In GIA Unbound this is a very new version of an very old text to a very old tune. Alan J. Hommerding has created his take on the “The Prayer of St Francis” for the eight hundredth jubilee of the saint. He set it to TALLIS’ CANON.
As always, the sheet music can be purchased at GIA, where the text is in their preview.
GIA Unbound does have a YouTube page but none of the ones I chose are there.
In my random look at songs from GIA Unbound I found this recent Carol Meier song for the Season of Creation set to her arrangement of the traditional tune WAYFARING STRANGER.
It works rather well.
The sheet music can be purchased at GIA, who provide the text and commentary in the preview.
I have noticed that GIA keep recycling the songs that it displays in the “Unbound” section, so by the time I blog these songs they are no longer highlighted there. They are still recent songs available at GIA in any case.
This is a singular text looking at the link between science and faith that suggests itself for the season of creation and was written by Mary Louise Bringle. I initially thought it was “From Wisdom to Wonder” which a different but interesting thought.
The sheet music can be purchased from GIA who provide the text in their preview.
The setting is by Benjamin Brody.
This is another selection from GIA Unbound and is ideal for the season of creation.
The text by David Bjorlin is set by William Beckstrand (FOREST FEN). It can also be sung to KINGSFOLD.
The words are in the preview at GIA where you can purchase the sheet music.
This one has a clip on Youtube from the composer.
This is from GIA Unbound and it is Mary’s imagining of the world from the perspective of her baby Jesus.
The words by Carol Meier are set to the traditional English tune FOREST GREEN.
As always, GIA provide the text in their preview and you can buy the sheet music there.
This song from GIA Unbound finds Alan J. Hommerding finding words to fit the tune WIESBADEN NEW by Keith S. Kalemba.
It turns out that “these are everlasting: faith, hope and love.”
The sheet music can be bought at GIA where the text is in their preview.
This is another song from GIA Unbound. Set to BUNESSAN, Eli Cooper-Nelson has provided a text highlighting the wideness and acceptance in God’s love.
The sheet music is available for purchase at GIA where the text is in their preview.
Since these are mostly pretty new songs there are unlikely to be any clips of them on YouTube.
Chris let me known that it is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Australia’s greatest hymn writer of his era, James McAuley. When you are looking through old hymn books looking for Australian hymns, he is the standout. It is a rare thing indeed for a gifted poet to turn his hand to hymn texts.
The Catholic Standard has a detailed article in the current issue, especially relating to his time in Tasmania.
Even so, a lot is left out of the article that is worth noting. McAuley was an outstanding poet well before he was a hymn writer. With Harold Stewart, he orchestrated the Ern Malley hoax, the irony being that not all the “fake” poetry was bad, although “Petit Testament” should have been a giveway.
Nicole Moore in the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature had this to say about McAuley:
James McAuley rose to prominence in Australian poetry as one of the two perpetrators of the Ern Malley hoax, drawing on his training in symbolism and surrealism to create a plausible oeuvre for Malley, in order to debunk modernism. His own first volume “Under Aldebran” (1946) demonstated his skills in both satire and symbolism, which were turned to more specific ends in his middle years with several faith-inspired volumes. His late poetry evidence a new phase, in four collections which were more humane and worldly, and displayed a detailed appreciation of the Tasmanian landscape.
After his conversion to Catholicism in 1952, McAuley became a dominating conservative figure in Australian cultural life. He was the founding editor of “Quadrant”, the magazine of the Australian Congress for Cultural Freedom, which controversially sourced its funding from the CIA for a period. “The End of Modernity: Essays on literature, art and culture” (1959) argued for a return to spiritualism and divine inspiration on poetry, while elsewhere McAuley proselytised more broadly. Appointed as reader in English at the University of Tasmania in 1961, he later assumed the chair and contributed significant scholarly work to the field of Australian literary studies.
For a glimpse at his greatness this is a prescient poem called, “In the Twentieth Century”, from 1969’s collection, Surprises of the Sun.
Christ, you walked on the sea,
But cannot walk in a poem,
Not in our century.There’s something deeply wrong
Either with us or with you.
Our bright loud world is strongAnd better in some ways
Than the old haunting kingdoms:
I don’t reject our days.But in you I taste bread,
Freshness, the honey of being,
And rising from the dead:Like yolk in a warm shell—
Simplicities of power,
And water from a well.We live like diagrams
Moving on a screen.
Somewhere a door slamsShut, and emptiness spreads.
Our loves are processes
Upon foam-rubber beds.Our speech is chemical waste;
The words have a plastic feel,
An antibiotic taste.And yet we dream of song
Like parables of joy.
There’s something deeply wrong.Like shades we must drink blood
To find the living voice
That flesh once understood.
His hymns with settings by Richard Connolly are collected in the Year of Grace, available at Willow.
Every twenty hymns or so in the New Living Parish Hymn book I’ll have a diversion just so I don’t completely regress to the past.
As far as I know, GIA don’t have anything like the annual cull and replacement of songs like for OCP’s Breaking Bread selections, but they do have GIA Unbound where newish songs are highlighted. Since they include a preview of the sheet music I’m going do just that for a few selections from GIA Unbound.
This one is for Christmas and has a text by Jacque B. Jones and is set by Randall Sensmeier.
It has a thoughtful lyrics and an inventive tune but the octave leap from D to D is too much for me.
The sheet music can be purchased at GIA, where the words are in the preview. They also sell this hymn set to SLANE.
This one was also in CWB I, so I covered it there.
It’s a pop song from the sixties by Patrick Appleford. The similarity to “Living Doll” is really only the last few notes of each verse. The text is still here.
I made a new backing because the chords here are different from those in TIS that I used last time.
It is still singable with an organ backing:
