Shiva and Vishnu disguised as a woman Mohini (which was necessary to defeat a vow given to s demoness by Brahma that she could never be killed by one born of woman). He vowed that he would not marry until no more pilgrims come to the holy mountain each January. The goddess waits but each year she is disappointed. BTW If we worry that Ayyappa is not a Christian perhaps we should think about the fact that the Buddha is celebrated in the Martyrology on Nov 27 as a saint under the name of Saint Iodasaph which is a corruption of the Indian word bodhisattva, a being bound for enlightenment. Dr Robert M. Price has published a book about how this “mistake” came about in Biblical Buddhism: Tales and Sermons of Saint Iodasaph. The story of Iodasaph was recorded in Middle English, we studied it at university and it is also known that the Pardoner’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales originated in a Buddhist story.
Hmmmmmm….
Nice to share as a one-off! Interesting about the St Iodasaph story. Got a link to more on that?
Well you can go here for starters for lots of links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
I would have expected the Bollandists to have got rid of them as they did Christopher and George and other legendary saints..
Dr Price’s book is on Amazon. I downloaded it on Kindle. But you can look inside here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biblical-Buddhism-Sermons-Iodasaph-ebook/dp/B005E0OFUM/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357913625&sr=1-16
And here for information about the Pardoner’s Tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pardoner's_Tale
Interesting how many of these videos are from BBC Songs of Praise….
I thought I spotted Aled Jones in one of them!
Nobody has posted any Russian or Greek orthodox music yet, much of it sublime, like the Rachmaninov Vespers….
Here’s my favourite Russian Orthodox piece:
Lovely visually, but it’s not very singable, is it? Unlike the Ave Maria from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers.
Don’t know who the choir is on that video, but it certainly has the Russian sound, especially the basso profundo at the end – makes my toes curl up.
Rock of Ages – very “core”-ish.
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll take the bait and go for something written a little more recently.
Current favourite is 10,000 Reasons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jYLTn4fKYQ
It does tend to change quite regularly though.
Of course a small amount of self-promotion (demotion?) doesn’t go amiss, my second favourite has to be this corker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyckFmyQhJ4
Was wondering if that would make an appearance!
Wouldn’t want to disappoint
Love it!!
Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending.
Absolutely love it. So much so that when in theological college I had an essay on the historicity of the return of Christ I made all the paragraph headings to be lines from this wonderful hymn.