Monday 19 April 2010

God bless our Pope.

From youtube. Get in some practice. It'll come in handy in September....

No last verse alas and as the comments below make clear the tune does not date from 1615 and definitely not from The Scottish Psalter. No way.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

o no. please. It's absolutely crap. Faith of Fathers - yes! but this - oh man. The tune. Ha. It doesn't even have a tune.

(goes away, discombobulated by the crapness ...)

:)

Patricius said...

Whoever posted it quite possiblydoes not read music. "Full in the panting heart of Rome" is number 226 in the old Westminster Hymnal where the tune given is in fact one adapted from The Scottish Psalter of 1615. Underneath it is a reference to an "Alternative Tune", as Appendix, No 16, which is the tune with which most of us are familiar and we hear here. The name given to the tune is "Wiseman"- appropriately since it was written by Cardinal Wiseman- the text that is. The Melody is attributed to C.A. Cox (1853-1916) with A.G.M. in brackets underneath- which I suspect means arranged by Dom Gregory Murray. Now! There is more probably than anyone would ever want to know!

leutgeb said...

Berenike, I agree on one level, but I find the way the harmony lurches so violently beneath strangley compelling in the way my Mum's cousin's holographic Sacred Heart/ Immaculate Heart of Mary pic is. (All depends which side of her kitchen you are on!)

Add in the OTT words and well, there we are.

Must not analyse further or I will have to rewrite it and then the magic will be lost! There's some interesting part writing to be sure.

Patricius, you should be providing editorial notes!

Anonymous said...

"lurch". Yes. That is a good word for what you are describing.

Couldn't you write a tune to go with the same lurches? I agree the words are so OTT that - well, I just had to post it with a dedication to my Free Presbyterian friend :)

There is some wonderfully wonderfully schmalzy hymn with an unexpected flat in the tenor line at some point - I swapped my English hymnbook for something a few years back, and miss it horribly - any idea what I might be thinking of? I think it moves when the tune doesn't, and in Hymns Old and New it's either a Bb or a Db, I think - is it "for Jesus' Heart all burning"?

leutgeb said...

Having played it and sung it twice in two days, I'm prepared to suspend usual measures of taste and go for it. What could replace it?

I think the the music and words go well to capture what must have been heady days in the 19thC. Very enthusiastic converts etc.

Not sure of the hymn you mean. Schmalzy in Db sounds good, though not many hymns manage 5 flats.

Dominic Mary said...

Patricius;
not having my WHs to hand I can't check, but if the reference you cite is in the old (maroon) edition, then it probably isn't Dom Gregory Murray - he'd only have been seven when it was published in 1912 !
Of course, if it's the new (blue) edition of 1952, then it might be him . . .

Patricius said...

Dominic Mary:
My edition of WH is 1964- BUT I recall singing it to this tune in 1963 when we got news of the election of Pope Paul VI ! (I was in primary school and we all trooped into the church to sing it).

Anonymous said...

It's not in 5 flats - there is jolly little accidental at some point, which is a Bb or Db. Dratters, I wish I still had that hymnbook. I'm left with the Adoremus Amerikan one, which is crap in many ways.